Hasta La Ideas

Any successful fisherman knows that light is key in making a catch. That’s why so many lures are pretty and glittery, but in deep water they’re really no use as the light only penetrates just below the surface. Problem solved! The Solar Rapala lure harnessed the sun’s energy to power its shimmering LED light, making it not only more effective during daylight but the single best bait to use at night!

Designer: Hakan Gürsu

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(Tricky for Fishies but Good for Us! was originally posted on Yanko Design)

Related posts:

1. Tricky Tableware
2. Table’s a Little Tricky

Le jeune collectif de réalisateurs français Haterz nous dévoile en exclusivité leur showreel 2012. Spécialisés dans la création de clips pour des rappeurs américains, ils réunissent leurs différents projets dans une vidéo de qualité à découvrir dans la suite de l’article.

Previously on Fubiz

• Corey Arnold
• Fishing Under Ice
• Fiji Vignette

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Armen Petrossian and chef Giselle Wellman give a culinary lesson in California sturgeon

Often regarded as the ultimate indulgence, caviar consists of non-fertilized, salted sturgeon roe. The prehistoric sturgeon has become a significant symbol in Russian culture, but the depletion of the once-prevalent population in the Caspian Sea compelled the government to issue a ban on fishing in 1998, which was extended another four years in January 2012. As a result, farmed caviar has become the most viable option for meeting demand for the tiny, bead-like delicacy.

Three Transmotanus varieties farmed in Northern California have become best sellers for industry-leader Petrossian in their Beverly Hills store—Classic, Royal and Averta President. Armen Petrossian calls the Transmotanus—which means “crossing the mountains”—an “excellent large fish with good flesh and bountiful eggs.” We recently had the opportunity to take a caviar master class at the store to learn more about caviar’s ocean-to-table journey and sample a rich array of freshly farmed sturgeon roe.

Petrossian gets their supply from Sterling Caviar‘s Northern California farms, one of the first complete sturgeon aquaculture operations in the world. Sterling raises the fish in above-ground freshwater tanks that are monitored for water flow, oxygen levels and temperature and, during the caviar harvest—which this year began in early March—females deemed ready have their ovaries removed and eggs extracted. The eggs are carefully cleaned in cold water, weighed and then lightly salted and mixed by hand. The period from which the female is first identified on the farm to when she has her eggs removed lasts about eight years (during which time eggs are checked for color), but the actual process of removing the roe takes less than 30 minutes.

“Transmotanus is raised mainly in California, I prefer to call it California sturgeon caviar,” said Petrossian, describing the process of sorting and grading the fish to sell at its optimal state. “We also made a name for it—we call it Alverta. This is a very interesting caviar because it is a large fish, with good meat and eggs that is close in taste to the ones from the Caspian Sea. You get more flavor with age. The complicated thing with caviar is that no one fish is comparable to another. That means that even in the same family and the same place, you will have huge differences between one fish and another. The difficulty is to forecast each fish in order for you to have it at the best condition.”

For the master class, chef Giselle Wellman created a five-course menu to celebrate the flavors of the sea and highlight some of Petrossian’s newest and most popular caviars. Chefs in the Petrossian kitchens have found inspiration in the nuanced flavors of the tiny eggs, and a standout dish was a house-made caviar-flavored fettuccini topped with light cream sauce and caviar.

The class included a tasting, which started with what Petrossian calls a “not caviar” paddlefish roe, followed by the American Hackleback, Royal Transmotanus, Alverta President, Tsar Imperial Siberian, Shassetra and Tsar Imperial Ossetra. The flight finished with a rich Kaluga ($481 for 50 grams), the progression offering a clearer understanding of the subtle differences in flavors and textures.

“What we are bringing is like when they are making a bag at Hermes,” says Petrossian on the quality of their product. “It is not only a nice piece of leather, or a good grape to make wine. It’s not just because you have the raw material called sturgeon roe caviar. You need to have specific knowledge and experience in order to know how to separate and grade the caviar. That’s our job, to create levels, to create the quality of the caviar and to create the grades.”

New in the Petrossian boutiques and online shop is Caviar Powder that offers the flavor of caviar with a longer shelf life. The powder can be eaten by sprinkling full beads or grinding the dried pearls into a powder that taste can be served with eggs, potatoes, pasta, smoked salmon or anything that would be more delicious with the addition of caviar flavor. Petrossian also makes Papierusse, which comprises thin sous vide sheets of caviar. Paired with a bubbly glass of champagne these creations are sure to induce decadent caviar filled dreams.

Our chat with head fisherman Stewart Hawthorn from the Vancouver-based craft-raised fish farm

Feasting on Drago Centro‘s celery root panna cotta topped with lightly smoked salmon, we discovered the story behind the beautiful piece of craft-raised fish, sourced by Chef Ian Gresik from Vancouver Island’s Skuna Bay. In a world where fish populations are depleting, mercury levels are on the rise and reliable sources for wild salmon is increasingly harder to find, Skuna Bay farmers are lovingly raising salmon in the region’s glacier-fed pristine waters to give their chef customers the assurance that they are serving the best product available.

Now with their inclusion in the Aquarium of the Pacific’s Seafood for the Future program, the Skuna Bay team is achieving its goals with delicious results. We caught up with head fisherman and managing director Stewart Hawthorn to find out more about how they’re swimming their way into the hearts of salmon fans everywhere.

What is your earliest memory of fishing?

When I was a boy on a family holiday in the borders of Scotland. We went down to the local burn (brook) and threw a baited hook into the water. Shortly later I caught a small trout, about the length of my hand. It should really have been thrown back—but I was so excited that my dad let me take it home and we fried it up in butter. Then, when I was a teen, I discovered that wild fish were being caught to the point of endangering their future stocks, and at the same time I came into contact with the fish-farming community, and that really started out my lifelong experience with raising salmon to feed the world.

How did the idea for creating Skuna Bay come about?

Skuna Bay came about because after farming fish for 25 years all over the world I realized that I wanted to make a direct connection with the people who use the fish that I am responsible for raising. Most salmon is farmed by the farmer and then goes through many hands before it gets to the chef. Skuna Bay fish go direct from the farmer to the chef, ocean-fresh. The idea was that we needed to make sure we treated the fish with the same care and attention after it was pulled from the ocean as our farmers had been giving it for the three years they spent raising it.

Why salmon?

I love farming salmon because they are the best fish to farm in terms of environmental performance. They are domesticated, we don’t need a lot of feed to grow a pound of salmon; most of a farmed salmon can be eaten (about 70% yield) and overall our environmental impact is less than that of any other farmed animal. Right now there are simply not enough wild salmon to meet demand—farmed salmon are taking pressure off of wild stocks and helping to preserve them. And it is a delicious and flavorful protein that is great on its own but can also be used in many ways by the chef.

Describe your day.

Most of my day now is spent making sure our farmers can focus on raising good fish, so instead of doing it myself I make sure there are no distractions for them. I spend time with local stakeholders such as our First Nation partners to make sure we are farming in alignment with their values. I spend time listening to what our customers are saying and what they want. I spend time making sure our practices are environmentally responsible. My goal is to spend as little time in the office and as much on our farms, but what I love about working here is that I know that even when I am not there, the fish are in good hands. Our farmers live with their fish 24/7 for eight days on and then six days off. They get up in the morning and the first task of the day is to take the pulse of the farm—checking up on the fish and checking up on the ocean conditions. Only once this is done to the farmers start to feed the fish, clean the nets and undertake other farm routines. Probably the thing I am most focused on is letting experienced and passionate farmers do their job properly.

Do you ever take time out to eat at the restaurants that are serving Skuna Bay salmon?

Yes, I love to see the innovative ways that chefs are preparing our fish. My favorite is ocean-fresh salmon sashimi with a little bit of wasabi and soy sauce or a simply pan-seared salmon fillet. We had a great salmon experience at Little Dom’s in Los Angeles where chef Brandon Boudet did salmon three ways: collars, meatballs and crudo. The most novel was a salmon ice cream by chef Ian Gresik at Drago Centro.

What is your favorite salmon dish?

Sashimi is the best because it lets the quality of the salmon take over and presents it as pure as salmon should be.

What steps did you take to ensure that Skuna Bay salmon would be qualified to be part of the Aquarium of the Pacific’s Seafood for the Future program?

Everything that we do as farmers is about helping to solve the world’s environmental challenges. We make sure that we farm our fish in the right spots, natural ocean waters that are glacier-fed with perfect tidal currents. We have a really good team of farmers who know their fish and love to work in the wild natural ocean environment. We then need to make sure that we respect the fish that we are farming by looking after them really well and ensuring that they are growing up in a healthy and good condition. Finally we need to make sure that we harvest the fish really well—it is really important to give them that rigorous care and attention even as they are being harvested—it has taken more that 3 years to grow them to harvest size and we can’t let our farmers down by dropping our guard in those final moments!

For the Aquarium we had to show that we do all of these things—so showing that we have a good and qualified team of farmer and showing that they work responsibly was the critical piece.

What are your goals with Skuna Bay?

We want to get connected with chefs and to give them fish that are as good as we experience when we pull them from the ocean. We want to have the ocean to plate freshness locked in. We believe that it is possible, with the right care and attention to detail.

Royal College of Art student Dan Watson has designed a trawling net that filters young and endangered fish from the catch.

Called SatetyNet, the design uses a combination of strategically placed holes and lighting to separate fish of different ages and species.

The technique exploits behavioral and psychological differences between species of fish.

Watson created the net to tackle the huge proportion of unmarketable fish caught and thrown back into the sea dead each year.

The project has been nominated for the Victorinox – Time to Care competition for sustainable design.

Here are some more details from Dan Watson:

Created by Dan Watson, a student at the Royal College of Art in London, about to graduate with an MA in Innovation Design Engineering, the SafetyNet is an innovative trawling system that exploits the natural behaviour of different species and ages of fish to ensure that only marketable fish are caught. This negates the increasingly critical issue of ‘unmarketable’ by-catch fish that are thrown back dead into the sea, endangering both the fish themselves and the fishing industry.

Every year, fishermen return over 7 million tonnes of unmarketable fish, dead, to the sea. The problem is that many current fishing techniques are not selective, leading to juvenile and endangered fish being caught along with more marketable ones. The SafetyNet is a new trawling system that cuts down on the catch and subsequent discarding of juvenile and endangered fish. By exploiting fish behavioral habits and physiology the trawl separates different species and ages of fish.

Click above for larger image

Using the SafetyNet system, the fishing industry can become more sustainable. This will give security not only to the 40% of the world’s population who rely on fish as their primary food source, but also to the fishermen within the industry itself.

See also:

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The Catch by Julia Lohmann	Non-lethal mousetraps by Roger Arque	More about animals on Dezeen