Local Food: Seafood!

psm — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 23:37:00 +0000

So, for our homework assignment, we all agreed to take on discussing some of our local foods. Back when I was an ESF student, I took a class called “Food and the Landscape” by the wonderous Matt Potteiger (which is totally worthy of its own post). Regardless, my final project focused on Onondaga Lake as a productive waterway. Here is a list of fish that people used to eat from the lake and local creeks:

American Eels
Atlantic Sturgeons (yes, they used to be found in the lake!)
Atlantic Salmons
Onondaga Whitefish

Just for fun, I found my old project, titled “Eating Onondaga Lake.” It is hard to read, but click on it, and it will take you to a (much) larger version.

I want to focus on the Onondaga Whitefish. If you notice, it is the only fish with a name specific to the area. It was a unique variety of whitefish found only in Onondaga Lake. It was a delicacy, getting shipped around the Northeast and featured prominently in restaurants in Boston and NYC. One thing that makes this whitefish so unique was that it lived in the salty water of Onondaga Lake, and was likely its own variety, if not its own species. The problem: they are in the past tense so no one can actually identify if they were unique or not. The last whitefish was caught in 1897. Again, no one knows exactly why, but it was likely due to overfishing as well as serious ammounts of pollution getting dumped into the lake at that time.

Most people around here dream of a day when we can swim in the lake without worry. I dream of a day we can eat fish from Onondaga Lake without worry.

Slow Food CNY » Onondaga Creek

Local Food: Seafood!