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The world's oceans are being plundered by industrial fishing. According to the United Nations, more than one-third of global fish stocks are now being harvested at biologically unsustainable levels. So can you eat seafood while preserving threatened species? Well, two Michelin-star chefs on the French coast of Brittany certainly think so. NPR's Eleanor Beardsley reports on their crusade to save the seas one diner at a time.
(SOUNDBITE OF OCEAN WAVES)
ELEANOR BEARDSLEY, BYLINE: Hugo Roellinger looks out across the bay of Mont-Saint-Michel from his restaurant, Le Coquillage, tucked inside a gray stone chateau high on a bluff.
(SOUNDBITE OF FOOTSTEPS)
BEARDSLEY: He says, on a clear day, you can see the bay's iconic 10th century island monastery.
HUGO ROELLINGER: (Through interpreter) If they chose to build the Mont-Saint-Michel in this place at that time, there must have been something special going on here.
BEARDSLEY: The free-spirited 37-year-old has just earned his third Michelin star. That's great, he says, but what really compels him is this bay with its vast tides.
H ROELLINGER: To grow up by the sea and it's always a relation with the sea and with the tide. And what is the tide? It's a relation with the moon and the sun. So here we don't cook the same thing when you are in big tide or in low tide.
(SOUNDBITE OF OCEAN WAVES CRASHING)
BEARDSLEY: Because, he says, the fish and shellfish are different at high and low tide. Roellinger's father opened Le Coquillage and earned its first Michelin star. As a boy, he says he had no desire to follow in his father's footsteps. He joined the Merchant Marine as a ship captain, but sailing around the world led him back home.
H ROELLINGER: When you are out on the sea, you understand that the Earth, it's mostly liquid. It's a liquid planet, but sometimes you forget this. And when you are a chef, and you can buy a cuisine, you can try to protect this element.
BEARDSLEY: France is one of the EU's biggest consumers of seafood, with much of it eaten in restaurants. That gives chefs like Roellinger a lot of power over what's served and caught. Down in the kitchen, final preparations for lunch are underway.
(SOUNDBITE OF KNIFE BEING SHARPENED)
BEARDSLEY: A sous-chef sharpens his knife to fillet a giant sea bass. Roellinger only serves fish in the summer that's caught by local, small fishermen.
H ROELLINGER: (Speaking French).
BEARDSLEY: "In the winter, we work with crustaceans, shellfish and algae," Roellinger tells me, switching to French. "Because fish have seasons," he says, "just like vegetables, and you shouldn't eat them when they're reproducing."
H ROELLINGER: (Through interpreter) We have to remember that we are eating wild animals. It's like wild game, and it is no banal act to kill and eat fish. The sea is not inexhaustible. Eating fish should be reserved for special occasions.
OLIVIER ROELLINGER: (Speaking French).
BEARDSLEY: Hugo's father, Olivier Roellinger, arrives on the bluff.
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H ROELLINGER: (Laughter) Bonjour.
O ROELLINGER: Bonjour.
BEARDSLEY: Bonjour, Olivier.
O ROELLINGER: Bonjour. (Speaking French).
BEARDSLEY: This longtime chef, now retired from the kitchen, helped save the threatened bluefin tuna in the aughts. As head of an international hotel restaurant network, he convinced hundreds of chefs across the U.S., Europe and Japan to take it off their menus. It worked. He says Japanese sushi masters who'd been furious later thanked him when the species was saved.
O ROELLINGER: (Through interpreter) We saved scallops in this region. Forty years ago, they were becoming extinct. So we restricted the fishing season. Sea bass, you just have to stop eating it in winter for it to come back. Science knows what to do. We just have to follow.
BEARDSLEY: Roellinger calls the sea humanity's cupboard and small fishermen the key to keeping it stocked. If they disappear, he says, our oceans would be depleted by overfishing and that cupboard would become a trash can.
Eleanor Beardsley, NPR News, Brittany.
(SOUNDBITE OF ADRIAN YOUNGE, ET AL. SONG, "THE SUMMERTIME") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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