He’s promoted the fish as a food source for 13 years, ever since he realized how plentiful they were on an angling trip when they leapt from the water and into the boat. “Part of this is about building out a workforce,” Adam says.ĭown in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, chef Philippe Parola is another ahead-of-the-curve copi enthusiast. That meant wooing chefs and fishmongers, but also convincing fisherman, processors, and distributors that the fish was worth their time. In addition to creating a friendly, vibrant logo and coming up with the name (a play on “copious”), they also focused on building relationships with all the people and companies they’d need in order to get the fish served on a commercial scale. “That feels cool.” He was thrilled when he overheard fair-goers chatting about the fish with its new name. “They planned to do 3,000 tacos a day, but did 9,000,” he says. Adam fondly recalled how demand had far exceeded expectations when IDNR experimented with selling copi tacos at the Illinois State Fair. Design director Bud Rodecker and project lead Nick Adam walked me through their unconventional marketing project. I visited the firm’s loft-like office in Chicago’s West Loop to find out how exactly one rebrands a fish. They went all out, hiring a marketing firm called SPAN to come up with a spiffy logo and brand identity for the longtime problem fish, in addition to its new name. In 2018, the IDNR partnered with a few other organizations, namely the environmental emergency firm Tetra Tech, to give Asian carp the Chilean sea bass treatment. The deep-sea fish now known as orange roughy, for instance, exploded in popularity after a campaign to change its off-putting original moniker: “slimehead.” Chilean sea bass, now often found on high-end menus, is actually the fish formerly known as Patagonian toothfish. There had been previous rebranding attempts for the fish by different states-“Kentucky tuna” didn’t stick-but other successful renaming schemes gave them hope. The association between Asian carp and environmental menace was too strong besides, when most Americans hear “carp,” they think of unappetizing bottom-feeders. Last year, a silver carp made it all the way to Lake Calumet, just 7 miles from Lake Michigan. The threat is so dire that the government has spent billions erecting massive electric dams to zap the fish back downstream. If they reach the Great Lakes, they could destroy their ecosystem. In many rivers, the water is so crowded with these creatures that other fish have evolved to be skinnier or oddly-shaped to squeeze past them. Copi eat plankton and algae-so much plankton that other fish get bupkes and native populations dwindle or die out entirely. Although it took decades for copi to arrive in Illinois, once it was there, it quickly upended the ecological balance. By 2010, Illinois had hired him to build up a program to deal with the invasive creature. “I was traveling around the world talking about these critters,” he says. After it arrived on his home turf, Irons did everything he could to understand them. These fish are, above all else, incredibly adaptable and hardy. Perhaps they would have remained just that, had they not escaped during floods, entered local waterways, and then absolutely dominated every other creature. At the time, they were seen as a green alternative to chemicals. Ecologist Kevin Irons is at the center of a long-gestating campaign to give the fish a reputational makeover thorough enough to whet American appetites.Ĭopi has been in waterways in parts of the southern United States since the 1970s, when environmentally-minded aquaculturists imported them to clean catfish retainer ponds.
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