Cooking with Ed Chiles | What the 'blue economy' can mean for Manatee County

"Houston, we have a problem!" It's not just a local problem or a national problem ... it's an international one. Fortunately, the problem is also an opportunity for us locally to create tremendous economic development in our area while honoring our heritage. It's an opportunity to be a model for other coastal communities around the world and to do so in a sustainable and environmentally sensitive way.

The problem is the huge imbalances in our seafood supply. How are we going to supply the growing world population the high-quality protein that we all want and need?

Here are a few sobering facts. We are importing more than 90 percent of the seafood that we consume in the United States today. Half of what we import is farm raised and comes primarily from Asia. The top three imported seafood items are shrimp, tilapia and salmon. Today the United States is supplying 1 percent of the aquaculture that is produced worldwide. China is 30 years ahead of us in this regard.

Here is the opportunity: We live in the only area in the country that has three national estuaries on our borders -- Tampa Bay, Sarasota Bay and Charlotte Harbor. We are, in many regards, the nursery for the Gulf of Mexico. We are blessed to have an abundance of wild seafood resources. The finest grey striped mullet in the world, Spanish mackerel, grouper, red snapper, amberjack, sardines, octopus and stone crabs, just to name a few. The opportunity is to better utilize those resources and in doing so capture a higher economic value.

Wild, organic seafood is in demand, yet we have a situation

where we see tremendous underutilization of the No. 1 seafood resource out of our area -- grey striped mullet. Indeed, on occasion, in years where there are heavy mullet runs we see males thrown overboard only to wash up on our beaches and in our canals.

We are fortunate to have one of the oldest continual fishing villages in Florida in Cortez. The idea is to change the business model in Cortez from one that is a commodity-based model to a value-added based model.

Seth Cripe and I have tried to demonstrate a model for doing just that by starting the Anna Maria Fish Company. We take the roe from the grey-striped mullet that our area is famous for internationally and we cure the roe. Instead of shipping it all the way across the world in 30,000-pound containers at an average of $10 a pound, we cure the roe here, pay the fisherman a higher value and create a gourmet product that we can sell for up to $90 a pound.

We have the ability to expand on this and capture more value by processing our local seafood in a value-added way. Fresh packing, canning, curing, smoking, drying and pickling not only mullet but amberjack, mackerel and octopus. Because when is the last time you were in a market and you didn't see canned sardines and salmon, herring, smoked oysters and clams in three and a half ounce tins and it's all from some other country?

Mullet and a lot of our other local seafood resources are high in omega-3 fats that can be processed into valuable oils. The waste stream from our local seafood production can be turned into valuable sustainable fish meal or fertilizer.

Additionally, we can seize the opportunity to be a model for bivalve aquaculture. Many people are not aware of the fact that this is ground zero for growing clams. Clams have tremendous value as a high-quality protein source that, unlike most other aquaculture products, has no detrimental environmental effect but indeed is very beneficial to the environment as a filter feeder with each bivalve filtering 10 gallons of water a day while also promoting the development of sea grass in the areas where they are planted.

The fact that we have one of the foremost bivalve experts in the world, Curt Hemmel, living and working in our community is another great asset. Hemmel produces the majority of the clam seed for the whole eastern seaboard and also does oyster and scallop seed production which are other environmentally friendly opportunities with huge economic potential.

Couple that with the horsepower that Dr. Michael Crosby and Mote Marine Laboratory bring to the table in terms of advances in the science and production of aquaculture as demonstrated in the development of their Siberian sturgeon farming and caviar operation as well as their work with other marine species like red fish, pompano and flounder.

Then mix in private investment by Healthy Earth, a venture capital private equity group, which has purchased Mote's sturgeon and caviar operation and partnered with our Anna Maria Fish Company to scale up the value-added seafood production that I have been discussing and you have a recipe for sustainable economic development of our "Blue Economy" in a way that speaks to our values and our heritage.

Now bring in the Gulf Coast Community Foundation's half-million dollar X Prize challenge to call one and all to develop proposals to address these issues and you can see a community that is moving forward to address the challenges of how we feed the burgeoning world population and how to do it in an environmentally conscious manner.

To learn more about the X Prize challenge go to gulfcoastcf.org/news/2015/02/24/gulf-coast-launches-500000-innovation-challenge.

Mullet are getting fat this time of year. The important part is how you treat your fish. If you catch them or have someone who will do it for you, make sure you break their necks right after they are caught and then plunge the whole fish into a nice iced brine. This will set the filets up beautifully. If you don't want to bother, come out to any of our restaurants and will serve you great fresh mullet beautifully prepared.

Here are some of my favorite ways to cook them:

Mullet fingers

Scale and filet the mullet. I prefer to leave the skin on as there is a lovely layer of fat between it and the filet.

Cut into fingers.

Dip in an egg wash and then dredge lightly in flour and cornmeal. 1/3 flour 2/3 corn meal. Fry lightly in canola oil and serve with lemon and tartar sauce if you wish.

Skin on mullet fillet

Scale the whole mullet and filet both sides, leaving the skin on.

Squeeze some fresh orange juice and lime juice on the filets.

Sprinkle some good sea salt and some fresh ground pepper and rub it with a little olive oil.

Sear it skin down in a hot pan.

Cook it skin down for a couple of minutes and then turn it for a minute or so. Don't overcook.

Serve with a wedge of lemon and lime.

Ed Chiles, owner of the Sandbar, BeachHouse and Mar Vista restaurants on Anna Maria Island and Longboat Key, can be reached at 941-778-1696.

This story was originally published July 8, 2015 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Cooking with Ed Chiles | What the 'blue economy' can mean for Manatee County."