A sardine update - on Portugal

"[Lisbon's] souvenir shops are packed with sardine merchandise. But sardine stocks off the Portuguese coast are declining, and the Portuguese sardine fishery has lost its certificate of sustainability from the Marine Stewardship Council." Slate.com

Way back I wrote about sardines - my favourite lunch - and I think I may have lamented the disappearance of Santa Maria tins from the supermarket shelves. Well today the AFR (Australian Financial Review) had an article about Portuguese sardines (Santa Maria were Portuguese) and I learnt a few more things. So this is sort of an update.

There's the good, the bad and the ugly in this story and with respect to Santa Maria, I don't think I'm going to see them back on the supermarket shelves anytime soon. I can't find a website for the company for a start. But I do find them in the Queen Vic market sometimes - although somewhat more expensive than the supermarket brands I do buy them when I see them - because they do taste better. And when I'm in France I shall be looking to see what is on offer in the way of Portuguese sardines.

So first of all the ugly - and I have to say, it's mostly ugly - well at least bad. Why Portugal? Well Portugal's economy has been heavily dependent on sardines. Roughly 40% of their fish production is sardines. I found a report on the world's sardine production, which divided the world into five areas, with Portugal an area all of its own - the rest of Europe was all lumped together. In the early 20th century it had hundreds of factories exporting all over the world. Today it has nineteen. In the 70s the industry collapsed because the French began sourcing their fish from the cheaper North Africa and undercut the Portuguese in Europe, who were then not in the EU. Later in the 90s it became obvious that the stocks of Atlantic sardines off the Portuguese coast were being depleted, and yet they carried on fishing. Some feeble attempts were made to cut back, but eventually in 2012 and then again in 2014 the Portuguese sardine fishery had its certification from the Marine Stewardship Council withdrawn, and it is still suspended. This Council by the way is the world body that certificates sustainable fishing. Portugal has drastically reduced its catch but it probably has a long way to go before stocks are on the increase again. One reason may well be climate change. According to the article I read in Slate.com "Sardines are a type of pelagic fish, which live in neither shallow nor very deep water and are hugely affected by water temperature. A study released this year (2015) shows that the fish are increasingly moving from their traditional Mediterranean environs to the North Sea and even the Baltic Sea as oceans warm rapidly."

The bad? Well it's aligned with the good really. Scarce resource - what do you do? You go upmarket. And there are several fronts to this attack. Since the 70s decline, sardines, once considered poor food, have become more popular due to their high Omega-3 content. They are now considered as a health food and so are generally more in demand. But there is competition from cheap suppliers, and so a lot of effort has been put into the marketing - stylish cans, emphasis of the gourmet factor and pandering to the tourist industry - which is huge in Lisbon.

The gourmet factor - did you know, for example, that you should keep tinned sardines for around four years to mature, turning them over every now and then to allow the oil to penetrate them all. Serve them as tapas, and you then make fresh sardines a hip dish. Jamie Oliver has a good page on this. His Jamie kind of comments rather sum up this approach:

"Whether from a can or fresh they are super soft, moist, salty and moreish – and they go dynamite with anything slightly acidic, like lemon, vinegar and onion. They also really benefit from fresh herbs, which lift the oily texture and give it some aroma"

And tourism - in the guise of the Sardine Festival on St. Anthony's Day on June 12 is another big money maker. The story of St. Anthony is rather nice. He was a Franciscan and one day, fed up with preaching to people, he went to the sea and preached to the fish, who aa put their heads out of the sea to listen. One assumes they were sardines. And so on St. Anthony's day they have a big festival during which loads and loads of charcoal grilled sardines are consumed (around 13 every second). Not nearly as wasteful as that Spanish tomato festival - after all they are being eaten - but nevertheless a lot.

"Unlike their canned cousins, the grilled sardines’ char brings out the fish’s salty tang, while lemon brightens the combination into a summery, briny bite." Slate.com

So, if I ever find any affordable Portuguese sardines again, I should probably feel guilty about it. At least a tiny bit. These days I seem to be mostly eating them from Vietnam or Thailand. I should look into that some time, because I bet they aren't very sustainable.

But then again I'm not feeding them to tuna or other farmed fish, which is apparently what happens to the majority of the sardines anyway.