delectable delights

Local chefs re-group with sustainable wreckfish.

Click here to download wreckfish recipes

Though it sure sounds like one, the Charleston Bump (unlike the Charleston and the Charleston Chew candy bar named after it) is not a famous dance. It is the exclusive spawning and U.S.-based hunting grounds for grouper's taste and texture cousin, wreckfish, a wholly sustainable fish that is monitored by the state and federal government.

The Charleston Bump, where wreckfish thrive, rises off the surrounding Blake Plateau and is located roughly 100 miles offshore of South Carolina and Georgia. Depths here range from an astonishing 1,300 to 3,000 feet of tumultuous water swirling with eddies and rapid, mean currents. It makes for an unusual combination of tough fishing and a happy habitat for wreckfish that embrace its spooky universe of deep-water corals and caves.

"The location is the greatest obstacle because it's on the east side of the Gulf Stream," explains Sam Ray, a 37-year fishing veteran who's been fishing wreckfish on the bump since the fishery was discovered in the late 1980s. "It's just a lot of tremendous topography relief with ledges that are 500 feet from top to bottom. They create up-wellings and tide riffs when the Gulf Stream hits it. It's ridiculous." Ray's boat, The Lien Machine, is just one of three boats that cruise these waters for wreckfish, so-named for their fondness for wreckage and debris.

Wreckfish may have a funny name, but its flavor and sustainability are taken seriously by Lowcountry chefs who find wreckfish similar to grouper or snapper in taste and like the fact that it doesn't share grouper's ugly overfishing truth.

"Most (species of) grouper are overfished, and they're not very resilient to fishing pressure," says Megan Westmeyer, the Sustainable Seafood Initiative coordinator at the S.C. Aquarium in Charleston. "It's going to take a long time for them to come back." Conversely, wreckfish are protected (their "bump-based" spawning grounds are closed Jan. 16 through April 14) and are as local as it gets.

"Buying and serving local, sustainable fish like wreckfish is just a good thing to do," explains FISH Restaurant Executive Chef Nico Romo. "You want them to have different kinds of fish to eat and the same diversified diet we have. And wreckfish is just a really light fish that goes well with so many things."

Read more about Sustainable Seafood:

Wild American Shrimp

Swimming Rock Fish Farm

HOME AT THE RANGE WITH HOLLY

In the summer and when cooking with fish, I like to keep things very simple and use what's readily and locally available. It doesn't get any more local than wreckfish and my back-stoop herb pots, which are brimming with basil (the backbone of pesto) and other fresh herbs this time of year. While the fish sears, whip up the pesto and you've got a smashing, fresh dinner in literally five minutes. I add a bit of orange zest to the pesto to complement the round flavor of wreckfish, but you can omit that altogether.

WHERE TO BUY WRECKFISH

retailers that regularly stock wreckfish during season:

Crosby's Fish & Shrimp

2223 Folly Road, Folly Beach | (843) 795-4049

Earth Fare

74 Folly Road, West Ashley | (843) 769-0794

Whole Foods

923 Houston Northcutt Blvd., Mt. Pleasant | (843) 971-7240

Click here to download wreckfish recipes