Ned Rozell: Eating Chilean sea bass takes a bite out of the last intact ecosystem on Earth
Ned Rozell: Eating Chilean sea bass takes a bite out of the last intact ecosystem on Earth
By Ned Rozell
Anchorage
January 21, 2014 Updated 9 hours ago
Back from the bottom of the world -- where she had just experienced her second winter solstice in six months -- Kristin O'Brien parked her shopping cart at the fish counter of a Fairbanks grocery store.
O'Brien is a biologist who studies "icefish" in the ocean surrounding Antarctica, and she'd spotted a chunky filet of Chilean sea bass. She asked the man at the display if he realized why the store should not be selling it.
No, he said, but customers had told him the fatty cold-water fish tasted good. O'Brien then explained how this animal from the other side of the globe is at the heart of a fight for what many consider the last intact ecosystem on Earth.
O'Brien is a professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks at 64.8 degrees north. Every other year, during Alaska's early summer and Antarctica's autumn, she travels to Palmer Station, 64.7 degrees south. There, she and her colleagues study icefish that live in the frigid waters of the Southern Ocean. The pale, almost transparent fish have white blood, which indicates a lack of hemoglobin, a protein in blood that transports oxygen. Unlike every other animal with a backbone, the fish can do without hemoglobin because frigid water has more dissolved oxygen than warmer water.
More:
http://www.adn.com/2014/01/21/3284560/eating-chilean-sea-bass-takes.html#storylink=cpy
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