Let’s go scup!
By Mike Stanton / ecoRI News contributor
Ignored, disrespected, even feared, scup is one of the most
plentiful fish in Narragansett Bay, a climate-change winner whose numbers are
rising with Rhode Island’s water temperatures. Yet many Rhode Islanders have
never heard of it, let alone tasted one.
Rhode Island fishermen caught more than 4 million pounds of scup
in 2021, making it the state’s biggest catch among fish and second in the
state’s commercial seafood school only to that better-known kingpin — squid,
aka calamari.
Not that they call it scup. Outside of Rhode Island, it goes by
the name porgy, or sea bream. The name scup comes from the Narragansett Indian
word for the fish — mishcuppauog.
Roger Williams wrote about scup in his 17th-century
bestseller, “A Key Into The Language of America,” about the Narragansett
culture.
“Of this fish there is abundance which the Natives drie in the
Sunne and smoake; and some English begin to salt,” wrote Williams. “Both wayes
they keepe all the yeere; and it is hoped it may be as well accepted as Cod at
a Market, and better, if once knowne.”
Today, fishermen, scientists, environmentalists, and seafoodies
in Rhode Island are working to achieve Williams’ dream.
Kate Masury, executive director of Eating with the Ecosystem, says the way to a sustainable seafood diet is through our stomachs, by eating locally sourced fish like scup. The Rhode Island-based nonprofit promotes New England’s wild seafood by connecting food systems with commercial fisheries.
“Food systems and fishery science happen in two different
silos,” says Masury. “There’s the fishery science that looks at the populations
of fish and shellfish … and then there’s the food system side that’s looking at
how to feed people. … And a lot of times, those aren’t necessarily linked up.”
People who have eaten scup sing its praises.
“It’s delicious,” says Chris Parkins, chief biologist for the
Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management. “It’s a great,
white-fleshed fish with healthy protein. Cheap too.”
Scup are also easy to catch and popular with recreational
anglers, including children fishing for the first time. Parkins calls scup “the
sunfish of the sea.”
“You know when you take a kid to a pond, the first thing they
always catch is a sunfish,” Parkins says. “In Rhode Island, you can take a kid
to any part of the shoreline, throw in a little bit of clam or squid, and
chances are, you’re going to catch a scup.”
Echoes Pat Brown, captain of the DEM trawler John H. Chafee, “We
took my daughter scup fishing this weekend and had delicious scup fish tacos
for dinner.”
So why don’t more people eat scup? Fear, says scup aficionado
John Delgado.
“It’s the intimidation factor,” he says. People don’t want to
deal with cooking a whole fish — the scales, the head, the tail, the bones.
As the seafood buyer for Dave’s Markets, Delgado has pushed scup
in the Rhode Island chain’s 10 grocery stores. Since Dave’s started carrying
scup about 12 years ago, sales have climbed from 25 pounds a week to several
hundred pounds. The workers behind the fish counter will fillet it for customers
and cut off the head and tail.
“It should be a staple, especially in the New England-Northeast
market,” says Delgado, standing behind the fish counter at the Dave’s in
Cranston after bringing in a load of scup from Galilee. “It’s definitely
underutilized. It’s a beautiful fish — not strong, not gamey. … I do it broiled
with some onions and tomatoes.
“When I have company over, they never really ask what the fish
is until after, and love it. And then I’ll say, ‘Believe it or not, it was
scup.’ And they say, ‘You gotta be kidding me!’”
As Delgado speaks, a shopper rolls her cart past the fish
counter and does a double take upon seeing scup. She buys a 3-pounder, familiar
from her childhood in South Carolina, where they called it porgy. She asks the
worker to de-scale it but leave the head and tail — better for broiling.
Scup is also on the menu at some Rhode Island restaurants,
including Oberlin, one of Providence’s finest restaurants, which has won
national acclaim.
“We used to call is silver bass, because that was the only way
we could get people to actually order it,” says Ben Sukle, the chef-owner of
Oberlin, as he fillets a scup. “People are pleasantly surprised all the time by
it.”
Tonight, Sukle is serving it raw, or crudo, as an appetizer — a
simple preparation with Arbequina olive oil, lemon, and sea salt. Every week,
he drives down to the docks in Galilee and buys local seafood; scup is often
among the catch. A critic for Bon Appetit reviewing Oberlin wrote that scup was “my
new favorite … you’ll wonder why it’s not on every menu.”
Just as farm-to-table has become a trend in local restaurant
cuisine, so has bay-to-table.
“You have to be responsible with what you’re pushing, and it’s
doing things like cooking with what’s local to you — that’s the most
sustainable way,” says Sukle. “It starts with restaurants understanding the
proximity to the ocean in Rhode Island means you can get that fish locally.”
The mission of Eating with the Ecosystem is that people can
restore balance to their diets and their ecosystem by eating local seafood.
“When you’re eating local, you’re not only supporting the
fishing community, but the full supply chain,” says Masury, who grew up in
Maine and earned a master’s degree at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in
San Diego before moving to Rhode Island. “Your food is traveling less far,
which helps in terms of carbon emissions. You’re also forming a connection with
the ecosystem that’s actually producing your seafood.”
Rhode Island’s newer immigrants can also teach us about eating
closer to home. Scup is commonly found at Asian, Hispanic, Portuguese, and
Liberian markets in and around Providence — more popular in cultures accustomed
to cooking whole fish.
In 2020, with Rhode Island’s fishermen and poorer residents
suffering through the COVID-19 pandemic, Eating with the Ecosystem teamed with
the Commercial Fisheries Center of Rhode Island and the Rhode Island Food
Policy Council to help both.
Using grant money, they bought seafood and distributed it free
to food-insecure communities “who already knew how to take whole, unprocessed
fish and shellfish and turn it into delicious meals.”
From the first delivery in August 2020 — 60 pounds of donated
fish in a cooler that was driven in the back of Masury’s Prius to the African
Alliance of Rhode Island — the program has handed out more than 210,000
pounds of fish and shellfish. The groups recently cut the ribbon on a
refrigerated storage unit at Farm Fresh Rhode Island in Providence and bought a
refrigerated truck to better transport seafood from the docks to Providence.
The biggest recipient is SunRise Forever, a group that works with
Providence’s sizeable Liberian community. On a recent Saturday, handing out
fish in a church parking lot in Providence, founder and executive director
Alice M. Howard notes her group has distributed food to more than 300 families.
The seafood helps struggling families eat healthy. And for
Liberian immigrants like Esther and Michael Neor, fish like scup offers a taste
of home back in Africa. Their five children each have their favorite recipe,
from baking or frying to chopping up the leftovers for a spicy pepper soup.
Today, Esther Neor is frying a whole scup and then smothering it
in a sauce of onions, fresh tomatoes, and garlic that bubbles on the stove. The
fish — white, flaky, and tasty — falls easily from the bone. Michael Neor pops
an eyeball in his mouth — for luck — and offers the other to this reporter, who
follows suit.
Esther Neor followed her mother to the United States after she
left Liberia to escape a bloody civil war. As a girl in the Liberian capital of
Monrovia, she accompanied her mother to the fish markets on Providence Island —
site of the first landing spot, in 1822, of freed people who had been enslaved
in America and founded Liberia.
“We called it black snapper,” she recalls. “To find it here in
Providence, Rhode Island — that makes me happy.”
This story was produced in partnership with Rhode Island
PBS. Watch the companion segment on demand at Rhode
Island PBS Weekly.
