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BANG FOR THE BITE
Taking a few seconds to consider our eco-best fish options at the store or a restaurant is easy, and if enough of us do it, we'll go a long way toward making sure seafood's around for future generations.
COCKTAIL FACT
The Guinness Book of World Records got rid of its live-goldfish-eating category, because shady competitors were breeding smaller fish.
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home › tip library › Sustainable Fish
How fine's your kettle of fish?
The Bite
Only as fine as it is sustainable. When shopping for seafood, take along an easy-to-use pocket guide or tap into a phone-text service that'll help you determine whether that Chilean sea bass is eco-friendly-fine enough for your kettle.The Benefits
- Keeping sea critters around. Scientists predict that there will be no more seafood by 2048 unless we change current (unsustainable) fishing methods.
- Simplicity. These methods make buying sustainable seafood so easy, even a Plunket's dogfish could do it.
Personally Speaking
The FishPhone service took the Ideal Bite team by storm when we learned about it; even those of us who don't like seafood stored the number so that we can show off to our friends.Wanna Try?
- Blue Ocean Institute FishPhone - send a text to 30644 with the message FISH in all caps, followed by the name of the fish you want to know about, and it'll fire back sustainability info on that species.
- Oceans Alive - download a pocket seafood selector and check its up-to-date list for the skinny on the most and least sustainable fish.
- NRDC - mercury info and another pocket-sized seafood selector that focuses on mercury levels.
Jan 16,2008
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All editorial suggestions in this tip are the result of testing and a preference for the tip topic. No advertiser has paid to have its company referenced in the tip. For more information, please read our Editorial Policy.
Thanksgiving Without Sushi
It's true. Seafood may be gone by 2048. And I've been flippin' freakin' out since I heard the news.
As a vegetarian in the 90s, seafood was the one "meat" I occasionally cheated with. The Japanese side of my family always brings over sashimi for the holidays, so I can't remember a Thanksgiving at home without spicy raw tuna with loads of wasabi, right next to the cranberry sauce and stuffing.
To tell the truth, it's rare that I buy fish to cook at home, but next family get-together I'm arriving armed with pocket seafood selectors in an attempt to nudge my extended family members in an eco-friendlier direction. Fingers crossed I've been eating anything but bluefin all these years...
-Toshio...off to contemplate a Thanksgiving without karaino-maki...
Biter Comments...
2 days in a row now when I go to vote on the tip of the day, it simply takes me to a site to sign up to get the tip of the day. :-(
Save the SeaFriends! Put down the cast net and pick up a carrot. Go VEGAN!
Here's a link for another printable pocket guide...you can choose a regional one or the national guide. http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/cr/seafoodwatch.asp
The Audubon Society also has a pocket seafood guide, which I use when I go out to restaurants or buy fish at the grocery store.
http://seafood.audubon.org/
The Monterey Bay Aquarium site also has a link for a web-enabled mobile phone. I have it saved as a favorite and whip it out to the amazement (and sometimes chagrin) of fellow diners.
I second the suggestion of Monterey Bay Aquarium's list. I carry a card in my wallet and check online. The cell phone bit is out of my realm (I have one, just not all the frills and I don't use it often).
You can also print out a wallet list compiled by Co op America from info from Monterey, EWG and other excellent sources, here:
http://www.coopamerica.org/programs/livinggreen/safeseafood.cfm
Thank you Melissa and Dave for getting here before me. All I can say is that tip made my stomach churn. Why would Ideal Bite or any buzzword "green" publication encourage people to eat fish or any other animal? Leave the ecosystem as it is and it will do just fine. Go vegan already! Or at least cut back on your animal consumption! That would help a LOT.
Thanks to the Biters who suggested visiting the Seafood Watch (Monterey Bay Aquarium) site, and others.
If you are a Chicago-based Biter or live in the Midwest, you'll want to download the wallet card provided by Chicago's Shedd Aquarium. Shedd's Right Bite card is produced in partnership with Monterey Bay Aquarium and is specifically designed with middle-America's seafood market in mind. (Right Biters' inside scoop: Check Shedd's site in early February for an updated Right Bite card featuring many exciting additions AND lots of juicy tidbits about local restaurants, seafood purveyors and culinary schools that are leading Chicago's burgeoning sustainable seafood movement.)
http://www.sheddaquarium.org/pdf/cons_rightbite_seafood_card.pdf
There are a lot of good reasons to go vegan (ethical, environmental, etc.). But it's not really practical to preach veganism and expect people to stop eating meat. It's idealistic, and the righteous indignation turns people off. Not to digress, though...
That said, taking small steps can make a huge difference, such as buying seafood that doesn't contribute to overfishing and pollution. In America - the land of the overprocessed, obese, and cancerous - these changes can and do make a difference.
For Canadian folks, we have our own pocket seafood guide. It's on a great searchable site too:
http://www.seachoice.org/
More info on sustainable seafood in general, with great links, at the Ecology Action Centre website (an NGO based out of Halifax, Canada):
http://www.ecologyaction.ca/marine_issues/mic_background.shtm
I love that the Monterey Bay Aquarium are regional too. I can take them with me when I travel and be confident that I am ordering seafood that is abundant regionally.
For the times that I just put some cash in my pocket and jump on my bike to head to local grocery store for fish, I am glad that my store works with Fish Wise (www.sustainablefishery.org) Fish Wise's system has the fish in the case labeled - no fumbling on a phone or in my wallet looking for the card. And it is great for folks who don't know to carry a card or don't read Ideal Bite!
Ask your local grocery store to contact Fish Wise and get the labeling on site going.
I have been struggling with this since that report came out, as well. I have also been a vegetarian for almost 20 years, eating fish only about once a week. I mainly became a veg. because I was disgusted with the industrialization of the meat industry. I still eat eggs and cheese, but I purchase them from local and organic farms. As for fish, there is a horrible cycle in place where overfishing has reduced stocks so now fishermen are capturing younger fish and are ignoring quotas, so that the stocks are decreasing even more. I just don't think there is any way to address this without strong govt. regulation and enforcement - which won't happen - so it is up to the consumers to decrease demand. It will be hard to give up my spicy Thai salmon and sushi . . . but, well, cucumber rolls are okay.
www.righteousrestyle.com
I don't think that giving up fish altogether is required to solve this problem, I even think that increasing your fish consumption can be a good thing, as long as your eating fish that are sustainably caught/farmed. There are plenty of options out there and the Seafood Watch cards are a good general guide. For information specific to the seafood case you're looking at, you should shop at stores that work with FishWise (www.fishwise.org).
By changing the demand in seafood from unsustainable to eco-friendly we are supporting the livelihoods of fishermen doing the right thing.
PHOTO ALBUMS
Posted by: Dave | January 16, 2008 at 05:46 AM