Dueling Over Declining Swordfish

Boat/US Magazine, May, 1999 by Ryck Lydecker

At a New York press conference, chefs Rick Moonen and Nora Pouillon pose with a model 260-pound swordfish, the average size landed from the north Atlantic in 1960. Today the average is 90 pounds and some advocate a swordfish boycott.

As denizens of the deep go, the Atlantic broadbill can't hold a candlefish to the great white shark, the barracuda or the giant squid. Yet the swordfish, as it is more commonly known, is a formidable foe. Growing to half a ton and up to 12 feet long, Xiphias gladius uses its rapier-like upper jaw appendage to slash through schools of fish and squid when feeding.

The flat blade out front that gives the ocean gladiator its name can be 30% of the length of the fish itself, and it's 100% deadly. The swordfish can punch his point through four inches of wooden planking and has been known to sink boats when provoked. Angry swordfish have even "run through" crew members on fishing boats and one reportedly tried to cross swords with the submersible, Alvin, 2,000 feet below the surface. The fish lost but the species' reputation grows with each such account.

In short, the swordfish is a force to be reckoned with. Yet, over the past 15 months, this cold-blooded killer that people love to eat has become a cause celebre because, unless something is done, it could become commercially extinct in the north Atlantic within the next 10 years.

So how do you turn a top-of-the-food chain predator that can kebob a boat into a dewy-eyed, warm and cuddly poster fish for a boycott?

"Overfishing is a very hard issue to bring home to people but we've found the best way to interest the public is through the food on their plates," says Vikki Spruill executive director of SeaWeb, an "ocean information project" funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts.

To make that point, Spruill and SeaWeb initiated "Give Swordfish a Break" at the beginning of 1998, the Year of the Ocean. The effort -- which she is careful to call a campaign but others label a boycott -- attempted to convince restaurant chefs to take swordfish off their menus until the federal government comes up with an effective management plan to restore the stocks.

"We chose swordfish because the north Atlantic stocks are severely depleted," Spruill said. "There's no debate about that. The debate revolves around minimum sizes, catch quotas, closing nursery areas and accurate monitoring."

Just to be sure they could drive their points home using the aquatic equivalent of the grizzly hear, SeaWeb conducted public opinion polls and focus group research.

Spruill found that the swordfish issue "resonated" with people and that the public could be swayed to sympathy for the cause. But Spruill's target wasn't just anybody. She went to the upscale end of the socio-political food chain.

"If the goal is to affect policy and influence the National Marine Fisheries Service -- you know, get people to write Secretary [of Commerce] Daley -- then the 'public radio crowd' is the one you want to reach," Spruill reports. "We know this audience. They will write letters to the president and Congress. They will act."

To get the affluent, college-educated fish-eater acting "through the food on their plates" -- or the lack of it -- Spruill, with the help of the Natural Resources Defense Council, enlisted 27 chefs from white tablecloth restaurants in major East Coast cities. Since most people in Spruill's desired demographic catch their swordfish with a credit card, the kickoff event took place at the upscale New York eatery, Felidia, in January 1998.

Small Fry

Chefs, Spruill explains, were "an easy sell." They've seen the problem firsthand in their kitchens. Thirty years ago, she says, the average Atlantic swordfish landed weighed 250 pounds. Today the average is 90 pounds and a swordfish that size is not yet sexually mature. Removing these "pups" from the population before they've had a chance to spawn could take swordfish off everyone's menu for good, Spruill maintains.

Washington, DC, restaurateur Nora Pouillon, became one of the leaders of SeaWeb's concerned chefs, which now number 700, according to Spruill.

"The swordfish offered by my purveyor became smaller and smaller," said Pouillon, who took swordfish off her menu five years before the campaign started (but whose "grilled swordfish with avocado-lime sauce" recipe appeared in Southern Living magazine a scant eight months before the boycott began).

"I realized we had already over-fished the adult swordfish and now we were consuming the teenagers," Pouillon said.

"Most swordfish served in restaurants and sold in stores are caught when they are babies...," reads one statement on a public opinion survey commissioned by SeaWeb. "Knowing this, how willing would you be to boycott swordfish by not buying or eating it?"

Two-thirds of those surveyed answered that they would be at least "very likely" to boycott swordfish. The same survey found that one in five Americans had eaten swordfish at least once during the previous year.

"If the big seafood chains like Red Lobster climbed on board, hundreds of thousands of fish could be spared," The New York Times editorialized, following the "Give Swordfish a Break" kickoff.