Seems a bit fishy?
Recently I bought a copy of Australia’s Sustainable Seafood Guide from the Australian Marine Conservation Society. Julian Lee mentioned it in his book How Good Are You (reviewed by me in March), going into details about the problems with fisheries in Australia and around the world.
Over 75% of the world’s fisheries are overfished - that is, when there aren’t enough fish left to support a viable population, or when it becomes unprofitable. I can’t say that I care much about the profits of companies who are too greedy to maintain a source of income, but I do worry about the loss to biodiversity, and overfishing can lead to collapses of ocean food chains. 90% of the big predatory fish - like bluefin tuna, swordfish and sharks - are gone already. I don’t want to let this go on the way it has been.
Realistic restrictions on how much fishing can be done on a species or area would be helpful, and so would marine parks (networked so fish could migrate between them). The AMCS works towards these goals, among other things. You can help by donating to them, and also by buying one of their seafood guides and using it to help you choose which types of fish are ok to buy.
I got the small guide pack, which includes two pocket guides to what sort of fish are sustainably managed, and one larger guide with more detail. There are other packs available, with more of the smaller guides so you can give them to friends.
The small wallet-sized guides are a simple listing of common fish found in supermarkets and fishmongers around Australia, coded red, orange or green depending on how overfished they are. The red stands for “Say No”, the orange for “Think Twice”, and the green for “Better Choice”.
The larger guide has the same information, only with more detail and habitat maps. It then goes on to explain the different methods of fishing and their environmental impact, and tells you how you can ask your shop about where they got their fish from.
It also explains the need for better fish labelling: at the moment, you’ve got no guarantee that the fish you buy is what it says on the sign or packet, no idea how it was fished, and no idea which company did the fishing. If consumers had this information, we could use our purchasing power to avoid overfished species, and reward the businesses which are doing the right thing.
Before I got this guide, I was almost ready to give up eating fish altogether. As it is, I think I’ll be seriously cutting back: I’m not going to buy any fish, either from a shop or a restaurant, unless I know that it was sustainably fished. This is a bit sad for me, because I do love to eat fish, and some of my favourites are on the “Say No” list, but I think it’s too important an issue to let my tastebuds decide. I’m going to try to find the “Better Choice” species and give them a try instead - hopefully I will find some new favourites! If this sounds like something you could do, check out the Australian Marine Conservation Society website and pick up a copy of the guide.
Tags: green guide, oceans, seafood
September 5th, 2008 at 10:17 am
I looked at these a while ago, but it seems really stupid that they’re charging for the information.
I understand charging for printed copies, but if the point of the organisation is to preserve fish, then surely they’d be better off distributing the information as widely as possible?
September 5th, 2008 at 10:55 am
Well, I guess it’s part of their fundraising - saving fish isn’t as sexy a cause as saving cute marsupials, so they probably don’t attract the same level of donations as some other groups.
September 9th, 2008 at 8:50 am
Yeah, I get that, just think they should approach it a different way - sell something else to raise money (maybe a cold bag with re-usable ice block to carry your fish in, with the list on it, or similar items), and distribute the information as widely as possible.
Charging for information about which fish we shouldn’t be eating just means a lot less people will know which fish to avoid, and they’ll keep eating them.
September 11th, 2008 at 8:06 pm
Fish species (alternative names in brackets)
Bad choice
Blue warehou* (Snotty trevalla, black trevally, sea bream)
Eastern gemfish* (Hake, king couta, silver kingfish)
Redfish* (Nannygai, red snapper)
Southern bluefin tuna* (Tuna)
Bigeye tuna* (Indian Ocean Tuna)
School shark* (Flake, snapper shark, tope are all overfished)
Silver trevally* (Silver bream, white trevally)
Orange roughy* (Deep sea perch, sea perch)
Swordfish (caught on longlines, which also drown birds, mammals and turtles)
Atlantic salmon (AMCS does not recommend because the fish can escape from their pens into the wild, and are also fed large amounts of wild-caught fish)
Rainbow trout (an introduced fish which may threaten native species)
Better choice
Blue Grenadier (Hoki)
Barramundi
Blue-eye Trevalla (Blue-eye cod, Big eye, Deep sea trevalla)
Bream
Yellowfin tuna
Flathead
King George whiting (spotted whiting, SA whiting - but avoid WA-caught fish, as the fishery is closed)
Whiting (school, sand, trumpeter, yellowfin)
Mackerel
Mullet (bluetail, fantail, flicker, yellow eye)
Ling (pink ling, rock ling)
Snapper (red bream, cockney, squire)
Tailor (bluefish, skipjack)
Coral trout (various species)
Shellfish, crustaceans etc… (alternative names in brackets)
Bad choice
Brown tiger prawn (Tiger prawn)
Tropical rock lobster (Coral crayfish, painted cray)
Southern scallop (Commercial, king or Tassie scallop)
Baby octopus (imported from the overfished Gulf of Thailand)
Sea cucumber (Sandfish, Black teatfish, surf redfish, Bêche-de-mer)
Better choice
Balmain and Moreton Bay Bugs
Western rock lobster
Oysters (but avoid Pacific Oysters, which are introduced and have become a pest)
Calamari (cuttlefish, squid, octopus)
Blue mussel (mussel, green mussel)
Blue swimmer crabs
(* species identified by the Bureau of Rural Sciences as Overfished)
hope this helps a little - and thanks for the article!
September 12th, 2008 at 11:22 am
Thanks Anna - I’m sad that swordfish is on the bad choice list, because I love it, but at least there’s plenty of new things on the better choice list for me to try instead.