Last week, The New York Times ran a puff piece on the “Take a Pass on Chilean Sea Bass” campaign, an effort to persuade restaurants to remove the popular seafood dish from their menus. The campaign, the Times wrote, was rooted in concerns that “its meteoric popularity was causing it to be overfished.”
But, as one seafood market owner who has not joined the hysteria asks, “Where’s the proof?” The U.S. Departments of State and Commerce issued a public fact sheet in March that read: “Is Chilean sea bass an endangered species? No.”
The only things endangered here are jobs. The sea bass campaign mirrors the “Give Swordfish a Break” effort of several years ago. That effort, which sought to eliminate swordfish as a restaurant selection for the same reasons that sea bass is now targeted, led one representative of the National Marine Fisheries Service to remark: “It will end up having a detrimental effect on our fishermen… I know a lot of [U.S. fishermen] who have lost their jobs already.”
