Mussels, Lobster, Shad

I didn’t know that mussels were available commercially from Long Island Sound (I didn’t know that they weren’t, either; I guess I never thought about it) until last week when a woman who came to hear my talk to the Darien Garden Club told me that the Norm Bloom & Son shellfish company has been taking mussels from the flats near her house.

Over in Bridgeport, two fishermen and a partner are opening a new business with plenty of room to keep live lobsters and clams, some of which, at least, are from the Sound. Good for them. It seems at first glance to be the kind of sustainable business we need more of.

We had shad for dinner last night and the sign in the market claimed that they were from Maine. Spawning runs start in the south and move north as the waters get warmer, and since I’m fairly sure the run hasn’t started in the Hudson or the Connecticut rivers yet, the shad we ate must have been ocean-caught, which is fairly controversial because if you catch shad in the ocean they don’t have a chance to swim upstream to spawn. The place we shop still sells Chilean sea bass (a/k/a Patagonian toothfish) too but there’s only so much you can complain about before they start to think you’re a bit nutty.