Alton Brown's podcast for World Ocean Day

As a celebration of World Ocean Day and to bring more awareness for the sustainable seafood movement, the Monterey Bay Aquarium presented an hour-long webcast featuring Alton Brown and the Aquarium's founder and executive director, Julie Packard. Alton's participation in the webcast marks another in a growing list of events to promote sustainable seafood and support for the Aquarium.

Alton's life-long interest in the sea began in childhood as he watched Jacques Cousteau's TV specials and made his first scuba dive at age 12 in the Bahamas. Today, he is a supporter of the Seafood Watch, a ten-year-old program from Monterey Bay Aquarium that educates consumers on the importance of buying sustainable seafood and helps consumers to advocate for the issue. AB said the seafood guide from the organization changed his life and now carries one on his iphone.

The goal of the webcast was to raise awareness about oceans and the critters we eat from them. Alton said selecting items from the "good" list on the guide offer some great choices to eat well.

Many of the topics for discussion came from questions posed by listeners. Someone asked about good choices for a new cook looking for firm white fish. AB suggested striped bass either farmed or wild caught. For the little more advanced cook he suggests black cod (aka sable fish), which is a fatty fish containing more Omega 3 fatty acids than salmon.

The question I posed to Alton was on sardines. While the moderator didn't tell the name of the people when presenting the questions, I knew this was partly mine. I asked about the recent article on sardines and AB giving the wee fish the Good Eats treatment.

AB said he has been "crazy about sardines" since having fried ones in Europe as a college student. The episode featuring them will be called "Little Fishy." He also added that he eats them 5 days a week. And believes there will be a paradigm shift in the way Americans think about the small fish. He also added rainbow trout in this new look at smaller fish.

He also stated he was working on a cookbook on sustainable seafood to help people cook these fish at home. Until we are buying and preparing this seafood at home, AB believes, we cannot fully make the needed changes. Everyone, both the chefs in restaurants and the home cook must participate. He wants this cookbook to educate and inspire people to try other seafood outside of the standard fare.

The other topic Alton passionately spoke about was fresh versus frozen fish. There is a mindset that raw equates to fresh. He believes the opposite and advocates frozen over raw. One reason Alton thinks frozen is better is the fish is frozen within hours of being caught whereas raw fish you do not know how long it has been around. It is also good for people in landlocked areas. Consumers can get the same high quality frozen fish anywhere.

Alton said he believes if we had people like Jacques Cousteau showing us the awe and beauty of the sea more people would be interested in learning about preserving it. Perhaps, AB's post-Good Eats life can be a seafood show on cooking and saving the oceans. After all, he said the ocean was wonderful because you can learn, protect and eat it all at the same time.

An archived version of the webcast will be available on June 9 at the Aquarium's website.

** Photos are from screen captures during the webcast, so they probably belong to the Aquarium's PR office.