Tinned fish is having a moment.
Not old-school canned tuna or salmon, but artisanal selections of sardines and anchovies sealed in stylish packaging. Food lovers have become tinned fish aficionados, draping these two- or three-bite fillets luxuriously atop pandemic sourdough toasts or hand-rolled pastas. For a couple years now, wine bars and restaurants, too, have gotten in on the trend, with locals like Anchovy Bar and Verjus offering plates that highlight the meaty salinity and savory punch of these little fish.
Half the attraction “is putting the most beautiful sardines or anchovies or tuna or whatever it may be in the can,” said Drew McConnell, co-founder of Conserva, an online shop specializing in tinned and jarred fish and high-end pantry goods. “And then the other half ... is just how effortless and easy to enjoy it is.”
Beyond their cool factor, many fans note, there’s a feel-good aspect, too: sustainability. It’s a belief born of the idea that eating lower on the food chain is better, and that these fish are able to reproduce fast enough to create a nearly endless supply.
But while the taste and fashion aspects are undeniable, not all tinned fish are a sustainable option — the situation is more complicated. Sardines and anchovies do reproduce quickly, but their populations can be overfished to a point where it’s hard for them to rebound. An example of how this plays out is the sardine population in the Pacific Ocean off the western coast of North America, where U.S. commercial fishing of sardines has been closed since 2015.
“They’re not taking advantage of their options, optimal spawning and feeding behavior,” said David Demer, senior scientist and leader for the advanced survey technologies group at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), speaking of the fish. “And that’s creating a negative feedback mechanism so that they’re not able to resurge.”
A shopper selects a box of La Brujula sardines at Billingsgate in San Francisco.
Noah Berger / Special to The ChronicleSo is the answer to simply stop eating them? Well, not exactly. And that might be a tall order at a time when consumption has risen. As the pandemic hit in the first quarter of 2020, sales of shelf stable seafood (in cans and pouches) rose 53.4%.
People are not wrong to think it’s a more sustainable seafood option than popular species like salmon, shrimp and tilapia, which are often farmed in damaging conditions, or bigger fish like rockfish and swordfish, which are slower to reproduce and take years to grow to catch-worthy size. It’s one reason why Stuart Brioza, who opened the Anchovy Bar in October, is highlighting these so-called forage fish, which are usually prey for larger species.
In many parts of the world, they often are caught in a low-impact way, according to the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch program, with purse seines, a net bag that pulls closed around a school. This method helps prevent trapping other species and requires less fossil fuels than dragging a heavy net around in the water.
At Verjus, which opened in May 2019, managing partner and wine director Matt Cirne pairs tinned fish with natural wine with sustainability in mind. “I think it’s a similar ethos,” he said, noting that he is careful to purchase responsibly fished products. “It’s sustainable. It’s exciting.”
But like the term “natural wine,” the word “sustainable” can be slippery; while there are good options out there, not all tinned fish are created equal. Seafood Watch, which works to improve fishing and aquaculture practices around the world, labels 15 of 17 types of sardines and 18 of 20 types of anchovies with its most restrictive rating: “avoid.”
Seafood Watch considers four factors when looking at wild fisheries, according to Ryan Bigelow, senior program manager: the health and quantity of the fish itself; how fishing methods affect other species in the area; whether catch limits are imposed and enforced in a way that will maintain a healthy population size; and whether fishing methods cause pollution or damage habitats such as reefs.
A variety of tinned fish products sold by Conserva.
ConservaIn the case of sardines, the size of the schools and opaque or poor fishery management are the primary concerns in most of the world. In some areas, bycatch (in which other species are caught unintentionally) and pollution are also issues.
“Of the four, management is the most likely to impact the other three criteria,” Bigelow said. “What may be sustainable one year could be unsustainable the next, making successful management that much more difficult.”
Overfishing is the primary threat to these so-called pelagic species — fish that swim in the middle depths of the sea. But that can’t all be blamed on the demand for tinned fish. A relatively small percentage of the total catch ends up on store shelves and restaurant tables. The rest is processed as feed for chickens and farmed fish, or used as bait for commercial and recreational fishing.
Science has shown that these fish have natural boom-bust cycles. In tracking the biomass of pelagic fish on the West Coast from British Columbia to Baja California, Demer of NOAA has observed some behavior that explains why populations in decline often stay in decline.
“The (sardines) were taking refuge in another school, presumably to avoid predation, when their numbers were smaller,” Demer said. “But that had an effect of causing their behavior to shift from their normal, optimal feedings, spawning strategies, to the behaviors of the other species.”
In other words, by trying to blend in with mackerel for protection, the sardines lose the ability to reproduce as quickly. When fishing continues after this cycle has started, it exacerbates the decline because the school doesn’t get a chance to rebound.
“Fish populations have shown time and again that when fishing pressure is reduced and strong management is in place, they can bounce back,” Seafood Watch’s Bigelow said.
Verjus managing partner and wine director Matt Cirne pairs tinned fish with natural wine with sustainability in mind: “I think it’s a similar ethos. It’s sustainable. It’s exciting.”
Noah Berger / Special to The ChronicleThe warming of the seas is also a factor. Ocean temperatures have risen an average of 0.13 degrees Fahrenheit per decade since 1900, according to NOAA. That affects how much plankton is available for small pelagic fish to eat.
Still, to Demer, the current population drop seems like part of a long-term boom-bust cycle. Similar conditions closed the Pacific fishery in the mid-20th century.
Like sardines, anchovies also have their own boom-bust cycle. In the Pacific, they underwent a bust cycle in the 1970s. After their numbers appeared to rebound in the 1990s, they were monitored according to the abundance of other species, but not counted annually. Then in 2016, marine advocacy agency Oceana sued to have fishery management enforced. Litigation is ongoing, as NOAA and the Pacific Fishery Management Council have taken annual counts and imposed a catch limit that stays the same year to year. The population is currently at a healthy level, but there’s still cause for concern, according to Geoff Shester, senior scientist at Oceana.
“The government’s refusing to use their own information and instead just set static catch limits based on long-outdated averages,” Shester said. “And that’s really where the fundamental problem lies.”
The effects of ocean pollution, meanwhile, are something of a question mark. A survey conducted by the Barcelona Marine Sciences Institute showed that 58% of sardines and 60% of anchovies studied had ingested microplastics — pieces of plastic debris smaller than 5 millimeters whose long-term effects are being studied. There was a high correlation between the presence of microplastics and parasites living within the fish, the study showed, but it’s unknown exactly how the parasites affect the fishes’ lifespan and reproductive abilities.
It would be easy to conclude that we ought to give up sardines and anchovies, but Sarah Mesnick, ecologist and science liaison for NOAA’s Southwest Fisheries Science Center, points out that taking that step has human costs.
“You’re supporting this whole processing industry,” she said. That’s about 35,000 people, according to 2017 numbers from the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health. The International Organisation for Women in the Seafood Industry estimates women make up 80% to 90% of the seafood processing industry. “You’re also supporting women in the processing plant, you’re supporting the store, you’re supporting the restaurant and the waiters.”
A package of La Brujula sardines in San Francisco.
Noah Berger / Special to The ChronicleBigelow of Seafood Watch advises people to look for tinned fish packaging that carries the seal of the Marine Stewardship Council, a global seafood sustainability organization. The seal indicates that the fish inside can be clearly traced to a fishery that has safe numbers and does minimal damage to other wildlife and habitat; it also says that the fish has been DNA-tested to ensure it is what the label says. It’s a costly program, so not all sustainable fisheries will participate, but Bigelow said that if you’re in the grocery store and don’t have time to do further research, it’s your safest bet.
In a short documentary called “The Anchovy Project,” restaurateur Brioza encourages people to get to know the people who catch their fish, as he has done with the fresh-caught anchovies that are a signature at his restaurants. (Note: The documentary was created by Whetstone Media. The writer of this piece does freelance editing work for Whetstone Magazine and W Journal but was not involved in “The Anchovy Project.”) Brioza also recommends changing our approach to seafood overall.
“The Anchovy Bar wasn’t built with a center-of-the-plate fish,” he said, referring to the idea that tinned fish can be part of the meal, but not the whole thing. “It’s really about utilizing seafood and in other ways, right?”
He also recommends broadening your tinned fish horizons. Shellfish is a particularly sustainable option. “We use farmed items in the shellfish world: oysters, clams, mussels, which really rely on no external resources … just tidal waters.”
Does that mean that shellfish are actually the next sustainable superfood? They have a great record, but it’s hard to know if getting the superfood treatment and scaling up production would damage their surrounding ecosystems. Remember that as recently as 2015, the World Wildlife Fund found that tuna and mackerel were in precipitous decline due to overfishing, but now both are relatively safe tinned options. The answer, instead, seems to be vigilance and dietary diversity. Remember, there are plenty of different kinds of fish in the sea.
Layla Schlack is associate managing editor of print at Wine Enthusiast. Email food@sfchronicle.com
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The Bay Area is hooked on chic, salty tinned fish. But its sustainability is not clear cut - San Francisco Chronicle
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