alt Hacker NewsThanks to social media, canned sardines are a scarcity on the supermarket shelf
Comments
The oceans are depleted. And some countries with shadow fleets are to blame more than the others. But somehow it’s not even a small priority for most countries. Whales are dying because they are malnourished and that is an indicator that there’s barely anything left. The idea that international waters are available for anyone and everyone to exploit is just wild.
Recent episode of the Odd Lots podcast, "How a Sardine Gets From the Ocean to a Can":
> Just a decade ago, tinned fish was hardly a premium product. Most Americans likely associated cans of tuna with thrift. But that has changed a lot in recent years. The category took off during Covid and now shoppers are shelling out for high end brands like Fishwife. Today's guest Becca Millstein started the company in 2020, positioning it as a distinct, artisanal product, more akin to one might find in European grocery stores. In addition to the sheer challenges of scaling, the nature of the business itself has changed, influenced by climate change and geopolitics (shortages have led Morocco to suspend frozen sardine exports for instance). We discuss the tinned fish supply chain and how a new brand positions itself in today's media market.
* https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-a-sardine-gets-fro...
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqP18fQi_CM
* https://omny.fm/shows/odd-lots/how-a-sardine-gets-from-the-o...
Where can't you find them?
All of my local supermarkets in the US have a million cans of sardines from a dozen different brands each, ranging from like $1.50/can for e.g. Goya in soybean oil[0] to like $7/can for very fancy ones, with the average around $4.50/can for ones in olive oil. They're not gone, just more expensive than last year for nice ones.
[0] - sardines come packed in your choice of water, soybean oil, olive oil, extra virgin olive oil, tomato sauce, or louisiana-style hot sauce with additional selection choices of containing herbs or hot peppers or olives, and olive oil ones always cost more than water or soybean oil ones for obvious reasons
I've experienced this recently. My wife has osteoporosis and her doctor told her to eat sardines with bones to get more calcium. She doesn't like eating them straight, so she makes hummus and blends in two cans of sardines. That batch lasts two days, so she eats a tin a day. But in the past year we have had stretches of weeks where we couldn't get them.
What a sad world we live in :( Social medias have such a significant impact all over the planet, from overcrowded tourist spots dedicated to taking instagram pictures, to canned sardines diets. Why do people fall for this kind of thing ? I still can't understand it. Is it all just an ego war ? That worries me
I'm sad for King Arthur[1] who genuinely loves his tinned fish and wants to share his passion with the world. He is a good boi and not part of this trend.
I don't really like fish. I watch his videos more for the vibes. I did buy a can or two to give it a chance but I still just can't stand it.
Destroying ecosystems beyond a tipping point. And the politicians just care about being re-elected. Focusing on short term gain.
” The decision taken by the Council of Ministers earlier this week on the 2024 fishing quotas in the Baltic Sea is in many ways unique. It shows a remarkable historical short-sightedness, ignorance of the fish and fishing in the inland sea, inability to understand the scientific advice of the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) and - perhaps most of all: the ministers are bending the laws that regulate fishing, ecosystems and the marine environment to the limit.”
https://balticwaters.org/en/baltic-sea-brief-60-the-final-he...
More and more I think we need to fix farmed fishing and stop cleaning the oceans of life. We don't, en mass, hunt for cows or chickens. We farm them. It has an impact but it doesn't take out the whole ecosystem either.
Darn, originally from northern Europe, I have always enjoyed sardines. I was wondering why they are suddenly harder to get.
I can't believe a weight-loss fad is going to take "my" sardines from the shelves.
Also, why only sardines? Any fatty fish will serve the same purpose. I guess a fad is a fad.
This is an AI generated article.
"Stuff you should Know" recently did an episode on sardines. I tried a tin because it was cheap, and they're better than I anticipated.
Canned sardines have been a staple of my diet since I was in the womb. I can’t wait for this trend to die off, it has been so difficult to find them lately. I mean I understand all of the reasons for it, and I can at least appreciate that sardines are the most sustainable form of fishery we have, but goddamn it is super frustrating.
Tinned sardines are convenient for toast, but if you want to cook with them it's crazy how much more you get your money from the fish counter.
If we can get TikTok addled zoomers to discover frozen dinners as well and reduce their burrito taxi usage.. we may just slay the inflation beast finally.
I was just grocery shopping yesterday (Philly) and there seemed to be no lack of the low quality sardines I normally see on the shelves every week? There are no "empty shelves" that I have seen in the two stores I normally shop at.
Yes that's good, blame social media and not the absence of sufficient regulation or the unsustainable fishing industry.
Someone should use those same social networks to write en masse to those social influencers, the same message to them all:
> Look what you've done, dumbass
"Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area."
Sadly Agent Smith was not wrong there.
I think they did this with cottage cheese a few months ago and avocados a few years ago.
pity it can't be salmon mousse gone.
I noticed the scarcity a bit in the last few months. I have been giving them to my dog for years for the low mercury omega 3s -- I even had a veterinarian stamp of approval.
I know this is about sardines, I like canned tuna, oysters and other things. Curious where social media is on the other canned items.
We have apparently reached the stage of the attention economy where even sardines can experience a demand shock because someone branded eating only one food for three days as a "diet"
I'm the rare breed that's disappointed that every pizzeria around me no longer stocks sardines either. Used to be such a classic, if divisive topping.
The article and many comments here suggest that a “sardine” is a specific species of fish. In fact, about a dozen species are canned and sold as “sardines”.
My grandfather lived in a time when commercial hunting went from viable to being outlawed --- I was worried that my children might live in a time when commercial fishing ceases to be tenable, but now that seems a near certainty.
Consider that we now have more tons of ships in the sea than there are bony fish:
Just came from a 2 week vacation in Portugal, they even had their own fancy (and very colorful) shops where they only sold canned sardines. Never seen such a range of products.
Not to say that climate change isn't affecting this in some way, but the Pacific Ocean is known to oscillate between Sardine and Anchovy regimes [0][1].
[0] https://www.mbari.org/news/from-sardines-to-anchovies-and-ba...
This is an important problem, and the response can go in starkly different ways. While many in the West wring hands and call for degrowth, China is scaling up aquaculture to create abundance without overfishing, and solving aquaculture's ecological problems with technology.
Millions of people are doing 3 day sardine and coffee diets for weight loss?
People will believe anything.
I got two dozen of canned sardines at home, selling for 100$ each.
Canned mackerel is pretty good too.
I've actually been wanting to try to raise my own. There is a freshwater member of the sardine/anchovy family native to Australia, Thryssa lackeyii. They're more towards the sardine size than anchovy, and they might (or might not) have an awful flavor. But they're not on the list of prohibited-for-import organisms, and I believe I'd just have to pay the fee for inspection on arrival.
I can find them just fine in Greece. Imported from Portugal or Morocco, plus some local brands.
Man, I had some Latvian sardines a few days ago. The can looked like I was about to enjoy a trip to culinary heaven and I was absolutely slammed back to reality, the fish had massive bones that you can try and break but they were extremely offensive to the product. Latvia WTF!!?
Influencers are a real fucking scourge to our society.
So I've been thinking about this. It's more general than social media and sardines.
There are now areas of the world with overtourism. Santorini, arguably Venice, Machu Pichu and maybe even Barcelona have more tourists than they can support. It's becoming a huge problem. Why is this the case? It's in part because people have disposable income to visit these places but I think there's a larger issue of why people want to visit these places. I think there's a FOMO element and the idea is pushed by social media in particular and media in general.
As another example, I blame at least in part the crazy NYC rent situation on Sex and the City, particularly on rents in the West Village. If you've lived in NYC you know there's so many SATC girlies living out their NYC dreams and not all of them have trust funds. You see this reflected in rents too. One side of 14th Street is Chelsea. The other side is the West Village. Rents on the Chelsea side are significantly lower than the other side because people want to be able to say they live in the West Village.
On a smaller scale you see this where people seem to view themselves as the main character in a movie or TV show and they're living out these scenes in their heads, typically to video and post online. They can be really inconsiderate about it too. Like just today I saw a video that someone in a public beach "dared" go in the water while someone was trying to get a photo of themselves and that other person got in frame. It really is main character syndrome [1].
I think what made a lot of things good in the past was lack of information (and the resultant FOMO). You've seen this in food trends too when Omega-3 became big and fish stocks suffered or when palm oil became big and that's a big problem.
Interestingly, China has a system to try and prevent everyone flocking to one or two cities ("hukou") and it's hard not to see the argument for this.
I have several triggers when I'm doomscrolling. One of the worst is when someone says "I'm trying the viral (restaurant, dish, bakery, bar, whatever)..." I've always hated this because whatever it is is never worth it. But the psychology of people wanting to show off this way is fascinating. It really feels like people's lives are that empty that they just want that external validation.
[1]: https://health.clevelandclinic.org/what-to-know-about-main-c...
This is only going to get worse with AI and not just for food recommendations. Think "where do I go for a vacation" and then the recommendation is pretty much the same for everyone, and you end up in overcrowded places because everyone else got the same advice.
If we're going to continue to eat sea food, isn't plankton some of the best to eat? It's basically as low on the trophic chain as you can go, unless people start developing a taste for krill I guess.
What will tinned fish review guy do now?
Locally in Silicon Valley, Costco and Safeway are both out of stock on sardines.
Kippered herring is in stock, though.
[dead]
The numbers in question are quite wild[0]
> The NOAA assessment estimated the Pacific sardine biomass will be at 27,547 metric tons by the summer – significantly less than the 150,000 metric tons needed to reopen the fishery to commercial fishing. Any fishery at less than 50,000 metric tons is considered to be overfished. The assessment estimates the sardine biomass was around 1.8 million metric tons in 2006.
Haha, damn. Fishermen must have visibly noticed such a decline. 1,800,000 metric tons to 27,000 metric tons. Two orders of magnitude. Wow.
0: https://www.seafoodsource.com/news/environment-sustainabilit...