Day Boat Seafood provides MSC certified swordfish to 2012 Olympic Athletes
Day Boat swordfish shines at Olympics
BP’s “Spirit of the Gulf” initiative was ‘an experience of a lifetime’ for Florida State Chef Justin Timineri, but the verdict is still out on whether the effort will help the seafood industry.
Until 2010, the only real connection between the US seafood and oil industries was their shared interest in use of the Gulf of Mexico waters. That did not exactly make them friends.
But after BP spilled millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf, the oil giant gained strong legal incentives to help the injured Gulf seafood industry out, and this Olympic season it did just that.
As part of BP’s sponsorship of the 2012 Olympic Games, it sponsored a “Spirit of the Gulf” initiative to promote seafood from the Gulf of Mexico. It included hiring several Gulf chefs, including Florida Chef Justin Timineri.
Timineri selected swordfish from Day Boat Seafood, a Marine Stewardship Council (MSC)-certified provider of Florida swordfish, for his menu. Day Boat catches each fish individually off the coast of Florida. For the event, it shipped the fish to Louisiana for portioning and blast freezing before its shipment to the United Kingdom.
“We haven’t seen a lot of direct feedback yet, but anything that we can do that is going to give positive exposure to both the MSC program that we’re involved with in particular and our interest with domestic fishermen is a positive thing because ultimately it’s consumers in general that will dictate the way this moves forward,” Scott Taylor, Day Boat Seafood founding partner, told IntraFish.
Every link in Day Boat’s swordfish sourcing chain is traceable, using a barcode each fish carries, right down to the latitude and longitude coordinates of the catch. Perhaps even more importantly, each fish is caught individually, which reduces bycatch to a level of 5 percent. Of those, nearly all are thrown back live, Taylor said.
Timineri had originally thought he would serve grouper, a Florida staple, but he went with swordfish since it was MSC certified, he told IntraFish. He pan seared it and served it with spicy blueberry barbecue sauce and a side of “firecracker” corn relish to thousands of athletes and their families and coaches at the USA House, a hideout for tired athletes in Kensington, away from the Olympic Village.
Exotic as the dish may sound, it did not taste that way to the athletes Timineri talked to, including Kayla Harrison, gold medal winner for women’s judo, the gold medal rowers and the US swim team.
“It felt comforting because it was like a piece of homecoming for them,” Timineri said.
Timineri won a TV spot on NBC News alongside Jackie Joyner-Kersee, who has held the heptathalon record since 1988 and has six medals – three of t hem gold – to her name.
“It was certainly an experience of a lifetime,” he said of the trip.
In total, about 1,000 pounds of Gulf seafood were shipped over as part of the initiative, Timineri said.
