The Chilean sea bass is heavily overfished ““ scientists
predict commercial extinction before 2005 ““ and UCLA serves
it for dinner.
Seafood dishes that appear on campus are made from a variety of
sea creatures, including orange roughies and Chilean sea bass.
However, unlike most other seafood served at UCLA, these two
species are also highly overfished.
“It’s really sad that they serve these fish.
It’s sad that most other restaurants serve them too.
It’s like they don’t care,” said first-year
sociology student Alice Chang.
The Audubon Society and the Monterey Bay Aquarium rate them as
red, indicating that the species have many problems including
overfishing, severe depletion and poor management.
Though the nutritional information for Orange Roughy Florentine
can be found on the Dining Services’ Web site, dining
administrators say that it has not been served for several
years.
Dining Services’ seafood vendor, the Santa Monica Seafood
Company, belongs to the Responsible Fisheries Society, which only
sells fish it feels are safe to sell by looking at sustainability,
said Assistant Director of Residential Dining Charles Wilcots.
Orange roughies can live over 100 years and reproduce in large
groups when they are about 20 years of age.
Since they reproduce so late in life, it will take the
population forever to recover, said Richard Vance, a UCLA professor
in the organismic biology, ecology, and evolution department.
“We should not be eating that species because it is too
vulnerable to exploitation,” Vance said.
Though the orange roughy is not an endangered species and is
fished commercially, its sustainability is extremely vulnerable,
Vance said.
“I don’t think most of the public cares, and
that’s the problem … but people who are concerned with
these matters don’t eat orange roughy,” Vance said.
The Faculty Center, which is a private organization and is not
funded by the school, also has vendors, like the Faculty Club
Association and the Restaurant Association, that advise them on
issues regarding food that is generally used and notifies them when
something is endangered.
However, the Faculty Center served Sauteed Orange Roughy Fillet
on Tuesday, and said it was unaware of the problems regarding the
orange roughy population.
This week was the only time orange roughy was served in the past
12 months, and only six pieces had been ordered, said Faculty
Center manager Ali Tabrizi.
Tabrizi said he will start researching the orange roughy and
stop serving it if he finds that they are in trouble.
“As a personal philosophy, I am very sensitive to the
environment,” he said.
UCLA Catering also prepares a dish called Thai sea bass, which
is made from Chilean sea bass.
Chilean sea bass also reproduce late in life in comparison to
other fish, reproducing around the age of 10. Due to heavy
overfishing some restrictions were placed on the fishing of the
Chilean sea bass, but pirates who disregard the laws fish up to 10
times the legal catch.
“I don’t think anyone can really blame UCLA for
serving it. I didn’t know about (the problems concerning
overfishing) and I think most people don’t. So you
can’t expect every eatery you go to to know about it, and
that goes for UCLA,” said third-year chemistry student
Michael Liu.
Dining administrators are in the process of revising the
catering menu, which they do every several years.
“I feel strongly that (the concerns regarding these fish)
should be a consideration as we put our menus together,” said
Connie Foster, associate director of residential dining.