Fishing for Spring

The El Nino oceanic current system seems to have brought us fairly mild winter and an early spring -- nice for us, maybe not so nice for the fish, especially on the west coast. Or at least not the ones that like cold water. According to Ryan Rykaczewski, Nereus Program alumni and assistant professor at the University of South Carolina, and an expert on El Nino: 
      
"In the tropical Pacific, the trade winds typically blow along the equator from the east to the west, from Central America towards Asia. These winds stimulate the upwelling of cold, nutrient-rich waters along the west coasts of North and South America and along the equator in the eastern Pacific. In contrast, the waters of the western Pacific are typically warm. However, during El Niños, for reasons that are not well understood, the trade winds weaken or sometimes even reverse direction. That weakening of trade winds inhibits the upwelling of cold water, and waves of abnormally warm water slosh towards the coasts of North and South America. During the biggest El Niño, in 1997 and 98, the surface waters were about 2.5 degrees warmer than average in the eastern Pacific. Over such a large area, that’s a lot of abnormal heat."
     
The warm water loving fish, like tuna, swordfish, ono (wahoo) and mahi mahi, come closer to shore on the US west coast, making them easier to catch, while the cold water fish (think wild salmon and halibut) find it less thrilling - their food supply is damaged by the warm water, and they can be affected by algal blooms caused by the warming waters. The food fish love to eat, largely Peruvian anchovies, die off in El Nino conditions, affecting the viability of not only fish, but all kinds of sea mammals and birds as well. 
     So while we're enjoying a lovely warm spring, the salmon and halibut will be swimming further north, looking for colder waters. This could mean lower supplies and higher prices on the cold-loving fish, perhaps a break on the warm water guys. 
     As basically the last wild food that we eat, some of us (you know who you are...) need to get over the idea that all farmed fish is bad - if we want the resource to last, we need to have other viable sources for our seafood. In fact, the only organic fish available is raised - because we don't know what the wild fish have been eating, there's no way to say its organic. We trust our sources for our raised fish - we love wild fish too, but we want some of it left for our grandchildren!