Click the picture to find out more about seafood watch!
Few people enjoy seafood as much as I do. There is nothing quite as good a blackened grouper sandwich or a raw oyster on the half-shell. My mouth is watering just thinking about it. My craving for these wonderful salty treats is in dire conflict with my knowledge of how we have decimated the fish populations of the world. According to Seafood Watch, a partnering organization with the Monterey Bay Aquarium, ”we have removed as much as 90 percent of the large predatory fish such as shark, swordfish and cod from the world’s oceans.” We have been over-fishing for a long time but with the recent advances in fishing technologies, we have been fishing at a rate that could lead to permanent losses of certain populations.
Overfishing has already decimated the Atlantic Cod populations to the point that the Canadian Government had to put a stop to fishing in Newfoundland, an area known for its one industry, fishing for cod. 40,000 jobs were lost overnight. Recently scientists went “fishing” for Cod to find out about the recovery of the population since they stopped fishing almost 20 years ago. What they found was very few fish and none of good size. Populations had been fished to such low levels that they were unable to recover.
We have just gotten too good at fishing and poor at managing. As technologies advanced we could catch more and more fish, however, most cod fisherman
photo courtesy thecoast.ca
were using “dragger’s.” These huge nets(some as large as a football field) were designed to catch fish by dragging the bottom and collecting huge schools. This is not a selective way to catch fish and many of the immature fish as well as the fish in the top breading portion of their lives were also removed from the population. Average fish sizes continued to shrink until there were no fish of appropriate size to catch.
The good old days of fishing.
Another fish we are about to permanently take of the “menu” is the Bluefin tuna. This is a fish of legend that has been caught for centuries and fed everyone from the Roman soldiers, to the guy on the street seeking high end sushi today. The Bluefin populations have declined extremely quickly and the average size of the fish has been reduced by nearly 50% since the 1990’s according to the World Wildlife Fund. The Japanese find this fish to be a great delicacy and will pay top dollar for it. Their high interest and willingness to pay such high prices make it a tough sell to get fisherman to reduce their catch.
Aquaculture, or the farm-raising of certain species of fish, seems to be one of the solutions to the problem. If done properly, aquaculture can produce large quantities of healthy protein with little impact to local environments and native fish populations. Fish such as tilapia and salmon and mollusks such as oysters and clams, have been successfully farmed for years and
Better management is another solution. Right now governments seem to have no control over what is happening on the high seas or what is being sold in their ports. I am all for the free market but not when it comes to proper management of natural resources. According to the WWF, current fish quotas are as high as 50% over what they should be for sustainable populations. As with most issues however, we need to make the change at home first though. have become a major part of our diets providing over half of the seafood consumed in the US. Aquaculture does have downsides though especially when farming large predatory fish like salmon. Salmon are a fast growing and voracious predator and need to constantly eat. To get one pound of salmon we use 4-5 pounds of other pelagic fish. These prey fish populations will continue to drop as we farm more and more putting a larger stain on native populations of predatory fish.
The modern fish markets. Frozen bluefin.
Click to go to get Seafood Watch App!
contains the Seafood Watch program. They have an online list of fish with different ratings from “Best Choice’ to “Avoid” as well as the “Super Green” list that includes fish that are currently being sustainably farmed in a low-environmental impact zone. Also available through Itunes or the Andoid app stores are the Seafood Watch Apps and you can check right in the restaurant or store which are the best choices.
To me there is nothing better after a long day then a glass of wine and a tuna steak. This might not be the best choice for the environment so I am working to expand my palate and find alternatives to my favorite meal and it has been fun trying different fish and knowing that my choices, with the help of others will help save the oceans fish populations and protect
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