This text was initially printed in Hakai Magazine.
On a snowy January morning in 2022, I walked into Duo, an unique little restaurant within the coronary heart of the southern Italian city of Lecce, carrying a polystyrene field stuffed with two frozen, plate-size jellyfish. With me was Antonella Leone, a senior researcher on the Italian Nationwide Analysis Council’s Institute of Sciences of Meals Manufacturing, who held an authorization letter for Chef Fabiano Viva to legally deal with the ocean creatures. Viva awaited us on the restaurant’s entrance, greeted us with a hearty handshake, and took the cooler. Inside minutes, his assistant was defrosting the jellyfish below the faucet. Viva laced up his white apron, stuffed a pot with water, and ignited the range.
Leone is a part of a small group of scientists who’ve been learning Mediterranean jellyfish for the previous 12 years. For the previous seven, they’ve concerned cooks, testing methods to get most people taken with consuming the marine invertebrate.
“The thought of consuming a jellyfish by no means crossed our minds, as a result of we might solely see one each occasionally,” Leone defined. Nonetheless, as a number of species of native and alien jellyfish grew to become considerable—comparable to in 2014, when a jellyfish bloom noticed 400 tonnes of the barrel jellyfish per sq. kilometer carpeting the large Gulf of Taranto—Leone questioned what they might do with them.
However persuading Italians to eat jellyfish is like engaging them to strive pineapple on pizza—not a easy activity. Southern Italians eat octopus, sea urchin, and different sea creatures, however jellyfish are largely ignored. Promoting jellyfish for human consumption is prohibited within the European Union, as regulators nonetheless don’t think about the ocean creature a protected, marketable meals because of historic lack of curiosity in them as a meals supply—which is why Leone arrived at Duo with a permission letter in hand.
Security issues round jellyfish don’t appear to be an issue in China, the place jellyfish have been on the menu for nearly two millennia. (A favourite is an appetizer of chilled jellyfish seasoned with darkish vinegar, sugar, soy sauce, chicken-stock powder, and sesame oil.) A current estimate discovered that 19 nations harvest as much as 1 million tonnes of the gelatinous sea dweller, contributing to a world trade value about $160 million.
Partnering with forward-looking cooks comparable to Viva, Leone and her group started researching in 2015 methods to make jellyfish tasty and protected for Mediterranean menus. As ocean fish shares proceed to deplete at alarming charges, whereas jellyfish appear to thrive, increasingly more individuals are asking if consuming jellyfish will successfully mitigate the jellyfish drawback, and if they may change into a sustainable and protected supply of meals. However can jellyfish change into a meals for all?
Jellyfish are in a broad group of aquatic animals that marine biologists check with as “gelatinous zooplankton.” Some, just like the extremely venomous Irukandji field jellyfish, primarily discovered off the coast of Australia, can have a bell as small as a cereal flake; others, like the large lion’s mane jellyfish, have tentacles as much as 36 meters lengthy. Jellyfish are an essential a part of marine ecosystems and function meals for 124 fish species and 34 other animals, such because the leatherback sea turtle.
However all shouldn’t be effectively within the jellyfish world. For the reason that flip of this century, scientists have witnessed a worrying improve in jellyfish populations in numerous elements of the world. In accordance with Lucas Brotz, a researcher who has lengthy studied jellyfish on the Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries on the College of British Columbia, it’s not simple to know the explanations behind the phenomenon.
“Not all jellyfish are rising everywhere, however we do see a kind of sustained main improve in lots of areas world wide,” Brotz says. And myriad causes could possibly be driving this alteration, amongst them alien jellyfish species being launched into new areas and vary growth as local weather change and warming waters favor some species over others.
The jellyfish improve is being felt notably acutely in locations such because the Mediterranean Sea and alongside the coast of Japan. Hordes of jellyfish have broken fish farms, clogged energy crops, capsized fishing boats as they’ve weighed down nets, and upended tourism by making waters unsafe for swimming. And their presence can have an effect on creatures they share the ocean with too.
“Think about [something the size of] the most important oil tanker on the planet touring alongside the Mediterranean coasts to Israel, consuming all of the plankton,” says Stefano Piraino, Leone’s husband and a marine biologist and jellyfish skilled on the College of Salento, in Lecce, explaining how huge blooms of jellyfish can hog all of the plankton that different planktivores want.
Seeing the brand new availability of jellyfish within the Mediterranean, Piraino joined Leone in her quest to seek out attainable culinary makes use of for jellyfish.
Again at Duo, Viva slipped on latex gloves and punctiliously lifted the Rhizostoma pulmo jellyfish from beneath the working faucet. They had been nonetheless a bit frozen—fairly in contrast to the dried jellyfish usually utilized in Jap delicacies, which have to be rehydrated earlier than use. Viva put the jellies right into a pot of boiling water and began stirring.
When Leone first started learning how jellyfish could possibly be used for meals or meals substances—and the way they could possibly be preserved for later use—she stumbled upon one predominant drawback. The first methodology of preserving jellyfish, as perfected in Asia, was to dehydrate them utilizing the chemical compound alum. However, she stated, consuming aluminum might be toxic, and alum-treated jellyfish usually don’t meet the European Meals Security Authority’s requirements. So Leone and her colleagues got down to devise a brand new and unhazardous approach of desiccating edible jellyfish.
Her group overcame the drying problem through the use of calcium salts as an alternative of alum and went on to experiment with dried, contemporary, and frozen jellies, turning them into mousse, meringue, seasonings, and thickeners.
The magic of turning gelatinous macrozooplankton into meals and meals merchandise occurs in Leone’s lab on the Institute of Sciences of Meals Manufacturing, the place she and her group of seven run their experiments. A protracted metal testing desk, with two cabinets of clear jars and scales at its heart, separates the expansive room. Inside an industrial fridge relaxation racks of check tubes containing jellyfish extracts.
However it’s one factor to do analysis in a lab and one other to persuade Italians to contemplate changing fish with jellyfish in soup. In accordance with a 2020 study led by Luisa Torri, a professor of meals science and expertise on the College of Gastronomic Sciences of Pollenzo, there is likely to be some hope for acceptance. The examine surveyed 1,445 individuals on their perspective towards the thought of consuming jellyfish, taking into account traits comparable to age, behavioral habits, and mouthfeel. In accordance with the outcomes, younger, well-traveled individuals with greater schooling ranges and sensitivity to the atmosphere usually tend to eat jellyfish.
I match that class, so when Viva invited me to take a whiff of the white foam effervescent quickly on the range, I attempted to maintain an open thoughts.
I closed my eyes and breathed deeply. “It smells like oysters,” I informed him.
“You could disconnect your mind from what you already know,” Viva replied. “You could detach your self from the meals in your reminiscence.”
Is the important thing to accepting an uncommon meals making new meals reminiscences? If that’s the case, we’ll must discover a approach to get jellyfish from the ocean to dinner tables.
Along with serving to to cope with future seas filled with jellyfish, fishing for these creatures has been touted as a approach to assist small-scale European fishers, who’re combating low fish shares.
“A supply of revenue? That might be nice!” says Rocco Cazzato, a sixth-generation small-scale fisher from Tricase Porto, on the concept of fishing jellyfish. “However I’d by no means eat them, not even when it’s the very last thing left on the planet to eat.”
Cazzato recounts the ache of pulling in fishing nets crowded with jellyfish that he couldn’t promote. He says that if jellyfish had been in demand regionally, just like the generally consumed scorpionfish, these jellyfish within the internet would assist small fishers like him make ends meet.
Though Leone is working to fill the knowledge void, figuring out which jellyfish are edible and protected for consumption continues to be a query few researchers are tasked with answering. In accordance with Brotz, whereas many various jellyfish sorts are rising worldwide, solely a handful of them are most well-liked for human consumption. And simply because they appear to be extra considerable doesn’t imply that fishing them might be a panacea. The title of a 2016 paper co-written by Brotz says all of it: “We should not assume that fishing jellyfish will solve our jellyfish problem.”
The paper advises warning: Jellyfish are understudied, and the consequences of eradicating them from the ecosystem, even when they’re in extra, are unknown and doubtlessly destructive. Some jellyfish, as an example, act as nurseries for juvenile fish, and jellyfish might be each predator and prey in meals chains.
Silvestro Greco, a marine biologist and the analysis director on the Anton Dohrn Zoological Station, echoes the priority that fishing isn’t essentially the best way to fight jellyfish blooms. He fears that when industrial jellyfish extraction begins, fast depletion may need surprising penalties for native marine environments. Within the early 2000s, as an example, a portion of the fishing fleet within the Gulf of California, Mexico, diverted its efforts to harvesting jellyfish. Fishers and processing-plant staff shortly profited from the brand new market however overfished the useful resource, resulting in the speedy depletion of jellyfish.
Nonetheless, some fishers are poised to launch if a fishery opens—there’s already curiosity from Asia about fishing jellyfish within the Mediterranean. However even with curiosity from fishers, if there’s no market, there’s no level.
In accordance with Leone, getting jellyfish to the plenty requires an entrepreneur prepared to speculate the a number of thousand euros wanted to request that the European Meals Security Authority settle for jellyfish as edible meals on the market, permitting them to be legally offered in fish markets and eating places.
Leone believes that she and her group have gathered the scientific analysis to help such an software to EFSA, and that some entrepreneurs have proven curiosity. It’s solely a matter of time earlier than some species of jellyfish make the record of accredited European meals, she stated, and she or he’s eager to dealer the divide amongst fishers, markets, and cooks.
Creating this market might assist artisanal fishers, those most affected by jellyfish blooms, Leone stated: “They arrive again with nets filled with jellyfish and three fish inside. If jellyfish would change into accepted edible meals, they might promote it as sea merchandise like others.”
Leone first focused curious cooks—ones with out preconceptions who had been keen to just accept a problem—in 2015, and so they grew to become essential group members. Leone and her group had been a part of the EU-funded GoJelly challenge, which appeared into new makes use of for jellyfish—together with in fertilizers, cosmetics, and nutraceuticals, and for snaring microplastics. Membership meant that Leone might frequently convey Viva and different cooks jellyfish to experiment with of their kitchens and discover methods to make the ocean creature appetizing. Through the years, Viva has tried the jellyfish pickled and dehydrated like chips, and as an ingredient in soups and pasta sauces.
Essentially the most vital issue encountered by Pasquale Palamaro, the chief chef of the Michelin-star restaurant Indaco, on the island of Ischia, was the drop in weight because the jellyfish cooked.
Jellyfish are 95 % water and a small share of proteins, and when the animal dies, it loses a lot of that water. To keep away from this, Palamaro believes they must be consumed contemporary inside a couple of hours of harvest, or saved safely frozen or preserved with the calcium-salt approach that Leone developed.
Palamaro boils the Pelagia jellyfish from the Mediterranean for one minute, marinates it in citruses for an hour, after which seasons it with pumpkin-seed oil earlier than serving it with quinoa. Gennaro Esposito, the chef of the Michelin-star restaurant Torre del Saracino, in Vico Equense, prefers to pair the jellyfish with marinated cucumbers, chili kefir, and lettuce paste. Leone has collected the extra profitable recipes of those cooks and others within the freely out there European Jellyfish Cookbook.
However not all cooks are satisfied of the jellyfish’s culinary potential. In 2017, Greco, who can also be a meals scientist and an avid cook dinner, fried 50 kilograms of Pelagia jellyfish on the Sluggish Fish convention in Genoa, Italy, to create consciousness concerning the speedy rise in jellyfish numbers within the Mediterranean.
“It was successful,” Greco says, “however as a result of they had been fried. Every part fried is sweet.”
He believes jellyfish don’t have an fascinating texture and don’t make a compelling case for culinary indulgence. All in all, he doesn’t consider that jellyfish might be shortly adopted by cuisines that don’t historically use them.
However in accordance with Leone, jellyfish as we speak are in the identical state of affairs as tomatoes within the sixteenth century. Tomatoes, now a key ingredient in conventional Mediterranean delicacies, had been unknown earlier than being introduced over from the Americas across the 1550s. At first, they had been regarded as poisonous and unhealthy. Nonetheless, presumably because of forward-looking cooks or just due to necessity, tomatoes started showing on pizzas and in parmigiana and pasta sauce, in the end changing into a part of the Mediterranean food plan.
Whether or not jellyfish will take an analogous trajectory and change into accepted in Western markets is tough to say, however a lot of our favored seafoods are declining or have already collapsed, Brotz explains: “We could get to a degree the place there isn’t a different seafood out there.”
Again within the kitchen at Duo, Viva turned one of many two jellyfish right into a soup, including tomato sauce, olive oil, a garlic clove, and a pinch of parsley. He supplied me a serving.
I noticed the turgid tentacles and a part of the cap floating within the orange liquid, and my abdomen turned. The primary spoonful of broth went down shortly. It tasted like a scrumptious—and fishy—tomato soup. Then I looked for a bit of the jellyfish. I hesitated, then slurped it up.
It felt like taking a gulp of the ocean itself, the flavour of the jellyfish unfurling in my mouth with the energy of a tsunami. The feel jogged my memory of calamari or a bit of fats from a cooked steak. As I chewed, attempting to repress my instinctive disgust, I considered cooked tripe. I swallowed.
I checked out Viva and stated, truthfully, “It tastes like the ocean!” He smiled, agreeing.
As I took a couple of extra well mannered spoonfuls, the phrases of Esposito, the chef of Torre del Saracino, got here to thoughts. He factors out that jellyfish carry a stigma, however that the intuition to keep away from them might be unlearned. By means of delicacies, “we rework a worry and a dread right into a style, which is healthier,” he says.
I replicate that my hesitancy is likely to be a results of cultural heritage—this meals is as unfamiliar to me as a tomato was to my ancestors greater than 500 years in the past—as Viva prepares the opposite jellyfish. He coats it in flour and deep-fries it in vegetable oil.
This time, it’s crunchy and crispy—like a French fry. And naturally, it tastes nice.
