Day-Boat Fish Versus Environmentalism

From a Washington Post article by Juliet Eilperin:

In this era of globalization, restaurant menus from New York to San Francisco boast fresh fish with distant origins: blackfin tuna from Tobago, mahi-mahi from Hawaii and black grouper from the Bahamas.

But a group of chefs and food service vendors (aware that such jet-setting comes at a heavy environmental cost) is promoting a radical shift in practice: Increase the amount of fish that is frozen at sea so it can be transported by ship or truck instead.

Culinary leaders who care about reducing greenhouse gases linked to global warming need "to get people to understand that frozen is fresher than raw" most of the time, according to Food Network host Alton Brown.

"What we need is more trains," he added. "There needs to be a fish train."

Although the idea of a "fish train" might sound like a fantasy, Brown is making a serious point: Bon Appetit Management, which operates 400 cafes nationwide, estimates that shipping seafood by air generates 10 times as much greenhouse gas as transferring it by container ship and five times as much as shipping by truck.

The rest of the article is here.