Read This - Eat Like a Fish
I was captivated to read Bren Smith’s book, Eat Like a Fish, My Adventures as a Fisherman turned Restorative Ocean Farmer. Bren and I met at a climate change conference at the Presidio in the Before Times, when brilliant and curious people still came together to exchange ideas and feed off each other’s creative energy, unfettered by Zoom screens. I was excited to learn more about how restorative ocean farming could replace the extractive practices that had reduced the fish in our ocean to unsustainable levels.
Bren’s book brought that excitement back. Especially in the face of portentous climate change, Bren introduces the world to a groundbreaking solution to the global climate crisis in a book that is autobiographic, as well as instructive and visionary and, at times, funny.
In Bren’s words:
“I am a restorative ocean farmer. It’s a trade both old and new. A job rooted in thousands of years of history, dating back to Roman times. I used to be a commercial fisherman, chasing your dinner on the high seas for a living, but now I farm twenty acres of saltwater, growing a mix of greens and shellfish.
I’ve paid my debt to the sea. I dropped out of high school to fish and spent too many nights in jail. My body is beat to hell. I crawl out of bed like a lobster most mornings. I’ve lost vision in half of my right eye from a chemical splash in Alaska. I’m an epileptic who can’t swim, and I’m allergic to shellfish.
But every shiver of pain has been worth it. It’s a meaningful life. I’m proud to spend my days helping feed my community, and if all goes well, I will die on my boat one day. Maybe a small obit in the town paper. Letting my friends know that I was taken by the ocean, that I died a proud farmer growing food underwater. That I wasn’t a tree hugger but spent my days listening to and learning from waves and weather. That I believed in building a world where we can all make a living on a living planet.”
Bren is such a great story teller that you find yourself enamored not just by his vision for a sustainable aquaculture future and his how-to manual of creating your own sustainable ocean farm but by his many adventures and misadventures on the high sea in the fishing towns and shoreline bars that are part of a fisherman’s life.
A tale of environmental renewal, Bren’s book is an essential guide to saving our oceans, feeding the world, and creating new jobs up and down the coasts.
If you would like to learn more, check out this film that Patagonia produced called The Ocean Solution
The Q&A afterward includes commentary from our friend Paul Greenberg, author of 4 Fish, regular contributor to the New York Times and ardent oyster aficionado.
Let’s think beyond the end of the fishing line. We know that oysters are one of the most sustainable ways to grow food because you don’t need to water or feed them but add several more such species, like mussels, and kelp and seaweed and you have a method of farming that can change food production both on land and in the sea, a farm that creates its own healthy ecosystem that is inviting to all kinds of life apart from what is being grown and harvested. It’s an idea whose time has come.
Linda Hunter, Founder & Director
Wild Oyster Project.
Find out more about Thimble Island Ocean Farm and GreenWave:
https://www.thimbleislandoceanfarm.com/