The waters of Sheepshead Bay once teemed with its eponym—no, not sheep’s heads, though perhaps those bobbed next to the carriage-horse carcasses that were dumped into nearby Dead Horse Bay in the nineteenth century. “The bay was named for the sheepshead porgy,” said Paul Greenberg one recent Friday morning. The sun was just starting to crest over the Rockaways, and Greenberg, his seven-year-old son Luke, and Luke’s friend Felix, were aboard the Sea Queen II in search of fluke. The other thirty or so amateur fishermen on board were scanning the water or chatting to each other. A wisp of pot smoke punctuated the brackish air.
“When we lost the oysters, we lost the sheepshead porgy—they have these huge mandibles used to crush oyster shells,” Greenberg continued. The boat bobbed pleasantly in the calm waters. A potato-chip bag floated by. “Possibly, it might come back. But we need oysters first. If we see Sheepshead back in Sheepshead Bay, that’s a real sign that something good is happening.”
Greenberg, who laughs easily and resembles Paul Giamatti’s distant cousin, is the author of “American Catch,” which explores the fishy problem of why Americans have all but stopped eating seafood from their own waters. Here’s the uniquely American catch: ninety-one per cent of the seafood we eat comes from abroad and much of it is farmed, while one-third of what we catch is exported, and much of that is wild. “I can’t help but think that if we were a fishier country, we’d be healthier, thinner, and more environmentally sound, and maybe smarter,” said Greenberg as he helped Felix reel in what turned out to be a clump of seaweed.
Greenberg made his maritime mark in 2010 with his second book, “Four Fish,” which discusses commercial fishing and aquaculture through the stories of four fish—cod, salmon, bass, and tuna. (The book won him a James Beard Award and a spot on the Times best-seller list.) In his latest, he focusses on three fisheries: oysters in New York, shrimp in Louisiana, and sockeye salmon in Alaska. The oysters in the small population that currently resides in Gotham’s waters are inedible, filtering polluted water through their bodies all day, though the area once boasted one of the biggest oyster beds in the world. Americans’ unabated desire for shrimp—it’s the most popular seafood in the United States, trailed by tuna and salmon—has lead to massive importing from Asia, because, perversely, it’s cheaper to buy and repackage frozen Asian shrimp than it is to buy and process American shrimp on our own soil. And, despite a thriving Sockeye salmon fishery in Alaska, which could feed all of America and then some, seventy-nine per cent of the fish is exported because we prefer bland, Filet-O-Fish substitutes that act as a vehicle for tartar sauce.
In his book, Greenberg discusses scuba diving in the sewage-infested waters of Jamaica Bay; “oyster-tecture,” a movement to reintroduce oyster reefs into New York City waterways to protect the land from tidal surges like the ones we experienced during Hurricane Sandy; the sci-fi sounding AquAdvantage Salmon, genetically modified to grow twice as fast as their normal brethren; and the cocktail-party factoid that the tiger prawn has difficulty spawning in captivity unless you clip one of its eyes off, at which point it suddenly becomes fertile. (Presumably this works best for homely shrimp.)
Greenberg’s breezy, engaging style weaves history, politics, environmental policy, and marine biology through its three chapters, but the part that will hit closest to home for New Yorkers is likely the one that concerns local waters. Greenberg fishes in them about once a month. “My dad grew up here,” said Greenberg, watching as someone caught a dogfish shark and kicked it overboard. Though he makes a point of keeping bycatch (like sea robins, which most people throw back), he doesn’t yet know how to successfully filet and cook a dogfish shark. “He remembers this sign that used to hang in a restaurant: ‘The fish you ate this very day was caught last night in Sheepshead Bay.’ ” Cue the collective retching of New Yorkers. “It’s very telling, you know?”
As the morning wore on and the kids caught a handful of small fluke, none “keepers,” Greenberg talked about how, after his parents’ divorce, his father would take him out fishing, part of what he calls “the divorced-dad weekends, where we did what he thought dads were supposed to do.” It turned into a lifelong passion, and though Greenberg’s “ur-fishing spot” is out on Martha’s Vineyard, where he spends time each summer, he makes do with what he has in New York, sometimes going out in a boat captained by a couple of corrections officers from Riker’s Island.
While Greenberg is wary of sounding “Pollyannaish,” he can still find a few rays of hope to cut through the sludgy, low-visibility water that the boat wended its way through, back into the bay. “The whole city is infected by this foodie craze, and at the moment it stops at the waters edge,” he said. “It has to, because at this point the fisheries we have are minimal. But it’s an estuary, and it was once one of the most important estuaries on the East Coast. Let’s not forget that.”
If city officials get on board, and individuals start eating more locally grown seafood—which Greenberg supports, because “it’s a potentially virtuous cycle, where if you’re eating from your own waters you’re more compelled to keep them clean”—and if we start actively building up our shellfish population, he sees no reason why New Yorkers won’t be able to go clamming in Jamaica Bay, or pluck oysters off the reefs and shuck them fresh, in the next few decades. “And as we continue to rebuild the shellfish around here we could see a lot more life,” he said.
Suddenly, there was a commotion at the stern of the boat. “It’s a big one!” someone shouted. Felix and Luke ran over to the railing and craned their necks to get a look. “Woah,” they said, together. An eight-pound fluke was netted and plunked onto the deck, where it flopped valiantly for a while before quieting. A moment later, a call was heard from the bow. “We’ve got another one!” someone shouted in a heavy Brooklyn accent. “Hey, Uncle Paulie, check this out!”
Greenberg grinned as the kids ran to get a closer look. “That’s a doormat,” he said, impressed. The fish was a few feet long. “You know, when I was a kid, I would have been desperate to get one of those large guys for myself. Now I’m just happy to see it.” He paused, glancing over the water. A woman jogged along the beach at Breezy Point, and in the distance the Marine Parkway Bridge loomed. “That fluke, it’s just living here, in the Rockaways!”
