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Eat Like A Fish - Week 4: One Fish, Two Fish, Grilled Fish, Whole Fish

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Well it took until week four, but for the first time in the study I was pushed outside my comfort zone, and I'm glad it happened. I started out this week full of bluefish and behind on the blogging. I was hoping to be able to come up with one of my new species quickly and have time to cook it up and eat it before the weekend. While I wasn't as lucky as I'd hoped, I'm pretty excited with how the week turned out. Come Monday morning, my week four species were... Summer flounder/Fluke ( Paralichthys dentatus ) Mahi Mahi ( Coryphaena hippurus ) Blue Crab ( Callinectes sapidus ) Butterfish ( Poronotus triacanthus ) As any of you that are actually reading this (is it even anybody?) may be getting a sense of by now, this is where I state my expectations of what would be easy to find this week, what I wouldn't find anywhere, and what I'd likely end up eating. Well my immediate assumption was that, although still a bit early in the year for it, my easy find of
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Eat Like a Fish - Week 3: Back to Back Blues

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Week three came and went and I can barely remember it already, especially since week four is almost over now as I write this. In my best attempt to not fall behind on posting, and because this past week was relatively uneventful and with a predicted outcome, I'll be keeping this post fairly brief. My species for week three were... Spot ( Leiostomus xanthurus ) Bluefish ( Pomatomus saltatrix ) Mackerel ( Scomber scombrus ) Cunner ( Tautogolabrus adspersus) After a quick look at my species, I again had a feeling of what I would be eating this week, and this time I knew I could make it come true. I catch cunner in our trawl net at work on a regular basis, but I've never seen a single one larger than about four inches, so I'm incredibly surprised to see that as a species on our list. I've since studied up and found out they get much larger than that, and I had absolutely no idea. Spot is a new one for me, but after reading a little bit, it sounded like it may be
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Eat Like a Fish - Week 2: "No Data is Still Data"

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It's what I tell my campers all summer long when they are working on their research projects... "No data is still data." Just because you went out looking for something and didn't find it, doesn't mean you throw everything out and give up. If your goal is to assess the population of spider crabs in a particular place and time, and you go out searching and find none, it doesn't mean to walk away. It simply means you found a place and time at which there are no crabs. Now keep going... Week two came quickly on the heels of a delicious, successful week one. Monday's email arrived and my species this time were: Tilefish (any local species) ( Lopholatilus sp. ) Sea Urchin ( Arbacia punctulata or Strongylocentrous droebachiensis ) Blue crab ( Callinectes sapidus ) John Dory ( Zeus faber ) I knew right away that I would easily be able to find blue crab, but that I wouldn't be able to find any that was local. Although at work we've been pulling
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Eat Like a Fish - Week 1

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Aaaaannnnddd we're off.... This past week was the first week of 26 of "eating like a fish." For detailed information about the study I'm participating in and what's involved, make sure to stop over to my Eat Like a Fish page to read up about the protocol. This week's post will likely be longer than all the other 25 to come as I work out kinks, get over the novelty of participating (this may take a while though), and familiarize all my non-existent readers with the process. On Monday May 8th I received my first email with a link to a Google Doc for the assignments for all 92 participants in the study. I've got to admit, I was pretty excited to get my homework and get started and see what everybody else was going to be looking for. My four assigned species for week 1 were: Quahog ( Mercenaria mercenaria ) Dab/American plaice ( Hippoglossoides platessoides ) Bluefish ( Pomatomus saltatrix ) Red Hake/Squirrel Hake/Mud Hake/Ling ( Urophycis chuss )
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All About Eating Like A Fish

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Eat Like A Fish! In March I received an email from a marine science related listserv that I am subscribed to regarding a study being conducted by a Rhode Island based non-profit called  Eating with the Ecosystem . This organization was looking to enlist participants as citizen scientists for the second phase of a study called "The Other EBFM: Designing Ecosystem-Based Fisheries Marketing Strategies to Complement Ecosystem-Based Fisheries Management." The overall goal of the study is to help make our local seafood markets more closely resemble our local ecosystems. Seeing the words 'citizen science' combined with 'local seafood' my immediate response was "WHERE DO I SIGN UP?!?" After filling out an online survey and patiently waiting, I was ecstatic to find out that I was chosen as a participant for this part of the study. Phase II will be utilizing 92 participants from all six New England states as market researchers. A small trai
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