Cultivating perch for fish fries, posterity

[Spiel]

Cultivating perch for fish fries, posterity

 

Mary Bergin — 2/11/2008

The Capital Times

 

Work has begun in Milwaukee to save the yellow perch fish fry from disappearing.

 

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MILWAUKEE -- Perch fry purists get into the habit of asking "ocean" or "lake" before making a restaurant reservation, but "Great Lakes" or "Eurasian" also is a relevant part of the inquiry.

 

A significant percentage of lake perch served during fish fries comes from Europe or Asia, says a researcher at the University of Toledo, and this is a part of what fuels UW-Milwaukee's work to raise yellow perch in a controlled environment.

 

The motive is twofold: It preserves the species, and it enhances food production. A long-term goal is to make perch farming a viable aquaculture industry.

 

The challenge is to "keep the product authentic but enable the commercial production of it," says J. Val Klump, director of the Great Lakes Wisconsin Aquatic Technology and Environmental Research (WATER) Institute.

 

"The yellow perch market tends to be insatiable," he says. "If we can find a way to produce them, the demand will be there."

 

Think of his scientists "as pioneers in the effort to keep yellow perch a favorite of the Friday night fish fry," suggests a brochure about the program's mission.

 

Big fish dive

 

The Lake Michigan perch population took a nosedive in the 1990s, dropping 95 percent from its high of 24 million. Zebra mussels, other invasive species, lake current changes and overfishing accounted for the change.

 

The state Department of Natural Resources dropped the sport fishing limit from 50 to five perch per day in the mid 1990s. Commercial fishing of yellow perch, at a high of 475,000 pounds per day in Green Bay waters in the mid 1990s, hit a low of 20,000 a few years ago and presently is 100,000 pounds.

 

No commercial fishing of perch is allowed on Lake Michigan, says William Horns, Great Lakes fisheries specialist at the DNR. The Green Bay and Lake Michigan perch populations are considered separate, he adds, for purposes of management.

 

Klump predicts more than half of the fish we eat will be raised in controlled environments in 20 years, as a response to the anticipated collapse of the world's seafood population by 2048 and heightened concerns about world security issues.

 

"Much of what seafood we eat is imported," says Fred Binkowski, senior scientist. "We don't know where it's growing, what it's eating" or what additives may be introduced into the diet.

 

A fish fry with the European zander, for example, resembles walleye in taste. An entree billed as Florida grouper actually might be Asian catfish, or another fish of cheaper quality.

 

So says Carol Stepien, genetic testing specialist and director of the Lake Erie Center at the University of Toledo. She played "fish detective" last year, at the request of a Milwaukee customer, to see whether perch in fish fries actually came from the Great Lakes.

 

The answer was "no" in two of five cases.

 

"I doubt if anyone could tell the difference in a taste test," Stepien says, of Eurasian vs. Great Lakes perch, and "it

 

is

 

lake perch, so I don't know how closely this could be regulated."

 

From a genetic perspective, the two types of perch are close relatives but different species that became distinct 4 million to 5 million years ago.

 

"It's like telling a human from a chimpanzee," Stepien says.

 

Milwaukee research

 

Milwaukee's WATER Institute raises and studies yellow perch from North Carolina, Chesapeake Bay and Lake Winnebago. Each stock is kept separate, to maintain genetic integrity, but there also is cross-breeding, to produce yellow perch that are fast-growing and more disease-resistant.

 

Every two weeks, scientists measure fish length and width, size of fillet, nitrogen levels, water content and other factors. The Lake Winnebago stock grows noticeably slower than the other two groups, the scientists say, but colorization is better.

 

The researchers are able to raise yellow perch to market size in 12 months, roughly one-half the time that is typical. Since conditions are controlled, mortality from invasive species is not a known factor in survival.

 

The stock's diet is controlled, too, and costly. When in the wild, these fish are bottom feeders that eat plankton to worms, insect larvae to minnows. In an aquaculture setting, "it's $1,000 per ton of food, and much are lost to mortality, compared to $100 per ton of food in the poultry industry," says Brian Shepherd, research physiologist with the USDA.

 

Food content is of concern. The typical fish food is made up of fish from unknown sources and diet exposure.

 

"You need cradle-to-grave control of your product," Klump says, "raising it from your own captive brood stock."

 

Although "we have to get away from using fish food to feed fish," Binkowski also says "there needs to be diet work done. No large supply of fish food is available that is based on plant material."

 

He acknowledges the challenge to maintain integrity of taste: "You don't want your perch to taste like potatoes" because that is what the fish eats.

 

Klump says perch aquaculture research is "just beginning" and is confined to the indoors at his place because "in ponds you're subject to fluctuations in the environment, and security is an issue." He is referring to a wide range of contaminants, from the deliberate dumping of toxic chemicals to the diseased bird that drops feces while flying over water.

 

"Ten years from now, private investors will be pouring more money into this" because of consumer demand for aquaculture fish. Only 99 U.S. farms raised yellow perch in 2005, of which 29 were in Wisconsin.

 

Supply and demand

 

The value of yellow perch caught commercially in 2004 was $2.5 million (1.6 million pounds), a decline from the previous year's intake of $2.9 million and 1.7 million pounds, says the National Marine Fisheries Service.

 

Less than 2 percent of U.S. seafood comes from the Great Lakes region. The market price of European harvested yellow perch is one-fourth to one-third that of Great Lakes perch, which sells at the retail level for $15 per pound or more.

 

"You aren't likely to get $9.99 for fish fries in the Great Lakes and have them be Great Lakes perch," is the way Stepien sees it, and she's at a loss to explain "why it costs so much less to import these fish," especially when transportation of product is considered.

 

The 14,000 yellow perch so far raised to market size at the WATER Institute tend to head to Schwarz Fish Co. in Sheboygan, for filleting and sale. The WATER Institute has been known to keep a stash, too, for serving the occasional dignitary.

 

Staff researcher Dan Szmania, who also is the staff cook, breaded and fried 60 pounds of perch during a meal for U.S. Sen. Herb Kohl, UW-Milwaukee Chancellor Carlos Santiago and others touring the WATER Institute. Kohl had played a key role in securing federal money for aquaculture research.

 

Why is it all such a big deal, if Great Lakes and Eurasian perch taste pretty much the same? Return to Stepien's "human vs. chimp" observation for a clue.

 

"We must preserve the species," she says, "or you'll lose your native strains."