Chinese Offer to Eat Denmark’s Oyster Problem | Hacker News Reader

Chinese Offer to Eat Denmark’s Oyster Problem

nytimes.com

125 pointshvo70 comments

Although it sounds like the "eat the oysters" solution here is a joke, the idea of using cuisine to tackle the problem of invasive species is not new. The Lionfish is native to Indo-Pacific waters but is now established as an invasive species in the Caribbean; the NOAA and partner agencies enlisted the help of chefs to publish recipes for cooking these fish, and even convinced the Catholic church to suggest that their Colombian parishioners eat lionfish on Fridays.

I mean it absolutely sounds like a great trade opportunity, if the numbers pan out.

Unfortunately the numbers are difficult to work out, because hunting lionfish is still predominantly a very labor-intensive activity. Some folks are working on remotely operated unmanned submersibles to factor out the labor. Also missing is a grid of underwater cameras feeding a stream to a back-end object recognition cluster to map out real-time lionfish locations to maximize kill utilization ratios (too much time is spent looking for them instead of killing them).

Bootstrap enough of the industry, then build enough of the submersibles to permanently station around the most sensitive coral reefs and eventually entire islands and coastlines to "fence them off" from future infestations, and push them further out into the ocean where large predators can feast upon them as they have less cover to hide within, if the native oceanic predators can even eat them. There is some suspicion that in the invasive areas lionfish have no natural predators other than humans; sharks, groupers and eels can be trained to expect dead lionfish handouts from divers, but no one has yet documented them start to hunt the lionfish on their own in significant numbers. I would settle for pushing them out into the relative desert of the benthic ocean, and hope they starve out there.

Fortunately, someone has already worked out a filleting robot for haddock, and modifying its pattern recognition for lionfish requires enough a training corpus to make it sufficiently reliable, so once killed they can be quickly prepared and frozen. The most recent research indicates lionfish aren't susceptible to Ciguatera. Unfortunately, lionfish toxins can also sometimes be found in their flesh, so they must be cooked (heat breaks down the toxins), and they can't be introduced into the lucrative sushi and sashimi markets (though I'm sure enterprising sushi chefs will find delicious ways to prepare the cooked lionfish flesh).

Accuracy rates on automated classification of lionfish in live streaming video is so far not revealed in any write ups I've read, and especially false positives (killing fish that the classifier thinks is lionfish but actually are not). That's a significant problem, and also the obstacle that I can't work out to gamifying the killing of lionfish.

The threat of the more capital-intensive automation of industrial-scale lionfish hunting/eradication also presents a challenge to locals who want to break into the market. Not much incentive for the locals to invest into opening the market when they know they could be out of a job within just a few years of establishing a lucrative market to well-capitalized (and often foreign) competitors who can tap more credit than the locals.

Currently, economically beneficial lionfish eradication for the locals is primarily focused upon leading hunts for diving tourists to favored dive spots, and not for systemic, industrial-scale, broad eradication across the entire coastline. Personally, I believe leaving it at this is a mistake, because lionfish represent a threat to our fisheries over the longer term.

Not new indeed; it's how we got rid of the Apicians from Gustible's Planet documented in 1962

http://www.vb-tech.co.za/ebooks/Smith%20Cordwainer%20-%20Fro...

There was an artificial lake on the Clark Fork river near Missoula, MT until recently. The lake had lots of lake loving invasive pike; pike that would eat the native trout. So Missoula started delivering pike to the local homeless shelter.

The lake has been removed but I still always like the idea.

> The post instantly electrified Chinese netizens, who always love to flaunt their centuries-long passion for diversifying food resources. > The proposed solution was as follows: “Denmark can invent an 'eater's visa' for Chinese visitors, offering unlimited entries within 10 years for stays of up to a month each visit. The oysters will be extinct within five years." > “Ha! Five years? Five months is enough," one user commented.

It's heartening, in a way, to see how fluidly certain interpersonal relations can move across language/culture barriers in this day and age. We really are all alike in many ways after all; maybe it's not yet time to give up on a post-internet era as one that can reach greater heights of intercultural empathy.

Assuming legislation doesn't gut the net.

Very true, that's the thought I had when I saw this. Cross-culture dialogue and understanding is very important, and it would be nice to see more and more, especially when it may be threatened by growing nationalism in various countries.

Am I the only person not keen to eat Danish shellfish? The Baltic is heavily polluted by all sorts of heavy metals and persistent organic contaminants, and filter feeders are known to accumulate these substances.

In fact, most of the Baltic fish catch already ended up getting exported to Asia as fish meal because it is illegal to use them as feed or fertiliser in EU if the final product is intended for human consumption.

They are not from the Baltic. It's the North Sea. More precisely Kattegat, Skagerak and along the western shore.

The western shore of Jutland may qualify as the North Sea but the other two regions definitely don't.

Morever, the top layer of the Kattegatt has a much lower salinity compared to the ocean due to significant outflow of warm brackish water from the Baltic, carrying all the pollutants to the North Sea through the Skagerrak.

To be fair, the situation has actually been improving since the late 90s with tighter regulation on effluents, however I'd rather wait another 10 year before this patch of sea clears up itself.

>The Baltic is heavily polluted by all sorts of heavy metals

Not like China's waters are any better.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25822200

Yes, more reasons to avoid seafood coming out of Asia. As I mentioned above, polluted feed from Europe is already adding to the problem.

Seems related to Chinese people looking for imported sea food due to water pollution:

http://www.bordbia.ie/industry/manufacturers/insight/alerts/...

I don't quite understand... Do the locals or larger Nordic/European populace not eat as many oysters? Why the Chinese versus any other nationality?

Population.

I'd suspect probably not as many per person, and certainly not as many overall due to population.

It's easy to think of Nordic countries as "big" because they are, after all, "entire countries", but they're really pretty small population wise. Denmark has as many people as Detroit. Norway is similar, Sweden has about twice that population (the total of all 3 being around 20 million people). China has maybe 20 cities that each have more population than Denmark, overall China has about 250x Denmark's population.

This is certainly untrue: Detroit's population has shrunk so much that they are less than a million [1]: Denmark's population is 5.6 million. Perhaps you meant another city?

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detroit

He may have meant the entire metro, which is 4.4 mil. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro_Detroit

Scandinavia and Beijing has approximately the same population, and Denmark is about a fourth of that.

The poor danes would have to eat oysters 24/7 to compete with China, and even if they certainly appreciates good food a bit more than most, it might still actually be too much oysters :)

It's originally just an internet meme that indicates the Chinese eat all kinds of stuff no matter what. People were just self-mocking at first. Since oysters are considered fine food after all, so some companies exploited this trending topic as marketing materials. That's how we get here now.

> It's originally just an internet meme that indicates the Chinese eat all kinds of stuff no matter what.

All countries with a great culinary culture tend to use a great variety of ingredients in all their plates.

And countries with a cultural revolution tend to appreciate more what any nutritious food source they can get.

If by cultural revolution you mean famine, then, by your logic, Ireland should have one of the best cuisines in the world.

The problem is lack of demand for this particular oyster in Europe. Otherwise this would be considered a boon for local fisherman. The oysters the article is referring to are of the "giant" variety with many of them being about the size of a human hand (fingers and all).

Not having eaten them myself, I would guess the taste isn't quite the same as their smaller cousins served over ice on the half shell. Also, even if they did taste similar, the sheer size would likely make them unappetizing to even the most adventurous westerners.

The Chinese on the other hand are very familiar with the giant pacific variety and have many traditional recipes for them.

Consuming oysters in a larger than usual amounts would result in high amounts of unwanted metals from the polluted sea (mercury etc.) in the body. Oysters are wonderful sea cleaners.

It is better for a larger population to consume them all, instead of a smaller one consuming more per individual.

Mercury contamination isn't usually a problem with shellfish because they're so near the bottom of the food chain. It's more a problem with big predatory fish like tuna, because each level of the food chain concentrates the mercury.

However, shellfish are very good at collecting micro-plastics, which is an unknown risk.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_oyster

These seem to be the normally eaten oysters everywhere.

I think it's just the Chinese running with a joke.

We farm the Sydney Rock Oyster [1] in Australia, rather than these. Sydney Rock oysters are pretty good eating.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sydney_rock_oyster

Pacific oysters are sold 5-10 to the glass jar at my local Chinese supermarket. The trick is to thoroughly rinse out any sand, then pick a cooking technique that brings out their umami sweetness -- slow cooking them in a clay pot with some green vegetables, ginger, garlic, scallions, and tofu makes a really simple and delicious meal.

> Also, even if they did taste similar, the sheer size would likely make them unappetizing to even the most adventurous westerners.

I think that's taking it a little too far. It's not that crazy a thing to try eating.

Take my comment as someone from the Nordics without any fact to base this on:

Most nordics consider oysters as exotic as eating frog, snails, or calf brain - not something they would be caught doing. (You might have more people ready for the Idea in the capitals) so yes, outside of restaurants there is pretty much no demand for oyster.

As for the Chinese, they are shown in the news to eath all kinds of things that there is zero demand for at home - be it types of fish that aren't part of our cuisine, and byproducts of poultry, pigs and others that have traditionaly not been used in food production.

Really? Frogs, snails or calf brain?

In Belgium (and I'm pretty sure this applies to the UK and France as well), it's not at all uncommon to eat oysters. I don't mind the occasional oyster, but probably couldn't be caught eating calf brain..

Seriously? I am English and whilst I only eat oysters occasionally I wouldn't think they would be considered unusual - and certainly not "exotic". I would have thought our fish and shellfish eating habits would be fairly similar?

Maybe we in Britain picked up the habit from the Romans during the occupation. I'm no expert, but I believe Scandinavia was never occupied by the Romans, so perhaps they never had a chance to learn the mysteries of the oyster.

Fun fact, in Chinese recipe, most of the Oyster species can be cooked in similar ways. So it's easy to let Chinese accept this one. One the other hand, Oyster seems pretty healthy since it contains protein but has few fat and sugar, which amuse young people nowadays.

However, since Chinese people already have several oyster-like species locally, importing this one could probably hurt local fish-men's interests.

Fat and sugar are both good for you in moderation; i never got this obsession with chucking entire food groups out the window as if they're the reason you have nutritional issues. The issue is always, always you. Or genetics.

You need fat in rather largeish amounts, but I've yet to hear a benefit of eating sugar compared to carbohydrates that are digested more slowly.

Well, the main benefit to sugar is that it metabolizes quickly.

How is that a benefit to someone living in the modern industrialized world, though?

When you need to run for the bus

I think it would be best considered as having limited utility, but folks who need a quick sugar boost like diabetics and endurance athletes can take advantage of sugar's characteristics.

They can take advantage of glucose. Fructose still needs to processed by the liver, similarly to alcohol.

I find it useful at breakfast or when i need a quick energy boost an hour or so before "real" food.

Not everyone in the west is a fattie. I am pretty skinny and wanted to gain some weight fairly rapidly a few years ago, so sat with a 2L bottle of soft drink beside my desk at work every day for a couple of weeks. It worked a lot better than my previous attempts of just "eating more".

Two-thirds of Americans are overweight or obese though. https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/health-statisti...

Actually, while you're technically not wrong since your statement was limited to just sugar, I was surprised to find out about a year ago that oysters are fairly high in carbohydrates.

Google shows that just one 50g Pacific oyster has 2.5g, whereas just about any other meat will have no significant amount.

The fresher your meat the more carbohydrates is going to be in it. Apparently the Inuit got something like 20% of their energy from glycogen in their animal kills.

I'm not sure the environmental impact of fishing an invasive species to extinction is positive compared to the problems the species itself causes. Especially if you want that venture to be profitable.

Could always stop at the point you no longer consider them to be a problem...?

It's hard to hit the brakes on a moving train. Still potentially possible.

And yet we still use trains and train stations.

Point taken. Perhaps I should have referenced Pandora's box.

By the definition of invasive species, eliminating them from areas where they were not native and are now harming the ecosystem doesn't require making them extinct.

Having dealt with Chinese tourists in Western US national parks, I'd recommend you just live with the oysters.

> "...but for many Chinese, they would not want to eat the oysters without grilling them with mashed garlic and chili sauce.”

At first that sounded gross (I, I guess like the danish, prefer them raw with a little lemon), but now I kind of want to try it. I think I'm going to try to find a place in NYC that serves oysters this way.

I live in Japan and I stopped eating raw oysters. The oysters that are consumed in Asia are quite different from the ones that grow in the Atlantic or the Mediterranean. They are just bland when row. They don't have this amazing sea taste that you would find in a "plateau de fruits de mer".

There are a great variety of oysters in any sea. Warmer climate facilitate faster growing, colder slower.

If you're eating bland ones are you in warm seas or eating from such? That bland taste happens when anything grows faster. Go up north, same in Western hemisphere.

there are quite a few things you can do with oysters, the British used to use them to pad meat pies out:

http://www.greatbritishchefs.com/recipes/beef-stout-oyster-p...

you can even brew with them:

http://www.merseabrewery.co.uk/beers/oyster-stout

(apparently the shells used to be used to clear the beer, which evolved to brewers starting adding them whole)

If someone would do the same for India's stray dog problem, our life would be so much better.

Since I got downvoted: More than 20000 people die every year, millions get attacked. They eat old people and children alive.

Just Google "stray dogs India".

Ok I did that, and learned:

" A study of dog bite cases conducted at a hospital in Kerala last year showed 75% of the patients had been bitten by pet dogs, and only a quarter had been caused by strays. A 2013 study in 13 Tamil Nadu schools found that pet dogs accounted for more than half of the dog bites suffered by students"

Please check out this link:

https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/4yoadk/kerala_senior...

Posting again in case my other post gets removed:

Please check out this link: (replace [website] with reddit). https://[website]/r/india/comments/4yoadk/kerala_senior_citi...

If oysters are so abundant, why are they so expensive where I live, near the Chesapeake Bay?

Different species.

The Chinese created famine in their country by eliminating sparrows as part of their so-called "Great Leap Forward". It turned out that the sparrows were eating pest insects. Now the Chinese offer to gobble these oysters. Can they be trusted?

The same happened in the US west, when ranchers killed all the wolves. In particular, Teddy Roosevelt gave federal protection to the Roosevelt elk, and hunters shot literally all the wolves in their habitat. No wolves meant no check on moose/deer populations, which resulted in overgrazing of certain important flora.

Everybody makes mistakes, and it's hard to tell when the lesser evil is the lesser evil.

The difference is that this problem was created by humans in the first place - the oysters supposidely escaped from farms.

Whether a problem is "created by humans" has no bearing on what would or wouldn't be a good solution. If the same problem arises without the intervention of humans, why would you treat it differently?

People hunt moose/deer so their populations are easily controlled with more permits.

When I was little and the wolves were still gone, I remember my uncle being limited to 1 or 2 a season in Wyoming. People don't say no to essentially free meat.

IIRC wolves were only brought back because people weren't allowed to hunt in Yellowstone Park. Wolves spreading to the rest of Wyoming, Idaho, Utah and Montana is collateral damage.

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