Orange roughy — the lovely-tasting fish that forms the core of the delish ceviche tostadas at Gloria’s — doesn’t even start to breed until about age 25 or 30. The ones caught are often over 100 years old.

Which means (a) that when I chow down on those ceviche tostadas, I may be eating a fish older than my great-grandmother, and (b) orange roughy stocks worldwide are near depletion because the species doesn’t have time to recover from overfishing.

Comments

16 August | 16:32 | Jennifer

When I clerked for a judge in Dallas, one of his favorite restaurants was Gloria's and we used to go to lunch there all the time. *sigh* I miss that place.

17 August | 0:20 | Abby

Good man, Josh. You can add the uber-trendy Chilean Sea Bass to the over-fished, late-reproducing stocks as well.

If anyone is interested in learning about which fish you can eat without guilt, go to http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/cr/seafoodwatch.asp

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Joshua Benton

Joshua Benton is the director of the Nieman Digital Journalism Project at Harvard University, among other things. Before that, he was a staff writer and columnist for The Dallas Morning News. (More.)