Razor Clams Tinned in Olive Oil

Tinned fish might be having its biggest moment since Napoleon held the contest that created it.

Maybe you didn’t hear that tale? Back at the turn of the 1800s Napoleon issued a challenge and the winner was Nicolas Appert. The problem Nicolas solved was an MRE for the military. The winning idea was tinned food.

The first food to find its way into a tin was sardines.

For a couple of hundred years afterward sardines held a similar place of regard that followed most foods invented for military convenience: a source of cheap sustenance. The same went for many other fish that got tinned, like tuna. We never grew up thinking it was special.

But something has changed in the last decade. Tinned fish is popular. Coveted. Desired. There are the breathless headlines. There are restaurants putting it on menus, served straight from the tin. There are social media splurges. There are loads of new tinned fish brands popping up and sending us samples at Zingerman’s. What’s behind all of it?

Certainly flavor is part of it.

Tinned fish, when it’s good, is absolutely delicious. Is it heresy for me to say some fish tastes better in a tin? It’s not a stretch to say ham is better cured than fresh. I think tuna is too—when it’s done right. I’d much rather have a tin of Ortiz tuna than a seared slab of yellowfin.

Tourism has something to do with it too.

There are places where tinned fish has long been held in high regard, made to taste great. The European capitals of tinned fish, Portugal and Spain, are booming with visitors. There, tinned fish flourishes in window displays. It is listed on restaurant menus, often served straight from the can. It fills entire aisles in supermarkets. Many Americans have packed their suitcases with foreign fish finds and come home searching for more. And maybe they found Zingerman’s — I don’t count us out as one source of the surge. We’ve been pushing tinned fish as great eating for years.

But let’s not discount cuteness.

Tinned fish packaging can be adorable. It’s certainly one of the reasons I buy it when I travel. But here’s a little secret. Within the cute boxes, a lot of the different packages hold the same fish. There are not that many tinned fish factories. But there are a lot of tinned fish brands who put their name on the packaging. That’s because most of the factories are happy to let companies rebrand their product. We found out about that years ago and are guilty of it too. Sorry to burst your bubble, but Zingerman’s sardines are not tinned at Zingerman’s Cannery in Ann Arbor along the banks of the mighty Huron River. We work with a century old fish factory near Porto, Portugal. We use both their regular stock, and, once a year, we tin a selection of the fattest, best harvest for our Vintage Sardines.

Americans love our salmon and shrimp. But our appetite for them has enormous ecological and social implications worldwide. To feed our salmon and shrimp habits, seafood companies have increasingly turned to aquaculture: farms that raise fish in small pools or giant open nets. Holding vast numbers of fish in tight quarters has many of the same inherent problems as raising chickens or pigs in confinement on land, including rampant disease spread (often combatted with sub-therapeutic antibiotics fed to the fish), enormous amounts of waste, and poor conditions for workers.

But perhaps the biggest problem is what they’re fed. Most fish are pescatarians. They eat other fish. On a farm they’re typically fed fishmeal – pellets made by grinding up small fish called “forage fish.” Forage fish are wild caught in giant nets called trawls, often off the coast of developing nations where regulations are more lax. This can decimate local fish stocks and make life terrible for the subsistence fishermen that rely on them.

So if farmed fish cause so many problems, does that mean we’re better off eating wild-caught fish? Not necessarily. In the case of our beloved salmon, virtually all Atlantic salmon are farmed, so there isn’t a wild-caught option. Even when there are wild fish to catch, how they’re caught makes a big difference. Those trawlers don’t just go for forage fish. They’ve also nearly wiped out fish populations ranging from cod off of the coast of eastern Canada to tuna off the coast of Somalia and Tanzania. And even though trawlers may intend to fish just one species, they often scoop up lots of other fish, too – and sometimes other marine life, like turtles. This is called bycatch. There can be tons of it, and it’s usually thrown away.

What’s a seafood easter to do? Here are a few recommendations:

Ask how wild caught fish were caught.

Seek out commercial fishermen catching with hooks, rather than nets like trawls. The bonito tuna that we get in tins from Ortiz is all line caught, one at a time. This allows the fisherman to be more selective with their catch.

Eat the little fish.

By choosing smaller fishes, like anchovies, sardines, or mackerel, we can encourage fishermen to harvest fish directly for people to eat, rather than grinding them up into fishmeal for farmed fish.

Try the unknowns.

Eating a wider variety of fishes can reduce the impact of bycatch by giving fishermen a market for everything they bring in. Try less familiar species like hake, wreckfish, or scup. There are many, many more. Get to know your local fisherman or fishmonger to learn what’s coming in locally to you.

Go for bivalves.

Oysters, scallops, clams, and mussels are ocean filterers. They get their nutrients from water currents with no added feed, even on farms.

Join a CSF.

Community Supported Fisheries (CSFs) are the fish version of CSAs, the farm shares for produce. CSFs get fish directly from fishermen to fish eaters. There are CSFs in many cities across the US. Some even ship nationwide, or have landlocked pick up locations. Start your search for a local CSF at finder.localcatch.org.