The Fish Around Us

By D.W. Bennett

"...Small lobsters creep over the bottom of Jamaica Bay, and delicious blue crabs dot the Meadowlands of New Jersey..."

New York is threaded with water-ways. Most are dirty, but they are still full of crab, lobster and sturgeon, goldfish and striped bass, bluefish and white perch and even pompano. Ignoring the unprepossessing look (and smell) of the city's rivers and ponds, New Yorkers are fishing all over the place: They cast from the bulkheads into the East River; they dot the jetties at the Rockaways; they trap blue crabs in the Hackensack Meadowlands (just ten minutes from Times Square). Correctly dressed flycasters quietly pursue huge brown trout in Kensico Reservoir. Warm-water anglers fish the New York and Croton reservoirs. Water and fish everywhere. And the season is starting afresh.

This month, as the waters warm, fish begin to stir, either out of the harbor muds to feed, or inshore to spawn. Winter flounder fishing traditionally begins on St. Patrick's Day. Jamaica Bay is a good spot, from the Canarsie Pier or from the bridges that cross the bay, or from rented rowboats. Winter flounder are crowd pleasers — easy to catch and not terribly choosy about how they are approached.

The king of New York's sport fish is the striped bass. It too has a spring run, up from as far south as the Carolinas, heading for the upper Hudson, where spawning takes place from Bear Mountain to Kingston. Another "race" of striped bass winters in the Hudson, moping in layers, mostly in Haverstraw Bay. White perch mope with them.

Early striped bass are caught near Great Kills on Staten Island. As the water warms they feed on Romer Shoals, off the harbor. Upriver, light-tackle fishermen seek out another batch in the Croton River and on the flats between the Tappan Zee Bridge and Peekskill. Forty-pounders have been caught in the Hudson, though three-pound fish are more common.

A true hot spot for striped bass is at the discharge canal of the Northport Lilco power plant on the north shore of Long Island. The plant sends a plume of warmed water into Long Island Sound, and it can be fished from a stone bulkhead or from the beach to the cast (if the wind is out of the west, blowing the warm plume close to the beach). Fishermen routinely fish the plume on New Year's Day, trying for the first striped bass of the year. These bass should migrate out of the Sound to winter, but instead find their way into the comfortable water near the plant and stay there, trapped by the cold water around them until April or May, when the surrounding water warms.

There are bluefish and menhaden (a bait fish) in the plume; pompano, a southern species, have also been caught there. Five years ago, a local angler caught, tagged, and released a January bass there, and it roamed free for almost four years before it was recaptured up the Sound on the Connecticut side. It might have spent half its life around the Northport plume. Last November, a run of small striped bass stormed the piers of Manhattan's Lower East Side, near the enclosed tennis courts, where business-men fished for them after work.

Small lobsters creep over the bottom of Jamaica Bay. Some are inshore migrants, others get there over the sides of commercial boats being chased by fish wardens. Lobster pots line both sides of the main ship channel into New York Harbor.

The little bays around New York are flooded with snapper bluefish in the summer, four-to-ten-inchers that chop and swallow forage species and take a small silver lure or a minnow bait. One of the city's prettiest bays is Udall's Cove, in Queens. Go into the cove and cast for snappers: The water is clean, salt-marsh grass lines the banks — a peaceful and bountiful place.

But New Yorkers don't demand picturesque spots — they'll fish anywhere. A dedicated group has even caught striped bass at some of the sewer outfalls on Manhattan's West Side. Some favor the 59th Street outlet, especially in winter. Others choose the 72nd Street sewer because it is a better all-year spot; the 96th Street sewer is popular because of its heavy flow.

"...New Yorkers will fish anywhere. They catch eels behind Staten Island and striped bass at Manhattan's sewer outfalls..."

Is this sort of thing wise? Indeed, is it safe to eat any of the fish caught in the metropolitan area? Go anywhere on the waterfront, look down at the water, and you will see something disgusting. Fecal coliform counts, used as an index of pollution by human wastes, are as high in parts of the Hudson, East, and Harlem rivers as anywhere in the world. A coliform count of below 2,400 per 100 milliliters is considered safe for swimming, but counts in parts of the Hudson and other New York waters exceed 1 million per 100 milliliters.

New York waters receive the wastes of about 15 million people, and some of these wastes are untreated. Whenever a summer thundershower strikes the city, most waste bypasses the sewage treatment plants and flows directly into the rivers of the harbor.

These wastes make New York waters dirty — that is, unsanitary — and also productive. Sewage is fertilizer, food for phytoplankton, the tiny floating plants that are essential to the marine food chain. What results is a biological bounty, but an unbalanced one: There are often so many organisms and so much sewage that the sunlight is blocked and the organisms suffer through population explosions and collapses.

From the fish's standpoint, the most important single need for life is oxygen. Oxygen dissolved in the water. Fish need about four parts of dissolved oxygen (D.O.) per million parts of water. Above four is fine: below three, things get difficult; below two, fish flee or die. D.O. has improved in most New York waters, the direct result of the construction or upgrading of sewage treatment plants. D.O. sags in the summer; August is the cruelest month for local fish.

But there are exceptions. Killifish seem able to cope with almost any conditions as long as they can keep their gills moist. In fact, they can live happily between layers of wet newspaper. Eels also can handle low oxygen. They abound in all of New York's waters. They live in the wrecks behind Staten Island; they swim up the Croton River and try to get over the dam; and they can move out of ponds and across wet grass, especially at night.

In New York waters, industrial contaminants are the major threat to both fish and man — such things as heavy metals, petroleum products, pesticides, and most organic chemicals, the products of industrial man which make life both pleasant and deadly.

Heavy metals enter the water from every source imaginable — from industrial plants, from sewers, from the atmosphere, from road runoff, landfill leaching, from something as simple as the careless disposal of fluorescent light bulbs. Cadmium, lead, chromium, and mercury are the most damaging heavy metals. They can accumulate in fish and in people and all but cadmium cause nerve damage. Pesticides — chlorinated hydrocarbons — also accumulate in fish. Some cause infertility. In fact, almost anything foreign to nature can get into water and foul up the natural system.

The major chemical disaster to strike the Hudson River has been the addition of PCB's, polychlorinated biphenyls. PCB's enter the Hudson from numerous sources, but mostly from the two General Electric plants at Fort Edward and Hudson Falls. PCB concentrations in the waters of that part of the Hudson, some 195 miles above Manhattan, are measured in parts per billion, but river organisms accumulate PCB's and things that cat them accumulate more. Predators or scavengers at the top of the food chain now have very large concentrations — measured in parts per million. The record is held by a time bomb of an eel that was carrying a load of 559 parts per million.

The two major commercial species of fish in the Hudson with heavy PCB contamination are white perch and striped bass, with levels averaging 15 to 20 and sometimes reaching 125 parts per million. Because the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has set a limit of five parts per million for a "safe" fish, and because almost all fish that spend any time in the Hudson are above that level, New York State has closed the river to commercial food fishing with the exception of shad (which, as adults, spend only about two weeks a year in the river, during their spawning runs) and Atlantic sturgeon under four feet, again because they are not residents.

New York State has published other regulations for consumption of fish taken in New York waters. No fishing whatsoever is permitted between Troy and Fort Edward, and eel fishing is banned in the Harlem, Hudson and East Rivers. The New York State Department of Health is, not surprisingly, frequently asked if fish from New York's waters are safe to eat at all.

Dr. David Axelrod of the department staff says, "Yes, but we recommend that a person eat fish from inland waters only once a week (but not 52 times a year), and we recommend that children under twelve, and pregnant or nursing women eat no Hudson fish." This he says will diminish the possibility of direct toxicity and the accumulation of dangerous amounts of PCB in body fat. He adds that PCB's have caused cancer in laboratory animals, and that PCB's can combine with other chemicals in complex, terrible ways.

As for shellfishing, caution! The muddy bottom of Jamaica Bay is packed with soft and hard clams; oysters still survive in Raritan Bay; and shellfish suspended in baskets in the East River fatten much faster than they do in the open waters of Great South Bay — but it is not safe to eat any of these. Indeed, none of the boroughs touches water that's open to shellfishing. Lobsters and crabs are safe to eat.

There remain on the river now only a handful of commercial fishermen. One is Ron Ingold, who each spring sets his gill nets out from the New Jersey shore of the Hudson River, one upstream, one downstream of the George Washington Bridge, tying them to 40-foot oak and hickory poles driven into the bottom muds. He and his crew will pull the nets at the top of every flood tide from now until the shad run ends around the first of May.

I have helped pull up Ron's nets. We have been out on the Hudson at 2 A.M. when it is still. The river runs hard against the net as we wait. The pull begins. At one end it might be light fishing, but toward the middle the shad come over the stern in bunches, so we end with shad in the boat halfway up our legs, the males (bucks) up to four pounds, the female (roe) shad up to twelve. They go in boxes of 100 pounds each to Fulton Fish Market soon after they are packed, and they are served in the finest restaurants in the city.

At the end of each pull, the crew goes back to Ron's barge, which rests in the mud below the cliffs at Edgewater. A coal stove heats the barge cabin, and the rafters are hung with old nets, anchors, crab and eel traps. The fishermen go to bed because they will be out setting net in four hours, but Ron stays up and talks about the Hudson and fishing; he tells of sturgeon that tear right through the net, of strange catches — sea turtles, fluke, anglerfish — and the yearly floater (dead body) that bobs up in the net.

Ron is the fifth generation of Ingolds to fish for shad in the Hudson, and he is confused. He helps biologists by providing fish for sampling for contaminants, knowing that if his catches show high levels, he is out of business. That is the paradox of New York's waters. The fish are there in abundance and they can be caught. They can be eaten too, but only every so often. We can curse because the waters are sick, or cheer because the fish have so far survived the sickness.

TEN LOCAL FISH AND WHERE THEY CAN BE FOUND:

Atlantic Ocean: Bluefish, Lobster, Striped Bass

Hackensack River: Blue Crab

Hudson River: Goldfish, Lobster, Shad, Striped Bass, Sturgeon, White Perch

East River: Blue Crab

Jamaica Bay: Blue Crab, Eel, Lobster, Winter Flounder

Kill Van Kull: Eel

Little Neck Bay: Bluefish, Blue Crab, Winter Flounder

Long Island Sound: Bluefish

Lower New York Bay: Bluefish, Lobster, Striped Bass

Rockaway Inlet: Bluefish, Blue Crab, Eel, Winter Flounder

Upper New York Bay: Bluefish

Fear of Frying: A Guide to Buying and Cooking Fish

By Ruth Spear

"...More fish is being eaten today than ever before. For the many who don't know how to prepare it, here are some pointers..."

Twelve years ago, when the Catholic church lifted the Friday ban on eating meat, there was panic at the Fulton Fish Market. The fishmongers need not have worried. More fish is being eaten today in America than ever before.

The reasons are several. First, thin is in — permanently. Fish’s 100 calories per three ounces make it an attractive alternative to the 330 calories of the equivalent amount of meat. Second, the big beef shortage of 1974 caused people to turn to eating fish. And they found they liked it. (Ironically, fish now equals, and in many cases surpasses, beef in price.) Third, as more and more Americans traveled and acquired sophisticated palates, they were exposed to fish in many forms they’d never tasted before. Only G.I.'s who'd been in Japan even knew what sushi was ten years ago; hundreds of New Yorkers do now.

Still, the average housewife remains woefully ignorant of how to buy fish, and how to cook it. So for the many who like fish and really don’t know how to prepare it, here are some pointers.

1. Buy from an established dealer: No really “bad” market could stay in business, but there is a range of freshness and variety in the merchandise that establishes a market's rank. “Fresh fish” can mean, in a large metropolitan area, fresh in the market that day, caught the day before. But it can also mean having been heavily iced on a large boat up to eight days before your dealer got it, and “fresh” that morning in his store. Well-established dealers have created a rapport with the relatively few smaller vessels that go out daily. Those dealers, who are known to pay top dollar, usually get first choice because they pay more.

2. Amounts: Tell your dealer how many people you're having for dinner and the number of those that are children. What’s important is the weight of the fish after skin, bones, etc., are removed. Phrasing is important. I once asked for “two pounds of bass fillet,” but the fishman heard “two pounds of bass, filleted.” He filleted a two-pound fish, leaving me with fourteen ounces of fish to feed five people. It is a good idea to stress the words “net weight” or emphasize the number of eaters. A fish like red snapper, for example, has an extremely large head; without that head, a four-pound snapper will weigh two pounds or less — feeding four. Four pounds of sole fillets, on the other hand, might feed ten to twelve, depending on how they are to be cooked.

3. Market forms: Whole dressed — This is a fish just as taken from the the water, scaled, with fins and viscera removed. Allow three quarters of a pound per serving, unless advised differently.

Pan dressed — A term for smaller (three-quarter-pound to one-and-one-half-pound) fish, scaled and eviscerated, with usually the head, tail, and fins removed. In the case of very small fish like smelt, the head and tail are usually left on. Allow a half pound per person.

Steaks — The cross section slices of large, firm-fleshed fish like swordfish, salmon, halibut, and cod. One pound will serve two or three.

Fillets — The side of the fish cut lengthwise. One pound will serve three.

Boned fillets are obtained in two ways: Either your fish market bones its own fish, guaranteeing you maximum freshness, or the dealer purchases fillets from a market filleter. (Fish which has been boned on the spot, where the boats come in — usually New Bedford or Boston, for the New York market — and sold in huge cans is known as “over-the-road” fish. This is more economical but creates some extra delay in getting that fish to your table.)

Don't hesitate to ask for the head, carcasses, etc., when you have purchased a whole fish and had it filleted. Make stock to freeze. Recipes abound in any cookbook; stock is easy to make, economical, and can be used, strained, refrozen, and kept indefinitely. I have a stock in my freezer whose base is a salmon poached two years ago. For poaching, it beats bottled clam juice by a mile, and the price is right.

4. Storing: Prior to refrigerating a fresh fish, wash it in cold water, dry it, wrap it well. Use it as soon as possible — two or three days at the outside. There certainly will be impairment of flavor and texture after three days.

If you find yourself with a fresh, whole, ungutted fish, scale and eviscerate it, drain off any blood, and store, following your usual wrapping procedure. Or, if you have the space, gut the fish and curl it or lay it straight, depending on size, in some suitable container that you can fill with water and seal. Freeze, then remove the container.

Wrap the resulting block of ice with the fish encased, and you can keep it frozen for many months, with no likelihood of freezer burn or ice crystals forming. (This method of freezing fish for long periods of time should be used only by those with a separate freezer with a temperature as low as 0 degrees Fahrenheit.) Put store-bought frozen fish in the freezer in its original wrap. Do not refreeze it if it has been thawed; use it as soon as possible.

"...Carolina shrimp may actually be better frozen than fresh. Look for firm, springy, moist meat and a clean sea smell..."

5. Buying shellfish: “Fresh shrimp” usually means freshly frozen, or flash-frozen, which is done at dockside and is perfectly all right as long as the shrimp are firm and have almost no smell. A carbolic odor means pass it up. Truly fresh (that is, unfrozen) shrimp are available only from the end of June through January, but they do come from far away — usually the Carolinas and Florida — and in this case, frozen may actually be a better bet. Look for firm, springy, moist meat and a clean sea smell.

Shrimp are sold according to “count,” the size determining the price. Generally the following rules prevail: small — 31 to 35 per pound; medium — 26 to 30 per pound; large — 21 to 25 per pound; jumbo — 16 to 20 per pound; colossal — under 10 per pound. (This largest size is sometimes called a prawn, but a prawn is a crayfish.)

Some markets handle tiny ocean shrimp, which run 150 to 180 to the pound and are sold only shelled and cooked. Most markets will sell you cooked, peeled shrimp as a convenience. At one market uncooked medium shrimp are $5.99 a pound. Cooked and peeled, they're $12.50 a pound. (Note that there is a 25 percent loss per pound in shrinkage from cooking, and another 25 percent loss in peeling.) You must therefore start with at least two pounds of uncooked to get a pound of cooked, peeled shrimp. Most recipes will specify which to use.

Oysters are sold live and in the shell, usually by the dozen, the pint, and the quart, depending on the market. A quart averages 36 medium oysters. The market will open them for you, but you must specify whether you want them on the half shell (for serving raw, or for dishes like oysters Rockefeller) or in a container with their liquor.

Mussels are usually sold by the pound, a pound averaging fifteen. Sometimes they are sold by the quart, so it is helpful to know that a quart equals about one and one half pounds of mussels.

Shine and firmness are the things to look for in buying scallops. As to color: Fresh scallops are a pinkish white, with sometimes a yellow or orange tinge around the edges. If they're gray and milky they're old.

Generally, two main kinds of clams are available in markets: soft long-necked clams, sometimes called steamers, and the hard clams known by size names — littleneck (the smallest), cherrystone, or chowder clams (the largest; in New England, these are quahogs, pronounced “gwohogs”). Clams are sold by the dozen in the shell and by the quart shucked with their liquor.

Soft-shell crabs and lobsters should be alive. If you are a fancier of lobster roe, you can tell the female by picking one up and turning it over. Females have a greater width to the midsection, and the last pair of swimmerets projecting from the belly are soft and crossed; the males’ last pair of feelers are hard and straight up. Also, the male tail is narrower and pointier. Sometimes just the claws are sold; don’t buy claws that appear dry and yellowed.

Crabmeat is available fresh in lump and backfin forms (these are size designations — backfin is smaller pieces of lump). Crabmeat is also available pasteurized, in cans. The best comes from Chesapeake Bay and may contain bits of flavorsome roe and fat. Other prime sources are Florida and Virginia backfin. In addition, many markets stock the huge frozen claws of the Alaska king crab, the meat of which is tougher. The prince of crabs, the Dungeness from the West Coast, is sometimes available cooked and frozen, but in my opinion eating it frozen comes in a poor second to eating it fresh.

6. Eating sashimi: Originally a traditional course in a Japanese formal dinner, sashimi — raw fish artfully cut — and its companion dish, sushi — raw fish in combination with vinegared rice and seaweed — must be made with perfectly fresh fish and shellfish no more than 24 hours out of the water. There are in New York at least 150 Japanese restaurants serving or specializing in this delicacy.

Yet doctors are against it. Their reasons: First, the obvious hazard of eating contaminated fish and shellfish from waters polluted by industrial or human waste. As great a hazard, says Dr. Louis Scarrone, eminent nutritionist, is the danger of worm parasite infestation, roughly analogous to the potential hazard you face eating steak tartare. Because of the parasites that can be present in raw fish, it’s simply wise to cook it.

Though good Japanese restaurants pay premium prices to obtain fresh fish and shellfish from pollution-free waters, and though they deal with only two or three selected merchants and have a chef who goes to market every day to buy just for that day, the parasite problem still exists. As exquisite as the sashimi experience can be, discretion may be the better part of sound health here.

Fish is the ideal foodstuff — high in protein, low in calories, with little connective tissue and therefore easily digested and assimilated. While the fat content of different species varies widely (less than 1 percent for cod, up to 20 to 25 percent for salmon and mackerel), most fish have a very low ratio of oil to protein (exceptions: herring, mackerel, and trout).

What fat there is contains a high proportion of polyunsaturates, now of special interest to doctors because of the implication of saturated (animal) fats in heart disease and, more recently, cancer. And the low sodium content of both freshwater and saltwater fish (not smoked fish, however) makes it especially valuable as a protein source to those on low-salt diets.

Fish and shellfish contain useful amounts of B-complex vitamins (thiamine, riboflavin, niacin, vitamins B6 and B12, and pantothenic acid) needed to maintain healthy nerve tissues. Seafoods, especially fish roes and shellfish, are a good source of minerals like calcium, iron, potassium, phosphorus, copper, iodine, cobalt, and manganese.

Swordfish occasionally comes under fire because of reported toxic levels of mercury. Japanese swordfish is no longer imported, and mercury levels in domestic swordfish, and other commercial fish, are below dangerous levels. One can, however, get hepatitis from eating raw mollusks, primarily clams and oysters; one can also get gastroenteritis, usually traced to inadequately cooked and/or refrigerated shellfish.

Thanks to tough rules regulating interstate shipping and handling of shellfish, the incidence of these complaints in the United States is low, considering our large consumption. The ultimate defense, of course, is not to eat raw shellfish at all, and to eat only the cooked shellfish you cook yourself.

Hepatitis A, cholera, and typhoid, the three most common illnesses sometimes associated with shellfish, can be avoided by not eating it in places where outbreaks have been reported. Travelers, take note!

Buying Fish: What to Look For

A mild, sealike smell: Don't be afraid to make the nose test. The odor should be mild and sealike but not fishy.

A shiny eye: Freshness proclaims itself in a fish's eye, which should be glistening and unsunken, with no trace of blood. If the eye has begun to cloud over from contact with ice, though, the fish can still be acceptable.

Clean, red, unsticky gills

Firm and elastic flesh: Scales should have a sheen and adhere tightly. To test a whole fish, pick it up by the head or tail; if it's limp and floppy, it's too old. A fillet should not fragment when held up. And any trace of slime, especially on boned fillets, means go on to something else.

No freezer burn: When you're having frozen fish, make sure the package is solidly frozen, with few air spaces in the packing. There should be no frost or ice crystals in the package, and no discolored parts or what patches that might mean freezer burn. A strong "fishy" taste indicates rancidity; get your money back.

Foolproof Fish Cookery

Strange that so many people are afraid to cook fish. Some don’t even venture into a fish market; those who do have a certain air of helplessness. ("We tell them to broil the fish with a piece of butter, just to get rid of them,” growls an East Side dealer.) The truth is, there is no easier entrée to prepare; so here is a guide to baking, broiling, frying, sautéeing, and poaching without fear.

The Canadian cooking method: Measure the fish at its thickest point and allow ten minutes of cooking time per inch. If the fish is sauced or in foil, allow five minutes extra per inch. If the fish is frozen, double the cooking time.

Baking or broiling: Use a greased broiler pan and baste fish with melted fat or a basting sauce. Bake at 450 degrees, or broil two to four inches from the flame, and use the Canadian timing rule (above). Don’t broil cuts of fish less than three quarters of an inch thick.

Pan-frying or sautéeing: Dredge fish in seasoned flour for crispness; cook over brisk heat in clarified butter or butter and oil; use Canadian timing theory. Turn fish halfway through cooking time.

Poaching: Use the Canadian rule. Bring to a boil enough liquid to cover fish; add fish, lower heat so liquid just “shivers,” begin timing.

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