- Alright, we are very pleased that you've all joined us today
for our NOAA National Marine Sanctuaries Webinar Series.
This is a series that is hosted by the NOAA Office of National Marine Sanctuaries.
And, we love to bring this types of learning opportunities to you
as a way to introduce you to national marine sanctuaries,
connect you as educators and other interested folks,
to provide you with the educational and scientific expertise of some of our topics,
or share resources and training that supports ocean and climate literacy with your different audiences.
So a couple of things I want to cover during today's presentation:
All attendees will be in listen-only mode,
and if you have any questions there is a question box in your GoToWebinar control panel
where you can type in your question.
If it's technical in nature, we'll address it as soon as we can.
If it's a question related to the content of today's webinar,
we will either tag it to ask our presenter today, Chef Allen Susser,
or if it's something that my co-host and I can respond to, we will do that.
It's exciting that we have 547 registrants for today's presentation on sustainable seafood.
We have participants coming from Trinidad and Tobago,
from India, Canada, the Falkland Islands, Indonesia, Guatemala,
Suriname, Costa Rica, Antigua and Barbados, and many other countries,
so some of them may not be here live because of the time zones.
We apologize,
but luckily there's an opportunity to see the recording following our live presentation.
So with that, I wanted to do a brief introduction to our National Marine Sanctuary System.
This map here indicates these special ocean areas that are
similar to national parks or national forests,
yet they're underwater.
So these are ocean treasures that are managed by NOAA and the National Marine Sanctuary System.
It's a network of these underwater parks
that encompass over 600,000 square miles of ocean and great lakes treasures.
So each of those blue dots on the screen,
from the Pacific Northwest, at the Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary,
down to the Florida Keys, and at our sweetwater sanctuary in Lake Huron,
called Thunder Bay, all the way to the South Pacific in American Samoa.
So again, these national marine sanctuaries and marine national monuments
help protect the ocean and great lakes.
And these places are known for their beauty and their biodiversity.
In many cases, we're not only protecting the natural resources
found in these marine sanctuaries,
we're protecting the shipwrecks and the cultural resources and the maritime heritage of these sites.
These special ocean areas also provide shelter and protection
for many of these endangered species like you see here,
the Hawaiian green sea turtle and the Hawaiian monk seal.
Our mandate insists that we do education and outreach.
That we also conduct research and monitoring,
all to protect the resource of these special ocean areas that the federal government manages.
And so these special ocean areas
are places that you can enjoy, and you can recreate in.
For example, you can kayak in many of your national marine sanctuaries.
And although we're protected areas,
we do allow commercial and recreational uses, such as fishing.
If you like to get in the water and immerse yourself,
there's great opportunities to snorkel in America's underwater treasures,
or of course even scuba dive.
There's places that you can surf within the sanctuary system,
and, of course, getting on a boat and enjoying marine life viewing and other activities.
All recreation that you can do in our national marine sanctuary.
And if all of this excites you and you want to
give back and contribute to these special ocean areas,
you can sign up and become a volunteer.
So there's lots of great ways to connect you and others
to our nation's underwater treasures and underwater parks.
Alright with that introduction, now let's get to today's presentation on sustainable seafood.
So myself, I am Claire Fackler.
I'm the National Education Liaison with the NOAA Office of National Marine Sanctuaries.
I'm here in Santa Barbara, California,
and I'm joined by my co-worker, Justin Umholtz, who is an education associate
for the Papahānaūmokuākea Marine National Monument in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands,
and he is on the big island of Hawaii.
And I'd like to now introduce you to our guest presenter today.
We have chef Allen Susser.
He is a James Beard Award-Winning chef
who's passionate about the commitment to local and fresh ingredients.
It's fun to know that the New York Times has called Chef Allen
the Ponce de Leon of new Florida cooking.
His landmark restaurant has changed the way that people eat in Miami forever,
and has affected how we eat, how all of us eat today.
Food and Wine Magazine has named Chef Allen one of the best 10 chefs in America.
Chef Allen's consulting is a boutique sustainable restaurant and hospitality consulting firm
which provides strategic initiative culinary resources and innovative direction for the industry.
And one of the current projects he's pioneering, Chocolate in St. Lucia, West Indies.
His Emerald Estate vintage chocolate is a bean to bar
authentically handcrafted organic chocolate.
He's also the culinary director for the Café at Books & Books.
He was recently recognized by Slow Food USA as a lifetime achievement award
for his commitment for working with local farmers and food artisans,
and it goes on and on.
He's a spokesperson for the National Mango Board,
he's a culinary ambassador for the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch program,
and he has a number of books out.
So we are so pleased to have our special guest Chef Allen Susser.
So with that, we're going to go ahead and give you the controls,
and you can begin to share your screen and take it away.
Alright, we'll go ahead and unmute you Chef Allen,
and you should be good to go.
- Alright, alright.
Am i here?
- We can hear you!
-Alright.
And unfortunately for all of our viewers we had a little issue with the web camera
on Chef Allen's end today.
It wasn't working as we like it to, so we've asked him to turn it off.
So, unfortunately, you won't be seeing him,
but I will hop off the web camera and let Chef Allen take over.
So there you go.
-Okay, well thank you Claire, a pleasure.
A pleasure to be here with you and kind of talk about sustainable seafood.
Sustainable seafood is really something that I've come to love,
and the need for it and the want to eat sustainable seafood as a chef
I think is really important.
It's somehow that we're going to make a huge difference in this,
and I'll talk about how sustainable seafood affects us and the choices that we have.
But as a chef, quality of fish, where the fish is coming from,
making sure that there is good fresh fish for us to serve in restaurants,
to serve locally, nationally, internationally,
as well as to have enough fish coming from the ocean, coming from the rivers and seas.
For us to have these choices and for future generations.
So i think that's kind of what it's about.
Just a little bit of background for me.
I'm based here in Miami, Florida.
And though I started fishing kind of in New York, I grew up in New York,
and I started fishing off a small pier on Coney Island in New York City
and kind of fishing from the beachside and learning that there were fish in the water out there.
And, but quite honestly, I did not like the taste of fish.
I grew up in a household that my mom did not cook fish well,
and she always seemed to overcook the fish,
and it's not something that I loved until I started to get involved with cooking myself
and learning how to cook, and learning that there's better ways of cooking almost everything, creatively.
And I learned about how to put flavors and use techniques
and cultural connections to the food that I cook,
and also come up with a sense of place.
So, that's kind of just a background to connect,
but I want to get into the presentation here and talk about sustainable seafood.
So here, what we're gonna look at,
just kind of see the different levels of fish that are in the waters.
And you'll see that it's kind of one of those circles of life type of thing
where one fish depends on another one fish eats another
but they're all needed to be part of our program.
So with that, what we will see is fish and shellfish are renewable resources.
They can reproduce and replenish populations naturally.
And that means that there's plenty of fish in the sea right now.
But also what's happened in the past 50 years,
our technical ability to fish with a sonar radar,
different types of fishing techniques, different types of modern fishing boats.
We've been overfishing.
We've been overfishing certain types of fish.
We've been hurting the environment,
and so these are all problems that we're going to talk about
as what we're kind of really focusing on is that if we left it alone,
which we can't anymore, so we kind of have to protect it,
and we have to make the right choices here.
So what I want to suggest is that we need to catch our fish sustainably.
We need to ask the question of your fishmonger or in your restaurant
whether the fish has been caught sustainably.
And I'll go into that as we go along here.
So the challenges facing sustainable seafood are immense.
There really are a lot of things, both on top of the water and under the water,
and the things that are going to affect us.
The major thing with sustainable seafood is taking care of the ocean, okay.
If we don't take care of the ocean, we are in trouble.
We're going to have a lot of problems.
So global warming is our first monster out there,
and that is a problem we need to get a hold and a handle on, global warming.
We have to take into account what's happening with global warming,
and we have to really work on that.
What's also out there is red tide and green algae,
and those are naturally forming that are affected by the types of
water, the pollution, the desalinization, and kind of the pollution, the chemicals, acid rain.
So these are all issues that we're having here in taking care.
Here you've got just a picture of pollution,
and believe it or not, this plastic bottle has life growing inside of it,
which is kind of scary when you start to see that happening.
Ocean plastic.
I mean look at this beautiful reef,
and you've got this pollution of ocean plastic.
Now, this is just a small minor piece of plastic,
but the volume of plastic in the ocean is horrendous.
And this is going to hurt the sea, the sea life,
'cause everything from the reef, the fish that eat off of the reef,
the fish that are eating the fish next to the reef, it's all part of the cycle,
and so that all depends on each other here.
And so that's part of what's happening.
As I mentioned in overfishing,
when you over fish, when you're using factory boats and you're fishing,
there's something we call bycatch.
Fishermen sometimes catch and discard animals that they do not want,
they can't sell, or they're not allowed to keep,
and this is collectively known as bycatch.
Unwanted catch also of ecological and economic issue,
and we work with partners and fishermen to avoid bycatch.
So just an example of that are "TEDs" in Florida and the Gulf of Mexico.
They have been using nets for catching shrimp for ages,
and they develop these TEDs, which are turtle extrusion devices,
so that the turtles actually can come to the surface and get out of the net
so they don't get caught in that.
And that's kind of why the bycatch, to protect from bycatch.
But also bycatch happens when a fish is caught out of season.
Some of the times the regulations are set
where a certain volume of fish can be caught,
or within a season, there is a season that you cannot catch a fish.
But if you're hauling up big nets,
you may catch some other fish, some of the fish that are not to be regulated and caught,
and so that you'll have to kind of put that back,
and once they're caught in nets like that, it's not catch-and-release.
This is bycatch, and it goes to waste.
And wasteful use of the seafood is really horrible.
So, sustainable fishing.
We can sustainably harvest fish within certain limits without depleting the resource.
We've been doing this for thousands of years.
Fishermen out there from the coast, from off of fishing boats,
they've been fishing,
and it's just since we've got the modern technology and the volume
that we've started to deplete the resource,
but it doesn't have to be.
And that's by fisheries management
is the process of using science to determine these limits.
And also that some fish are caught
while some are left to reproduce and replace the fish that are caught.
So that's kind of controlling it.
Understanding how much fish can be caught,
understanding when it can be caught and when not to,
depending on whether they're molting or whether it's production time,
and so that's kind of where where the difference is.
What I want to suggest is that your seafood choices matter to the ocean.
You, the individual, what you choose to buy,
what you choose to eat, what you choose is going to make a difference,
because that's what kind of moves forward into what we're going to be eating.
And if you choose a sustainably caught fish,
then the market will have sustainably caught fish.
If we can't differentiate from it,
then we're going to miss the boat here.
So the idea of making choices will help to sustain a healthy fishery.
It'll also maintain the local economy because usually
local fish are caught in local areas by local fishermen,
and they are small businesses.
And maintaining small businesses with
the cultural balance and the diversity of a small fishing village.
There are not so many small fishing villages so much,
but, guess what, all around the world there are small fishing villages.
And it makes a difference as towards how they're coming to market with fish,
as towards fish from other regions that are not caught sustainably,
that are caught just factory fish.
And we want to keep that sense of balance to where the fish comes from.
So other choices that we make and put demand on the fish that are not doing well.
Unintended catches, hundreds of thousands of turtles, birds, and other animals.
Or sometimes, we're also catching too many of a specific fish,
and that's horrible because if we catch too many we wipe out the population.
We don't allow it to regenerate itself,
and that's kind of why we talk about sustainable seafood.
Trawling and dredging are harming the coral and other habitats,
which is just kind of hurting the earth, the surface of the underwater,
and that's really a problem that we're facing.
So what I want to do is talk about fresh fish and determine the quality of fish
'cause as a chef, and that's kind of where I'm sharing this perspective, from a chef's perspective.
I'm not a scientist.
I'm a fisherman, but I love to fish.
I do it more recreationally, but I work with fishermen,
and I think it's so important that you kind of learn
what it is that fresh fish is about, or the quality of fish.
And so that here are just a couple of ways when you're looking at the best quality of fish.
A fresh fish has an odor that smells like fresh seawater, okay.
Just as it was pulled fresh from the sea.
Not a fishy smell that kind of smell denotes mishandling.
I usually buy, as a chef, I usually buy whole fish
because I want to see the whole fish.
I want to see how fresh it is.
I want to see the color of its eye,
the brightness, the fullness of it.
I also want to see the gills and make sure
that they're red and pink and free of slime.
Also, the cavity, the belly cavity, which is usually cut open,
and it should be a bright red-blooded streak going through it.
And also on the flesh side,
where the flesh, if you press the flesh itself, it will bounce out.
It will bounce back,
and it'll have some spring to it.
If the fish is old, where you pressed your finger in,
it will leave an indent, and that's not good.
Buying fresh fish is super important because that's where the flavor is.
That's where it's going to be how you can cook and be creative in your cooking,
when you start off with great ingredients.
The quality of your fresh ingredients, the quality of your fish is tremendously important,
and that's kind of what we're going to explore.
A little bit of the regional faces of this
as we look around the United States.
Because to me, cooking is local, seasonal,
and must be sustainable.
So, local means kind of capturing the flavors of the location that you're in,
whether you're talking about a region of the United States, if you're talking about Florida.
Here, I live in Florida,
and so that my region is Florida.
My region is also south United States.
But also I have the Gulf of Mexico on one side of me,
I have the Gulf Stream coming in on the other, and I have the Caribbean.
So the volume of fish that I have here is just amazing.
The varieties of fish.
And so that cooking is local.
Seasonal, there's different consequences of seasonality.
Here in Miami, we've got a tropical fruit season,
a citrus season, herbs and spices, vegetables,
and also different local influences that I'll go into as we go through this presentation.
So when you're cooking regionally,
cooking with seasonal ingredients are tremendously important.
Motivated by local resources, from the farms from rivers from the seas,
so I deal with farmers.
Whenever I can't go directly to a farmer,
I go to a farmer's market.
It makes a difference because it also helps you shop in season.
And when you're shopping in season, guess what,
you're getting the freshest ingredients.
You're also getting what's in season,
so it's the most nutritional
It's the most nutritional,
but also it's probably the least expensive because it's in season.
And then topping it off is the flavor.
The flavor is the premium prime flavor
when you're talking about local in season flavorful
from the farms or from the rivers and season.
That's why I love fresh fish here.
Inspired by various cultural factors –
cooking methods, spices, and a sense of place.
As I say here in Miami,
the diversity of our culture here, of the Caribbean influence,
of the South American influence, the Latin influence,
the North American influence, the United States influences, the Northeast and the Midwest,
amazing amount of influences.
I love that diversity.
That diversity brings a sense of place.
It brings interesting techniques and flavors,
and that's really what's great about regional cooking.
Regional cooking also has great ideas
because you know you're coming up with what's seasonal,
and you become inventive and also it brings out
a natural hospitality to who we are and what we're doing.
And guess what, it's making foods that's undeniably delicious.
That's really what the idea of the seasonality is.
So what I'm going to do is a kind of explore with you our coastal regions –
the Northeast, the Southeast, the Gulf Coast, and the West Coast of the United States.
And looking at the types of regional cooking is done.
The types of regional foods that are utilized and the seasonality of it.
So I'm going to start off first off with the northeastern area.
Northeast has beautiful fish out there
And kind of just want to tip my hat here to the national marine sanctuaries
because off of the Northeast coast is the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary,
which again, people fish at, people can dive at, people can utilize.
It's this beautiful underwater national park kind of thing
that is kind of promoting conservation and sustainability,
as well as the other things that we're going to look at.
So in thinking Northeastern, local, and seasonal,
to begin with, you start off with the historical.
Who's there, the types of people, the European colonists, the influences of the European.
But really just as much as the Southeast and here in Miami,
you've got a myriad of immigrant influences,
as well as Portuguese, Italian, Dominican, and Chinese.
So, the cultural influences are immense.
The type of fish that are swimming there are
Halibut, Lingcod, Tuna, Sea Bass, Bluefish, and Salmon.
So the varieties of fish are great,
and that's really what makes it interesting in cooking,
when you've got a great variety of fish.
Shellfish, oh my god, clams, oysters, delicious mussels, scallops, crab, and lobster.
It's really just amazing the volume and choices that you have.
And so utilizing these seasonally, utilizing them locally.
And then the vegetables are always important:
corn, squash, cranberries, sunchokes, and really some great dairy up there.
So kind of looking at some sustainable recipes.
These are just some ideas of some flavors that are going on.
A New England Clam Chowder, steamed lobster or grilled lobster, lobster rolls.
Actually, lobsters is a really good example of sustainable seafood because
the way that they're harvested, the way that they grow the seasonality of it.
Great product for that.
Fluke ceviche.
- [Justin Umholtz] Chef Allen.
-Yes?
- Chef Allen, I'm sorry to interrupt.
You had asked potentially to do a poll at the clam chowder.
- Okay, okay that's awesome.
- Alright folks, so Chef Allen's prepared a few polls for you.
I'm going to pull up the first one.
- Thank you!
[Laughing]
Talking about regional influences: what is your preference?
So you can go ahead and click on either
New England Clam Chowder or Manhattan Clam Chowder.
If you can't see it, it is behind your screen.
So just move your screen, and it should be showing up.
Let's see.
We have 58% of people have voted, 63.
I'm going to give you another few seconds.
- Okay
- A couple more folks in here before I close the poll.
Alright, it looks like we're kind of steady now,
so I'm going to go ahead and close the poll in three, two, one.
And let's share it.
Alright, so Chef Allen, I don't know if you can see it, so I'll read it out loud to you.
- [Laughing] I can!
- You can, okay great.
- Yeah, New England Clam Chowder 87%,
and Manhattan Clam Chowder 13.
Alright, so interesting enough.
Okay, now there's a regional play.
Manhattan is, the differential...
It's cooked slightly different,
but New England Clam Chowder is a clam based with cream.
Okay, cream, potatoes, bacon, etc.
And then Manhattan Clam Chowder is with a tomato base with fresh tomatoes.
So again, just regional preference on something,
and I'm really interested to see that whether more people are just familiar
with New England Clam Chowder as a general idea,
or whether it's actually the taste preferential, but that's awesome.
Thank you for responding to that.
It's kind of interesting to see where the preferences are.
So going on, some other Northeastern type of recipes are
fluke ceviche with watermelon, Sicilian pistachios and sea salt.
Or even a clam bake with lobsters, clams chorizo, sweet corn, and potatoes – there's a classic.
And poached cod with saffron and mussels, and fava bean succotash.
So I just mentioned the clam bake.
Colors, textures, flavors – unbelievable.
Lobsters, corn – the combination works well.
Clams, sometimes people put oysters sometimes there's chorizo
or some kind of sausage in there.
Usually, potatoes are in that,
and in the traditional clam bake, it's something that's cooked on the beach.
Now not too many people really do that nowadays,
but the cultural background of that is digging a hole in the sand in the summertime,
making a fire, and burning it out to coal,
placing wet blankets down, putting the seafood and vegetables in there,
covering it up and then covering it with sand, playing the day away,
and then a couple hours later, kind of coming back and it's all kind of steamed together in that.
So, that's kind of what a New England clam bake looks like.
And so, kind of some fun stuff,
and I think having these connotations, these things that
speak to where the food comes from, speak to locality, speak to kind of summer fun in the sun,
it's really part of our culture,
and that's kind of what our food talks to our culture,
which talks to the way that we eat and who we are.
And that's kind of where that comes back.
Here's another picture of a poached cod with saffron and mussels,
kind of a Portuguese sort of flavor profile.
Saffron, really big aromatics with mussels out of the shell,
and beautifully poached cod going on there.
So interesting enough, one of the things that the national marine sanctuaries
at Stellwagen Bank marine works with Massachusetts marine educators,
and they did a student marine art contest.
Here's just one of the pictures.
So I love that because it brings back the
artistic and the involvement with the oceans and really our involvement with the ocean,
our involvement, whether it's in the art or whether it's involvement at the beach site,
or in involvement at the table, it's all so important to what we're doing here with sustainability.
That's all part of the idea of what sustainability is so important to us for.
Now I'm going to move on to Southeastern.
The southeastern region,
which kind of generally goes from the Carolinas, south around Florida.
And Florida, you've got the Florida Keys,
and here you've got a picture of fishing the flats,
which is kind of a very interesting bonefish,
very flat around the Florida Keys on the gulf side in the Gulf of Mexico.
And so talking about the Southeast,
also the Florida Keys,
there's a very large national marine sanctuary there.
That's again, it's like a beautiful underwater national park,
and lots of great snorkeling, community involvement – people are fishing there,
snorkeling, using the beaches.
It's just beautiful.
So I want to talk about one of my favorites,
which is stone crabs.
Now stone crabs was a sustainable resource.
It was sustainable.
Right now, we're sort of questioning it.
This is what the whole stone crab looks like just out of the water.
And actually, generally, you don't get to see that crab whole because
what they do is when we harvest it, they harvest the two claws right now.
It used to be just one claw, depending on the size,
and the harvest is done during specific times of the year,
so that's from October 15 through May 15th is stone crab season.
So on the other times we don't harvest it,
it's illegal to take them out of the water,
so it allows them to grow and regenerate.
And that's fine,
but what the problem is and with stone crabs in recent time is global warming.
The weather, the temperature of the water is warming in the Keys,
so they're not as active.
They're not molting the same.
Also in the Keys, coming out of the Gulf is red tide,
which is also something that's coming out of the Everglades.
And also green algae bloom,
which is also coming from the other side on the Atlantic side.
Also affecting stone crabs is severe hurricanes.
The severe hurricanes are happening more often,
and it's also part of global warming as the water is warm,
the hurricanes become more severe and harder to predict and then control,
so we're getting hit hard in the water because there's nothing protecting the sea from the hurricanes.
As I suggested, they're taking two claws.
Up until a couple of years ago, stone crabbing and stone crabbers
were only allowed to take one claw.
The beauty of this stone crab is that they actually grow the claw back,
so it takes a little bit of time,
but they grow the claw back.
In about 18 months they can grow the claw back,
and it will have two claws again.
Also affecting is supply and demand.
In order to have stone crabs,
it used to be you had to come to Miami.
You had to go to the Keys, you had to be in Florida to eat stone crabs.
Now, they're shipped all over the world,
as so many foods are shipped all over the world.
It's supply and demand.
It's dollars.
It's the golden rule.
If you've got the gold, you rule.
If you want stone crabs and you're somewhere else,
if you've got the money, you can buy it.
And so that is over overstretching the supply,
and that's the problem.
And then the seasonal catch still remains,
and I'm hoping that they don't shorten the season with that.
So I just want to give you a picture of
what the stone crabs look like when they're cooked,
and it can range,
and they have different sizing allocations, from colossal all the way down to medium with that.
Now, I want to talk about Lionfish.
This is a fish that we have in our waters.
It's an invasive species.
This Lionfish is a beautiful fish,
but it does not belong in Florida waters, nor does it belong in the Caribbean.
It's a fish out of the Indian Ocean,
and that's where it belongs.
It has natural enemies.
Here, this fish has no natural enemy.
Not only does it not have a natural enemy,
but it eats everything on the reef.
It eats every little fish on the reef,
and so what happens by it eating everything on the reef,
it significantly threatens the biodiversity and the health of the reef.
And if we destroy the fish on the reef,
it destroys the reef.
It destroys the reef,
then we have more tidal change and we have more problems with the seafood
because the fish that grow on the reef are being eaten by fish a little bit outside of the reef
that are eaten by bigger fish and eaten by the apex feeders.
And so it's a whole fish chain that's threatened by this little beautiful fish.
So with that, I actually wrote a new cookbook, Green Fig and Lionfish,
talking about sustainable Caribbean cooking.
And my motto on that is to eat them to beat them, okay.
We have to start eating Lionfish in order to eradicate them
because it has no natural enemy.
So just as I'm saying we have to slow down on stone crab,
we've got to pick up the pace on Lionfish.
It's a delicious fish.
It's a really nice, white, briny fish,
and let's start eating it!
So that's part of our story here.
Seasonal and local here in the Southeast,
you're looking at different fishes.
Grouper, Snapper, Yellowtail, Tilefish, Tripletail, Mullet,
great array of fish that are here.
Also on seafood,
shrimp, crab, stone crab, Florida lobster,
which is a beautiful warm weather lobster, warm water lobster.
We use grits and rice, corn, boniato, name,
again, depending on the cultural background,
what kind of starches are used in the cooking.
Beans and greens, okra, calabaza, chayote, plantains, zucchinis, and peppers.
It's kind of like endless,
and then, hold on.
Tropical mangoes, papaya, citrus, oranges, grapefruits, tangerines.
This is like the best place in the world to be cooking.
That's why I love being here in Miami
and cooking and utilizing all of these wonderful ingredients.
So here I'm going gonna look at some sustainable seafood recipes from the Southeast.
Wild-caught shrimp with heirloom grits and tomato gravy.
Tilefish with braised collard greens, butter beans that preserve tomato and pickled okra.
Also, King Mackerel Crudo or Smoked Cobia.
Okay so kind of really some delicious things.
Here's a picture of the shrimp and grits with tomato and gravy.
It can go from simple grits to organic grits.
It can go from wild-caught shrimp, Key West shrimp, to other types of shrimp.
So again, we have choices to make.
We have choices to bring it in,
and that's really kind of the difference that we have here.
Here's a Kingfish Mackerel Crudo,
which is raw, but it's kind of marinated with a Leche de Tigre,
which is a lime and tangerine, sort of a vinaigrette.
And now, I'm gonna move on to the Gulf Coast.
Gulf Coast, off of the Gulf of Mexico
also has some great opportunities for choices of fish,
and that's kind of what we're looking at.
Here again, you've got another national marine sanctuary,
and this is called Flower Gardens Bank,
kind of off the Texas coast,
which you'll see here.
And also, education is important to know it's there.
Get out there, swim it, and be a part of it.
But here looking at the seasonal and local Gulf Coast ingredients.
Black Grouper, Redfish, Swordfish, and Pompano.
Oysters and clams, crab and shrimp.
On the produce side,
you've got corn and black-eyed peas, greens, collard greens mustard greens lots of greens,
as well as rice and sweet potatoes and grits.
So great opportunity to cook.
Also, you'll see a little bit of a New Orleans and Creole influences here in the Gulf.
Cajun shrimp and crab with a hominy gumbo.
A Gulf Shrimp Po Boy,
so shrimp here used in a sandwich is wonderful.
Blue Crab Beignets is another way of making sort of like a crab cake.
Scallops with summer squash and sweet corn puree.
Grilled Mahi Mahi with a mango habanero barbecue sauce.
And even a Cornmeal Fried Redfish with black eyed peas
and roasted corn salad and pickled collard greens.
So, kind of really wonderful flavors.
Here's a picture of the
Grilled Mahi Mahi with a mango habanero barbecue salsa.
Instead of a sauce, you're using a salsa,
which is kind of great flavor textures, keeps it fresh but nice and spicy
with the habanero in it and some of the barbecue chili's spices.
Here's a gumbo with some local shrimp cooked Cajun-style with sausage and okra,
which is really delicious.
Look at that richness that's coming in with that.
I think we had another poll that we wanted to do here.
- [Justin Umholtz] Perfect timing, I was just gonna ask you.
- Okay!
- Alright, here we go.
So, I am launching the poll.
Please indicate your favorite out of these three options:
Ceviche, Crudo, or Pickled Fish.
Again if you can't see the poll,
it is probably behind the screen you're looking at,
so diminish that screen and you'll be able to see it.
- [Claire] Yep, or if you're in full-screen mode,
you can pop out of full-screen mode temporarily to answer the poll.
- Yes.
- Okay, good.
- Alright, well ceviche looks pretty high up there.
We have about 62% voted,
so I'm going to give you a little bit more time to vote.
Let's see if we can bump that up.
Take your last five seconds to share your opinion.
Alright, I am going to close in three, two, one.
And share the results.
Chef Allen, can you see that?
- I can.
So, interesting results.
Ceviche was 71%, Crudo was 17%, and Pickled Fish was 12%.
Now, these can be cultural options.
These can be just well knowledgeable what the preference is,
and that's awesome.
I really think that having choices,
being able to select the flavors,
that's why we love seafood.
There's so many ways of preparing it,
and so many options that we have so that the variety is there.
And that's kind of why seafood is my my favorite to prepare
because we have so many ways of preparing it in that sort of fashion.
So talking about pickled, this is some pickled cucumbers and ginger
with a nice fish from the West Coast,
and I'm going to move on to some of the flavors of the West Coast.
Off the California coast, that is.
And here I'm gonna look at the Monterey Bay,
which is just a magnificent area.
Unbelievable what's available from the Monterey Bay,
not only in seafood but in kind of a different sea life.
The whales, the otters, the seals,
and how the balance of life there is
and kind of how maybe something like the otters are helping the ecosystem.
They eat and stabilize the kelp forests that are there.
And if you haven't seen it, the kelp forests are amazing
with the wild animals there.
So, one of my favorites is the Monterey Bay Aquarium,
which is a great place to see this,
but the wildlife is there on the beaches and on throughout.
So talking about the West Coast, looking at local ingredients,
like Dungeness crab, spot prawns, and calamari.
Rockfish, Arctic char, Black bass, and sardines,
so we've got plenty more than that.
I'll tell you what, California, the Salinas Valley over there,
avocados, artichokes, garlic, brussels sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower, eggplant,
and that's just the start of it.
It's just amazing what comes out of there.
So the greens, the spinach, the kale, the citrus, that's there.
So cooking, that's why California cuisine and California local cooking has been so great.
So here's just a couple of seafood dishes from the area that I want to highlight.
Spicy fish stew, Striped Bass Crudo,
here's a crudo again with a seaweed ponzu.
Smoked trout tostaditas with a cashew pesto and a spicy salsa brava.
Fried oysters, kimchi ham, and mint.
I love the creativity, the freshness of these.
Lots of times I'm matching up salads.
Here's an herb salad with a grilled California squid and a spicy tangerine vinaigrette.
And then also, we've got a Dungeness crab.
Dungeness crab salad with avocado and a spicy ginger vinaigrette here.
Nice and light and fresh and crisp.
That's what the food is about.
That's where it's just easy to eat, easy on the eyes, and delicious,
so that's kind of what it should be.
Here's that spicy seafood stew with
lots of types of clams and fresh fish, some crab in there,
as well as a tomato-cilantro broth.
Kind of nice and brothy and refreshing in that fashion.
In the Northwestern Coast,
we're looking at a nice salmon getting ready to roast.
And also another national marine sanctuary,
which is the Olympic Coast off of the coast of Washington.
Now here just to take a look
- [Justin] Chef Allen?
- Yeah?
- You had asked to do one more poll between Monterey and Pacific Northwest.
- Let's do it!
- Is that ok?
- Awesome, absolutely!
- Alright, here we go.
I'm launching it now.
Many people are reluctant to cook fish at home,
so when ordering fish in a restaurant how do you prefer it prepared?
Go ahead and start voting.
Just a reminder if you're in full-screen mode,
you're gonna need to pop out of that to be able to see this,
or check behind the screen you're looking at.
People are thinking about this one,
but we're up to 60% voted.
- Okay.
This is interesting 'cause this is really a full array of cooking techniques
and every region has its own preferences, I think.
- This is a popular one.
People are, we're up to 80%.
I'm going to go ahead and close this folks
- Awesome.
- in three, two, one.
And here are the results.
- Okay, interesting.
So, baked came out at 11%.
Grilled fish, 63% for grilled fish,
definitely the winner with that.
Poached only four percent.
It's not an easy technique and kind of it has subtle flavors with it.
Sauteed is a is usually a big favorite,
so I'm interested to see that it's only 15% on sauteed.
And deep-fried is 7%,
so it's interesting, but I think that in the past maybe number of years
deep-fried would have been one of the most popular ways to eat fish,
and today, that was one of the least popular.
So, I think we're eating healthier,
and I'm glad to see a lot of participation in that
because you are making your seafood choices,
and that's exactly what we have.
When we have the number of fish and the types of regional food,
it's about seafood choices.
So here you have some salmon that spent most of their life,
actually, they're born in the rivers.
They swim out to sea,
so they swim out to Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary,
and then they go back to spawn,
which means they go back to have their babies at the exact spot that they were born.
So they swim back into the Olympic national park,
back upstream to the very spot that they came from.
It's an amazing sense of being that the Salmon are there,
and every single salmon does that.
So, it's very interesting to see what happens with salmon.
And you know, salmon is a delicious fish.
Here I'm gonna go over just a couple of the Northwestern types of flavors that we have.
Dungeness crabs, spot prawns, calamari.
Salmon, Rockfish, Turbot, Halibut, Arctic Char.
And again in northwestern,
pepper, zucchini, broccoli, cauliflower, eggplants, and turnips.
And, of course, you've got potatoes and pears and apples.
So we've got some great flavors that are going on with that.
Now here,
Northwest is also kind of a casual place for eating,
which I love about the Northwest and the cuisine.
So, salmon a thousand ways,
this is just wild salmon burger with pickled green tomatoes,
just kind of a different take on it.
Dungeness crab BLT with roasted potatoes, delicta squash, and cider jus.
Longline caught Cod with fennel, fingerling potatoes, and pickled shallots.
Here, I've got a nice salmon with quinoa, broccoli, toasted almonds, and dried apricot and harissa.
Also, another way of cooking is the whole fish itself.
So whole fish Rockfish with kale and anchovy, chilies, pine nuts, and Meyer lime.
Here's just a simple.
Simple, right.
Okay, line-caught Lingcod, fennel, and fingerlings,
great combination of flavors.
The sweetness, the aromatics.
A variety of potatoes in there, that's awesome.
And just an everyday pan-roasted salmon and broccoli.
We want to have these choices,
and by thinking sustainably, by thinking that we want to have these choices,
we need to make better choices by asking for sustainable seafood
when you're ordering, when you're thinking about that.
And so to do that, what we have is fisheries management.
The fisheries need to be managed.
We need to understand that the fishing and seafood are vital
to the economies and the coastal communities.
So to manage it,
we have to collect data, make assessments,
research to elevate the benefits and the cost of how the fisheries are managed,
and help to prioritize management needs,
and to facilitate policy that maximizes societal benefits from ocean to coastal resources.
And that's done with great participation.
This is one of the science ships that are out there
managing, watching, taking numbers with us.
And so doing stock assessments
are critical to modern fisheries management.
The data that's collected from commercial and recreational fishermen,
as well as on the water, scientific observations as we saw.
Stock assessments describes the past and current status of a fish population or stock.
It answers the questions of the size of the stock
and makes predictions of how a fishery will respond
to the current and future management measures.
So their management measures are whether to shorten the season,
lengthen the season, allow people to the size of the fish.
It's all about sustainable fishing.
This is just a picture of local people, recreational fishing out by a buoy,
which is also creating sustainable energy.
And also underneath the water,
fish create artificial reefs around these types of things.
That's why people go to fish there.
So it's kind of just a very interesting combination of things that are happening there.
I want to bring to your attention the Magnuson-Stevens Fisheries and Conservation Act
which is the primary law governing marine fisheries management in U.S. Federal waters.
The key objectives to the act is to
prevent overfishing, rebuild overfished stocks, increase long-term economic and social benefits,
and ensure the safe and sustainable supply of seafood.
So this is something that's really been great,
and it's in effect currently.
And here, I want to bring in the fact that it's fun to fish.
You want to have this where your kids, your grandkids can fish and have fun,
be involved with the water be on the water, be out in nature.
These are all part of sustainable seafood
and having the choices and having the ability to get out there.
So we want to protect our waters.
We want to make sure that we protect it from pollution, from global warming.
These are all components of what's happening here.
The national marine sanctuary seeks to
preserve the extraordinary scenic beauty, diversity,
historical connections, and economic productivity
of our most precious underwater treasures.
And so with that, your choices matter to the ocean.
It really will make a difference.
- Oh Chef Allen.
- So that's it.
- You've got us like licking our lips and our mouth is watering.
Those pictures are phenomenal.
Thank you for your great presentation.
We have just maybe two or three questions we'll ask you.
- Sure.
- And Justin will kick it off and close out today's webinar.
- Alright well, I will ask the first question that came in.
Our questioner referred to a lot of new technologies that
reduce bycatch and promote more sustainable fisheries,
and she was asking how can industry better communicate those advances
to chefs and the public.
Education is tremendously important.
Chefs want to know,
and that's what I'm saying.
If the public, if the guests in the restaurant ask for sustainable seafood,
then the chef is going to want to make sure he's getting sustainable seafood.
Then the chef is going to ask the fish guy,
where's my fish coming from?
How's it getting caught,
and how do I get more at a better price?
So it is a full chain reaction from the customer,
and that's why I'm saying that if the customer is on the demand side,
the information will flow back to them through the chefs, through the suppliers
because they want to sell.
But they want to sell what people want to buy.
- Yeah, great point.
Here's another good one.
This is kind of referring to the Lionfish.
So, you said "eat it to beat it" as one of your mottos,
which is fantastic.
What would you say when the option of the fish itself
is that it's often called like a trash fish.
So how do you change the way the public
portrays a fish in an effort to handle the invasive nature of the fish?
So Asian Carp is another example there, throwing out there.
- Okay, no I love that,
and quite honestly, I have done trash fish dinners
We have to get off of the prime fish cuts.
We have to get away from just selecting the obvious snapper, grouper, halibut.
The ones that we were brought up with.
The ones that we know of.
The smaller varieties offer choices and flavors,
offer choices and textures,
and also, quite honestly, trash fish, guess what, they're going to be half the price
because there's very low demand on that.
And so for right now, get on the bandwagon.
Buy the trash fish.
Buy the fish that's less known, Dogfish or Bluefish, or things like that
that are less popular but, guess what, if you get a great fresh fish,
it's delicious.
And again, cooking makes a difference.
- Alright, Claire, you think we have time for one more?
- Yeah go ahead and ask one more,
and then we'll do our closing slides.
- Alright well, to honor our midwest audience, since we had a question there,
what would you suggest for those of us living more in the central or Midwest area
where fresh fish is harder to come by?
- I know!
River fish, lake fish.
Lake fishes, there's some pretty good Great Lakes fish.
Whitefish is delicious.
Kind of learning how to cook,
it's a little bit different techniques.
But also with today's supplies,
there's lots of fish traveling through.
So, I do like fresh fish,
but there's nothing wrong with farm-raised fish,
and there's a lot of farm-raising that's going on.
Better, more up-to-date farm-raised where
we're not abusing the farm-raising system.
Where there's no antibiotics.
There's no growth hormones.
The water going in and the and the water going out is understood
and does not harm the environment and does not harm the agriculture around.
So that better farming practices is going to bring better tasting fish
to all parts of the region.
And here in Florida,
we have a tremendous amount of fish farms, believe it or not,
with all the waters and gulf and ocean around us,
there's a tremendous amount of fish farms here as well.
So, I think fish farming done properly
can be a great answer for you in the Midwest.
- Excellent.
Well, we still have lots of questions that we won't be able to get to today,
but Chef Allen, we're hoping that you'll agree to answer some of these questions via email
that we can send out to all registrants
- Of course.
- from today's webinar.
- It'd be a pleasure.
- Yeah a lot of high interest in your presentation,
we greatly appreciate it.
So for those of you that typed in questions that we didn't get to,
we do apologize.
I do want to wrap up today's presentation with a few closing slides.
If you'd like to watch this presentation again or share it with friends, family, colleagues,
it will be available on our webinar archive page.
Don't worry about that long link.
Justin will put it in the chat box,
and it'll also be in a follow-up email
We like to provide a certificate of attendance for all attendees for the live presentation,
and, of course, if you're watching the archive and you get to this point in the presentation,
you can email that sanctuary.education@noaa.gov to request a copy of the certificate.
This allows for each attendee to get one contact hour of professional development.
I wanted to do some cross-promotion for some upcoming live events
that NOAA will be offering.
My colleague, Hannah MacDonald, will be exploring
using a live interaction with Exploring By the Seat of Your Pants.
So, if you want to learn about killer whales
and have students or young children participate in this live interactive game,
this is happening tomorrow.
So there's a link,
and I believe Justin will put the link in there on how to register.
There's also another live interaction
with a National Geographic explorer named Jill Heinerth.
She has done some cave diving all over the world,
but she's going to be talking about her experience of cave diving
in the Channel Islands off the California coast and one of our national marine sanctuaries.
And then our very own Justin, who's co-hosting today,
will be presenting on next Thursday, July 16th.
He was part of this 2018 expedition on the EV Nautilus, an exploration vessel,
and he'll be working with Dr. Christopher Kelly from University of Hawaii
talking about these strange off-ridge seamounts
that are found in the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument.
So these are some of the upcoming free live events.
All of these do get archived and are available at your convenience.
My last little pitch before we round out the hour here
is when you close out of today's presentation there are
four to five questions that will take you less than a minute to respond to,
and we greatly appreciate when you do that because we take that information seriously
on evaluating our distance learning programs.
And then, in there is also a link to take a more detailed
NOAA multimedia and distance learning survey,
so that one would take you maybe 10 to 15 minutes.
And if you're a formal or informal educator,
we're targeting you to respond to that so we can better meet your needs.
through our distance learning and multimedia offerings within NOAA.
So with that, just wanted to say thank you for everyone's participation in today's webinar,
and this concludes today's event.
Thanks for joining us!
- Bon appetit everybody.
- Thank you!
[Laughs]
Yep!
- Thank you all!
I really appreciate it!
See you soon!
Okay!