June 16, 2017 — Rick Francolini took a poached skate wing caprese on toast from the server’s tray at Big Dog’s Barbecue at the Orleans Bowling Center.
“I’m a big skate fan,” he said. Francolini lived in Paris 25 years ago and it was considered a delicacy there. He’ll dust skate wings with corn meal, sauté it, then finish with a lemon caper pan sauce.
“It’s like a white fish. Very good tasting,” Francolini said.
But in the U.S., particularly in the Northeast where cod is god, other species like the skate and dogfish that Cape fishermen catch, are slighted.
Changing perceptions about what they describe as “under-loved” species is central to the marketing blitz put on the by Cape what the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance, thanks to a $200,000 Saltonstall-Kennedy grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Cod has vanished thanks to climate change, overfishing, and other unknown factors. Chatham was once one of the country’s top cod ports. Located on the doorstep of Georges Bank, New England’s fish locker, whose abundance once seemed limitless, the region’s fishermen hauled in 27.5 million pounds in 2001, but saw that plummet to 2.9 million by 2015.
Cod didn’t even make the top 10 list of fish and shellfish landed by Cape fishermen in 2016, but dogfish was at the top with nearly 11.7 million pounds landed, and skates number three at 7.1 million pounds. But these do not have the star power of cod and restaurants and fish markets pay high prices for cod imported from the West Coast or Europe. The U.S. imports around 90 percent of the seafood it consumes, but dogfish and skates are mainly exported to Europe and Asia where there is demand.