If commercial fisheries maintain business-as-usual catches on the high seas, the world’s major seafood stocks will collapse by the middle of the 21st century.

That’s the startling message a respected marine biologist brought last week to the annual Cooking for Solutions conference on sustainability sponsored by the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

While the message from Stanford researcher Stephen R. Palumbi was indeed alarming, a colleague from Minnesota said it’s not too late to turn things around.

Anne Kapuscinski, professor of fisheries and conservation biology at the University of Minnesota, indicated the ocean’s fish species “have an incredible ability to rebound. We just need to set aside protected areas so it can happen.”

Addressing both organic and sustainable issues that impact the daily regimen, the annual conference at Monterey Bay Aquarium focused primarily on the world food supply, from both land and sea.

Julie Packard, the Aquarium’s executive director, sounded the initial alarm as the conference began, noting “90 percent of the top predators in the sea — the tuna, swordfish and sharks that we love to eat — are gone because of overfishing.”

Packard hoped the conference would spread the word so the public will be encouraged to make changes, to bring about a more stable ecosystem.

Palumbi told conferees that it won’t be long before clams, lobsters, crab and popular tasty “big fish” will become scarce if “we continue to fish the oceans like we’ve been doing.”

The Stanford researcher in evolution and marine biology noted that 72 out of 100 of the best-known fish species “are still left...If nothing changes, though, the major seafood stocks will collapse by 2048.

“Oh we’ll still have fish, but not the things we’re eating now. Anyone for jellyfish pie or sea squirt soup?”

Kapuscinski called for programs to address acceptable, sustainable aquaculture. “Around 40 percent of the fish and shellfish consumed around the world are farm raised today — 25 percent of them here in the United States,” she added. “Aquaculture is the fastest growing segment of food production in the U.S.”

Shrimp and salmon are not the only things being farm raised, she pointed out. Seaweed — like the nori used in sushi restaurants — is an important item in the growing aquaculture industry, as are oysters and tilapia, a fish currently favored by restaurant chefs.

“Let’s get back to a seasonal mind set,” declared the founding director of the Institute for Social, Economic and Ecological Sustainability. “It wasn’t all that long ago that we used to see different fish on the menu as we changed seasons. We just can’t expect to eat the same fish every time we order seafood.”

Kapuscinski urged Americans to focus on seafood choices that “are lower on the food chain while we rebuild our wild capture fisheries.”

To that end, the Monterey Bay Aquarium has established Seafood Watch, a guide that allows consumers to “make choices for healthy oceans.”

The pocket guide urges consumers to ask questions when shopping or eating out. These include “Where is the seafood from? Is it farmed or wild-caught? How was it caught?” The guide — which is adapted for various regions of the country — also contains the best choices for “ocean-friendly seafood,” and spells out some alternatives as well as which species we should avoid. To obtain a copy, call 877-229-9990 or log onto www.seafoodwatch.org.

The greening of Wal-Mart

One of the eye-opening segments of the conference came during a session on organic and sustainable foods offered by retailing giants like Wal-Mart.

Three years ago, Wal-Mart’s chief executive officer “put sustainability at the top of the agenda,” noted Peter Redmond, vice president/divisional merchandise manager seafood and deli.

Redmond said his firm can now influence the way foodstuffs and fishing stocks are grown “because of the volumes we buy. We set conditions and (purveyors) must live up to them or Wal-Mart doesn’t buy.”

As an example, the Wal-Mart executive addressed the 50 million pounds of shrimp the rapidly growing discounter purchases annually from Thailand.

“That’s a lot of shrimp,” Redmond allowed. Anxious to see what their suppliers were up to, Wal-Mart began an inspection routine that brought the firm’s shrimp purchases in line with management’s new mandate on sustainability.

In dealing with suppliers and making changes to processing plants, Wal-Mart “can go into a country and literally change the footprint,” Redmond declared.

Yet while “consumer education is a huge thrust” of Wal-Mart’s public relations effort, Redmond said “our role is not to tell customers what they can and can’t do. Customers vote with their pocketbooks.”

He added that the next big issue in sustainability is “food miles,” loosely translated as the number of miles clocked in bringing foodstuffs to the marketplace. The thrust will be to feature more and more locally grown items, cutting back on products flown or trucked in from far-distant points, he and other speakers noted.

But there’s no turning back, Redmond concluded. “Wal-Mart is going green. And it doesn’t necessarily cost you money to do it.”

“Besides, you’ll make a whole lot more money if you do it right,” agreed Fedele R. Bauccio, CEO of Bon Appétit Management Company.

Additional observations

Panelists at the conference on sustainable and organic agriculture, aquaculture and viticulture made several other key observations:

• Sustainability needs to be addressed by the country’s leading politicians and included in the debates for the next national election, declared Dr. Thomas Tomich, director of the UC Davis Agriculture Sustainability Institute.

• Owners of more than 50 percent of California’s vineyards have completed a “self-assessment” that’s part of the state’s sustainable winegrowing program, noted Karen Ross, president of the California Association of Winegrape Growers. “When people talk about wine in California, sustainability is part of that discussion,” Ross noted.

• “The rise of superstar chefs has had the greatest impact on the food industry,” maintained Bob Scowcroft, executive director of the Organic Farming Research Foundation. He said the issues tackled by these chefs and the trends thereby established have moved food editors to change newspaper food sections, which in turn have moved consumers toward sustainability.

• Food imports have doubled in the last six years while food inspections have declined, advised author Marion Nestle. Years ago, more than 20 percent of the nation’s imports were inspected, she said. “Today, a little more than 2 percent of the total (is inspected). Eat organic and eat local...Vote with your fork.”