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Monterey Bay Aquarium "Seafood Watch" program
Have you heard about the
Monterey Bay Aquarium "Seafood Watch" program? WOW - these
guys are doing some great work to provide the public information about
sustainable seafood choices. I just attended a very informative
presentation sponsored by the world renowned
Arizona-Sonora
Desert Museum, the
Sonoran Sea
Aquarium and the
Monterey Bay Aquarium.
The focus of the evening was to bring attention to the need for
sustainable seafood choices and also entertain us with cooking
demonstrations by chefs Janos Wilder, Albert Hall and Nick Ruman. The
evening was delightful and the food (sustainable seafood of course)
was superb.
 The mission of the "Seafood Watch" program is to
empower seafood consumers and businesses to make choices for healthy
oceans. Using your purchasing power to drive the market toward
environmentally responsible fishing and fish farming practices, you
ultimately help assure abundant supplies of seafood for the future.
Seafood Watch makes seafood recommendations based on the
environmental impact of fishing or fish farming operations. The
Monterey Bay Aquarium has produced
Seafood Watch pocket guides
to categorize these seafood
recommendations and to help you determine which seafood is from an
eco-friendly source.
The regionally designed pocket guides are broken down into 3
categories:
Best Choices:
These fish are abundant, well managed and caught or
farmed in environmentally friendly ways.
Good Alternatives: These are good alternatives, but there are some
concerns with the way they are caught or farmed. They are, however,
better choices than items in the Avoid column.
Avoid: Avoid these products, at least for now. These fish come from
sources that are overfished, depleted or are caught or farmed in ways
that harm the environment.
Click here to download your own
West Coast pocket guide, or
Gulf of
California pocket guide (PDF). You can see and download all the
regional pocket guides at the Seafood Watch pocket guide page.
The following are excerpts from the
Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood
Watch program website:
What is sustainable?
Well Managed - Abundant and Resilient - Minimal Bycatch - Minimal
Habitat Impact
Sustainable seafood comes from fishing and farming operations
having minimal impact on the surrounding environment. Seafood Watch
evaluates the sustainability of a fishery or fish farming operation
based on these factors:
- Is the fishery or fish farm well managed?
- Is the population being fished healthy and abundant?
- Is there a problem with bycatch (the catching and discarding of
unwanted marine life, dead or dying)?
- Is there habitat damage either from fishing gear or pollution from a
fish farming operation?
Overfishing
70% of the world's fisheries are at capacity, overfished or depleted.
Why are seafood supplies in trouble? What is causing populations of
fish to decline? One of the largest concerns is overfishing, or taking
fish out of the water before they reproduce to sustain healthy
population sizes. The more efficiently we catch the fish, the more
populations shrink, until the fish are depleted.
A May 13, 2003 article in the scientific journal Nature sums it up:
Since the advent of industrialized fishing efforts, we have fished 90%
of large fish, such as tuna, swordfish and cod. Scientists warn that
we are now fishing the last 10% of these populations.
Can the oceans keep up?
While populations of fish and other marine life continue to decline,
demand for seafood is increasing. A growing global population,
increased awareness about health benefits of eating seafood, and
modern technologies delivering seafood across the globe to doorsteps
in a day are all contributing to concerns that oceans cannot keep up
with demand. As we efficiently remove the fish, there simply won't be
enough fish left to support a healthy, viable fishing industry.
Bycatch
Another issue affecting the health of the oceans is bycatch, when
fishing gear unintentionally catches species such as seabirds, sea
turtles and other marine life. They are ultimately thrown overboard,
dead or dying, because they have no market value or are prohibited to
sell. Approximately 25% of the world's catch is wasted; 44 billion
pounds of marine life a year are bycatch.
Pelagic longlining targets fish by using baited hooks connected to
a central line. The central line is three to 50 miles long and is
allowed to "soak" in the ocean, attracting anything that swims by.
This includes endangered sea turtles and many other species of marine
life, such as this blue shark (above). Unfortunately, the damage to
the shark had been done by the time the line was hauled aboard.
Habitat Damage
Marine life habitats are fragile and often damaged by fishing gear
outfitted to drag along the seafloor. The right-hand image above shows
the damage of a trawling net, outfitted to drag along the seafloor,
targeting groundfish such as cod. Along the net's base are large
rubber tires, called "rockhoppers," that allow the net to hop over any
rocks, ledges or other structures along the seafloor without getting
snagged. The effects on the seafloor are devastating. Vast expanses of
ocean bottom have been stripped of their natural structures that fish
and other marine life need for shelter, breeding, nursery grounds and
feeding.
More information about each of the seafood recommendations is
available at
www.mbayaq.org/cr/seafoodwatch.asp. You can download a
PDF Seafood Report for each species and link to additional information
about that species in the "All Fish List." The web site offers fishing
gear animations, information about bycatch, overfishing and links to
other useful sites. By using and distributing the Seafood Watch
materials, you are playing an important and vital role in marine
conservation.
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