“Keeping them honest” is the catch phrase always used by CNN when they go on to attack Trump and his Republican party. It usually comes in tandem with ‘fake news’. I wanted to use it for a heading in this article as it seems appropriate. Over this last week alone, I have three examples that have come to my attention on the naming of fish. I’ll mention these and a few others just to alert you. That YOU, the consumer, need to be more aware of what you buy. Caveat emptor ‘buyer beware’. It leads to the same message that I always promulgate, the same old drum I beat, that you need to force the suppliers, retailers, restaurants etc to be more honest and transparent.AS things get more worse, only YOU can create change.
So, a few misnomers. Chilean Seabass is a beautiful fish but not even a seabass. It’s actually Patagonian toothfish, which in itself is very similar to Antarctic cod. The two are often mixed for sale, which is another issue, but I can bore you with that at anther time. Chilean seabass was devised as a name to enhance sales in the USA. Then there’s grenadier, often caught with the toothfish. Its actual name is rat tail fish, by virtue of its long rat tail. No surprise they changed that name, ‘for marketing purposes’. It’s not a bad fish in saying all that.
The best one I heard recently was an offer of Dover sole from Canada. The catching locale of the fish, West Coast Canada, had already alerted me to another example of misnaming, as Dover sole is a splendid and expensive fish caught in the North Sea, on which the port of Dover borders. The price for the Canadian ‘Dover sole’ was then about half the cost of the ‘Dover sole’. A quick inquiry deduced that the Canadian Dover sole Microstomus pacificus, is named after the authentic Dover sole, Solea solea
Chris has lived in Pak Sha Wan, Sai Kung for many years. He has been in Hong Kong since 1982, and is now in the family business, Pacific Rich Resources.
He is passionate about preserving the oceans and his blog, where this article was originally published, came out of his frustrations in dealing with supermarkets and them not being responsible. So he’s blogging, and working with others, to try to create change through social media
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