A cownose by any other name is edible
Cownose rays are becoming a growing menace on fishing in the Cheasapeake Bay. So some local oystermen are finding ways to turn the predators into a meal. But to make the rays more appetizing, they need some good marketing. Sabri Ben-Achour reports.
Fried ray strips (The Virginia Marine Products Board)
More on Food
Chef Ryan Pryor cooks up fried ray strips at Sam Miller's Restaurant in Richmond, VA. (Mike Hutt).
TEXT OF STORY
Kai Ryssdal: Making your living on, or from the water has never been easy. Fishing can be dangerous. It's sometimes not very profitable. Increasingly there are strict limits on how much fishermen can catch. And then there are the natural predators. Oystermen near the Chesapeake Bay are hoping they can turn their enemies into a tasty treat. Sabri Ben-Achour reports.
SABRI BEN-ACHOUR: A few miles up Virginia's Cone river, near the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay, thousands of oysters are beginning their lives in metal tubs, just below the water's surface. Oysterman AJ Erskine pours them into a sorting machine.
AJ Erskine: They're about three months old, and they're ready to go in cages.
The cages -- where these bivalves will spend the rest of their lives -- are to protect them from what some oystermen call a growing menace: stingrays. Specifically, Cownose rays. Every March, they migrate in from the Atlantic, into the bay and even a short distance up rivers, where they gorge themselves on oysterbeds and disrupt habitat.
ERSKINE: It basically looks like schooling sharks, because the wings break the water and looks like shark fins.
Real sharks would normally chow down on stingrays, but they've been overfished. Biologists think it's one reason why the Rays are becoming a problem. So to protect the Chesapeake's cash crops like crabs and oysters the state of Virginia is trying to figure out some way to keep the stingrays under control, some way to put them to good use.
At the Sam Miller's Restaurant in downtown Richmond, Mike Hutt is pushing fried stingray on diners.
MIKE HUTT: Try the taco. It's Chesapeake Ray, it's fried, and it's made into a taco.
Hutt directs Virginia's Marine Products Board, and he's in charge of marketing "Chesapeake Ray."
HUTT: We're trying to develop it as a food source, to take it out of the bay, and have it on the menus.
They have Ray Fillets and Ray Strips -- Spicy and Country style. The red meat is high in protein, low in fat.
HUTT: The meat by itself in a filet or strips is very bland. It tastes like what you add to it.
Hutt is shopping the ray in restaurants across Virginia, he's going to Korea and Japan to drum up support there. You can probably guess what it tastes like, here's customer Melissa Bowenriese.
MELISSA BOWENRIESE: It's kinda, oddly enough, it tastes like chicken. Are you sure that's not chicken?
People do seem to like it once they try it, but it's been an uphill battle says Mead Amery, a seafood distributor.
MEAD AMERY: Over the last few years we've found out that ray, for reason, has a bad connotation. Sting ray has a very bad connotation for some reason.
Yes, some reason, which brings up a very good question: How do you market something that is basically, you know, unattractive? Turns out history has an answer.
BRUCE KNECHT: The first step is you need a name.
Bruce Knecht is author of "Hooked," the story of a fish called the Patagonian Toothfish. It's a monstrous deep sea creature with devilish teeth and oily flesh that nobody ever caught on purpose. Until someone decided to call it Chilean Sea Bass. It's not a bass, but calling it one made it seem safe, "Chilean" made it exotic.
KNECHT: It kinda took off when it became sort of the fish that trendy chefs in New York and Southern California wanted to have.
Stingray marketers have taken a page from this playbook. Instead of Cownose Ray they call it Chesapeake Ray, they describe it as "the veal of the sea" for its texture.
Oren Molovinsky runs a stylish upscale restaurant in D.C. called Mien Yu. He's figuring out how he's going to put ray on his menus.
OREN MOLOVINSKY: We certainly don't put it on as an entree, for one. It's very difficult to introduce an ingredient as an entree that people just aren't used to seeing in this area.
He'll try it out as an appetizer first, it's not as big a commitment for the customer. If things really take off in restaurants, there are ideas floating around to use the discarded parts of the ray in medicinal supplements, and use what's left after that to make fertilizer.
In Washington, I'm Sabri Ben-Achour for Marketplace.
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From Washington, DC, 12/12/2009
This is the dish that we are featuring on the menu at Mie N Yu in Washington, DC.
Tokyo Style Ray & Oyster
sesame & shichimi breaded Choptank Sweets Oysters (Chesapeake Bay, VA – farm raised),
seared ginger-soy Chesapeake Ray sushi hand roll 8
This dish is inspired by the struggle of wild Chesapeake oysters to survive the over-population of the predatory
Cownose Stingray, which is rapidly depleting the Chesapeake’s wild oyster population. Our hope is to help develop a market for the Chesapeake Ray in the efforts of keeping the population at sustainable levels
From Battle Creek, MI, 11/27/2009
This has the potential to be a very good thing, as long as it is in moderation. As a previous comment said, over fishing them would not be a solution. However, using the stingray meat should be a part of the solution, and should have been a long time ago. All agriculture needs to take a more holistic look at its impact. At one time a farm was its own micro-ecology. e.g. chickens & ducks had the added benefit of reducing the bug population which kept both the animals & humans healthier. Chicken manure is much higher in nitrogen than other types, so it was used on corn, which needed the extra nitrogen, which in turn fed both the animals & humans on the farm. This has eroded in our modern times of CAFO's and corn and soybean monocultures, which all depend on Saudi oil, with disastrous results. (BTW, the Saudi oil is where all the chemical fertilizer comes from to make modern ag possible.) e.g. the modern egg has only 1/4 the vitamin D and 3 times the cholesterol that it would if the chicken were allowed a natural diet. (Check out Mother Earth News for more information about free range chickens.) In the end, we have to internalize the externalized costs of our food supplies, and requires keeping natural ecosystems in balance.
From Laurel, MD, 11/12/2009
Actually, everything else being equal, it is preferable to fish lower level predators rather than apex predators like sharks. A pound of shark meat probably took around five pounds of ray meat to create. Eat a pound of ray meat instead and you've lessened your environmental impact.
From Harleton, TX, 11/12/2009
A cownose ray is not a stingray.
From Cebu, CA, 11/12/2009
in the Philippines, stingrays are called pagi, and people cook and eat them. having tried it, i admit that it is delicious.
some links:
http://overseaspinoycooking.blogspot.com/2008/10/kinunot-na-pagi.html
http://wyattbelmonte.blogspot.com/2007/04/linabog-na-pagi.html
From Oakland, CA, 11/12/2009
Chesapeake Bay needs more sharks.
Also Chesapeake Ray sounds awful.
From WA, 11/11/2009
This is an example of what was coined by fisheries biologist Daniel Pauly as "fishing down the food chain". As favorable seafood species become overfished, we move on to less desirable species. This is happening worldwide at a quickening pace as our population grows. The result is that the marine ecosystems we know today are mere skeletons of what they once were in terms of biodiversity and function. The solution? Don't eat seafood, or at the very least be aware of what you are eating and avoid problem fisheries. Seafood watch lists made by organizations like Monterey Bay Aquarium make this information readily available with wallet-sized cards.
From Flagstaff, AZ, 11/11/2009
How can fishermen and regulators feel that overfishing rays will help an ecosystem that is out of balance from overfishing of sharks.
The Chilliean Sea Bass is now endangered because marketers thought a name change would make people want to eat ugly fish.
Marketing fish is not going to solve the many problems of our fisheries.
Decisions on fishing should be based on science and long term economics not exploitation.
From Morris, MN, 11/11/2009
So, we overfished the sharks that ate the rays, and now our solution to the ray overpopulation is to create a market and potentially overfish them? Honestly, you'd think we'd learn.
From Baytown, TX, 11/11/2009
Why not market stingrays as pet food? Cats, in particular, like seafood and are unlikely to have a hangup about rays. Call it "Harvest of the Sea" and pet owners wouldn't know the difference.
For decades, people have claimed that scallops were cut from rays. Why not really use rays and call it "Deep Sea Scallops"?
From Portage, MI, 11/11/2009
What was the original name for the "Alaskan King Crab"?
Answer - Spider Crab.
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