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30 July 2003
salmon alert and sustainable seafood generally
An article in today's New York Times raises concerns about farmed salmon. Salmon certainly has figured more prominently on menus and home kitchens in recent years, so reports of dramatically higher levels of PCBs in farmed salmon bear reading.
Whole Foods has been offering both farmed salmon and wild salmon for some time now, and their web site includes a section on seafood sustainability, addressing issuing of overfishing, pollution, and diversity in menu planning. If this topic is of interest to you, I highly recommend the Monterey Bay Aquarium's "Seafood Watch," which includes a wallet card and specific, updated information about the status of certain species.
Speaking of the Monterey Aquarium...their web site now has five web cams. I'm particularly fond of the otter cam and the outer bay cam. Often the otter cam doesn't capture much, but when the otters are within view, it's a hoot! (The mini video on the otter page, the one titled "Our Exhibit Otters," will give you an otter fix if there's not much happening on the live web cam.) The Outer Bay exhibit is one of my absolute favorites--of Monterey or other aquaria. I think it alone could merit a trip to Monterey. The camera really doesn't do it justice, and at the actual exhibit I can sit for a l-o-n-g time, watching the enormous tuna glide by. It's kind of nice just to think about it.
Back to work, but I might have to put the otter cam on at 10:30--feeding time!