The Ugly Fish That Got a New Name and Became a Luxury

In 1977, an American fish merchant walking the docks of a port in Chile found a huge gray fish with a mouth full of sharp teeth. Local fishermen called it “cod of the deep.” Scientists called it the Patagonian toothfish. Almost nobody wanted to eat it.

So he gave it a new name: Chilean sea bass.

In this video: how one name turned a throwaway catch into one of the most expensive fish on the menu, how that demand brought pirate boats to the Southern Ocean, the three-week chase of the Viarsa through storms and sea ice, the 110-day hunt for the Thunder, and how the fishery was finally brought under control.

Would you order something called Patagonian toothfish? Tell me in the comments.

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Footage: Pexels. Maps made with Natural Earth data. Graphics created for this video.

Sources:
G. Bruce Knecht, Hooked: Pirates, Poaching, and the Perfect Fish (2006)
Priceonomics, “The Invention of the Chilean Sea Bass”
Taste, history of Chilean sea bass
CCAMLR, “Elimination of IUU fishing and the world’s first catch document scheme”
Hotel Online (2002), Take a Pass on Chilean Sea Bass campaign
Parley (2015), Operation Icefish
Pew Charitable Trusts (2015), conviction of the Thunder’s captain and crew
MercoPress (2015), record chase of a poaching vessel
TimesLive (2015), how Sea Shepherd hunted the Thunder
Wikipedia, Patagonian toothfish and Viarsa 1

#chileanseabass #seafood #fishing