North American flounder and tuna for sale at a market in New Jersey. (AP Photo/Brian Branch-Price)
How to eat seafood sustainably
Some general guidelines, tips, and resources for supporting good fishing practices.
By Moises Velasquez-Manoff | Staff Writer of The Christian Science Monitor/ June 27, 2008 edition
In general, US fisheries are better-managed than others worldwide, so try to buy local seafood. This may be difficult as well as expensive, because America imports 80 percent of its seafood. Think of the higher price as one that’s closer to the true cost of a sustainable fishery.
The London-based nonprofit Marine Stewardship Council has certified 26 fisheries worldwide, including Pacific albacore, Alaskan pollock, and Baja Mexican red rock lobster.
Friend of the Sea, another international nonprofit, also has a certification process.
The basics: educate yourself
The lower you eat on the food chain, the better for you and the marine ecosystem. Predator fish may accumulate toxins like PCBs. Larger fish are also longer-lived, take longer to mature, and so are more vulnerable. If you don’t know the status of a given fish, a “forage” fish is probably better.
National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration’s Fishwatch has a wealth of information and recommendations.
The Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch has a pocket guide to print out. It recommends wild-caught Alaskan salmon (not farmed), Pacific sardines, and even harpoon-fished Hawaiian swordfish, among others. It urges consumers to avoid orange roughy, groupers from the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic, and Chilean seabass.
The Blue Ocean Institute’s Guide to Ocean Friendly Seafood also has a guide to print out.
At the supermarket
Greenpeace has just released a study ranking supermarket chains on their seafood sustainability. Whole Foods and Ahold USA top the list; Trader Joe’s and Publix are near the bottom.
Write your elected officials
In the United States, the newly reauthorized Magnuson-Stevens Act calls for an end to overfishing in US waters by 2010 and for yearly quotas by 2011. It also calls for the US to address illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing in international waters.
Since 1995, the United Nations has had a code of conduct for the high seas to establish sustainable fishing practices. It recently put out a nonbinding resolution on high seas bottom trawling that calls on nations to stop trawling until they have written environmental impact assessments.
Urge elected officials to stay the course – to push for the goals made explicit in US legislation, and support regulatory efforts on the high seas.
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Comments
2. Winnie Zwick | 06.27.08
The Moneterey Bay Aquarium has a national and many regional seafood guides that list by fish species and location and/or method caught. Check it out at: http://www.mbayaq.org/cr/SeafoodWatch.asp
3. Wayne Heikkila | 06.27.08
The consumer has to watch it carefully ans many of the certification programs are competing for clients and to see who can outgreen the other. The NOAA/NMFS (Fishwatch) and Monterey Aquarium are the most accurate and fair in their assessments.
4. Russ George | 06.29.08
I strongly disagree with your proposition that any sea food can be eaten sustainably. Since we are now working on the last 10% or less of ocean fish populations there is NO sense in the notion that we can “sustainably” harvest some portion of what wild stocks remain. Organization like the Monterey Bay Aquarium are in league with fishermen who insist their tradition and livelihood is important. The determine effort of the aquarium to spread marketing spin opposing farmed salmon while fomenting the collapse of the wild salmon fishery in California illustrates this. Sorry fisher folk you caught it and we ate it ALL and just like the passenger pigeons, buffalo, great auks, sage grouse, and countless other species eaten into or nearing oblivion we’ve eaten more than nature can provide and you just cannot eat any more wild animals.
If you farm it you can eat it. That’s it. Got it!!
5. Robert Simpson | 04.05.09
In addition to Monterrey Bay, both Audubon and Environmental Defense have seafood guides. The weakness I found in the Greenpeace study was that part of the score was based on the chain’s cooperativeness with the survey taker. As a result, some gracers who declined to participate had fewer redlist species for sale but were still rated lower.
6. John Lavrakas | 04.20.09
Oregon is pursuing an innovative approach to providing background information to consumers on local fish sold in stores. This is done through its Pacific Fish Trax project, which has a web site (www.pacificfishtrax.org) and in-store kiosks. The project is currently test marketing information kiosks in two stores in Portland, Oregon, where consumers can scan their package of albacore tuna and find out the name of the fisherman who caught it, his vessel’s name, the company who processed it, and where it was caught. A great story on this was provided on Oregon Public Radio at news.opb.org/article/4335-who-caught-my-tuna-consumers-get-tracking-tool.
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1. Benjamin Roberts | 06.27.08
You report on the Greenpeace study finding that the supermarket chains Whole Foods and Ahold USA did better than their peers in terms of sustainable sourcing, but neglect to mention the study’s conclusion that ALL chains, inclusing those two, FLUNKED a basic sustainability standard. You absolutely cannot assume that the fish you buy at these stores is sourced in an environmentally responsible way.