NEW! Now you can tune in here for your very own culinary tips, news, insights and thoughts direct from our kitchen. Learn more about some of your favorites and soon to be favorites on our menu, discover new recipes and stories we'll share and more in this fun, brand new featured section we call Notes from The Kitchen. Only at www.theoschophouse.com
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Here at Theos, as many of you have already discovered, a delightfully wide and ever changing variety of seafood is featured throughout the week.
Being the most dynamic area of our menu, we put great attention and effort into bringing you only the best selection of fresh, flown in in
seafood available each day. We're proud of our seafood menu selections
and we know these are favorites of yours as well; the versatility, tastes and health benefits of seafood all give this choice high marks. Now,
have you ever wondered about the seasonal aspects for some of these kinds of seafood; why you usually don't see specific kinds of seafood at
certain times of the year? We'll take a look today.
If you're one of the many who feel that wild-caught fish are preferable to farmed, and that fresh is preferable to frozen,
then you might be interested to know about seafood seasons. We may not think of seafood as being seasonal, like cherries, but in truth much of it is. Let's
today look at 'wild caught' ocean fish.
Where the Wild Things Are
Oceans occupy 71 percent of the earth's surface, with most of the world's wild fisheries being found within.
They are divided into five major oceans, which in decreasing order of size are: the Pacific Ocean, Atlantic Ocean, Indian Ocean, Southern Ocean,
and Arctic Ocean. By far most of the world's wild fishing is to be found within the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.
Fortunately, being right in-between, we in the U.S. are lucky enough to be in close proximity for access to some of the best seafood in
the world from these two areas, along with the tastes found in the Gulf of Mexico.
Not a bad place to be at all if your a true seafood aficionado.
Of all the many marine ecosystems throughout the world, with these choices, we'll be looking at commercial fishing within U.S. waters today.
Harvestable Surplus: The harvestable surplus is the number of individuals that can be harvested from the population without affecting long term
stability (average population size).
As with other countries, the 200 nautical mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ) off the coast of the United States gives its fishing industry
special fishing rights.
The U.S. EEZ is the largest in the world, 1.7 times the land area of the US, and includes eight large marine ecosystems:
the Northeast U.S. Continental Shelf,
the Southeast U.S. Continental Shelf,
the Caribbean Sea,
the Gulf of Mexico,
the California Current,
the Insular Pacific-Hawaiian,
the Gulf of Alaska,
and the Eastern Bering Sea.
Each area is managed by state and federal programs and they are regulated much as hunting seasons are,
to avoid overfishing, ensure adequate reproduction and protect fishermen from dangerous weather conditions. This very important work
will help ensure healthy fishery populations. More geography.
Nearshore fishing areas lie within three nautical miles of the shoreline, with state jurisdictions usually extending three nautical miles out to sea.
Coastal fisheries are the fisheries that lie within the
200 nautical mile distance from the coast that defines the exclusive economic zone, but outside the three nautical mile distance
that defines the nearshore fisheries. Coastal fisheries are under federal control in the form of NMFS(National Marine Fisheries Service), as well as under the control
of one of the eight regional fishery management councils.
Beyond 200 miles lie the high seas, or international waters, the waters outside the jurisdiction of the EEZ of any country.
We fish there too, as does everyone else.
High Sea Fisheries
The main commercial species in the high seas are the highly migratory species; fish that make long migrations across the high seas and are
fished by many nations. When they unknowingly cross borders and enter the EEZ zones of the U.S.,
they become important species for U.S. coastal fisheries. In the Atlantic these transboundry fish include
tuna: bigeye in the Atlantic, albacore in the North Atlantic, and bluefin in the West Atlantic, with yellowfin tuna close to being overfished.
Blue marlin, white marlin sailfish and many sharks are also included in this area. In the Pacific
the major U.S. catch stock is tuna, though billfish, swordfish and shark are also caught here as well.
These stocks account for 99 percent of the Western Pacific region's catch.
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