Tuesday, June 24, 2008

The quest for sustainable fish

It can be hard to find sustainable fish. A story in the Miami Herald says the search "leaves this convert to sustainabsle seafood high and dry" (and needing new approaches).

Enrique Fernandez found too few certified fish and rejected the $30 per pound price for certified salmon. He tried Fish Phone, texting in his triggerfish dinner but they had no information. If you want to eat sustainably-caught fish, you have to do a lot of work on your own.

We've failed if the search for sustainable seafood is this challenging and unrewarding. We need a new approach.

image: Miami Herald

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Totally.
There are a lot of great easy reference resources for identifying sustainable seafood options ... but it's still really hard for the average shopper.

More and more, I'm appreciating gradual efforts by the Aquarium and other organizations to improve the practices of huge retailers. If the ball can be moved in that arena, shoppers will have no choice but to buy sustainable fishes.

GTC said...

If we wanted to make it really simple we could just try to eliminate shrimp, the most destructively fished for ocean product. Check out Shrimpsuck.org at http://shrimpsuck.blogspot.com/

Mark Powell said...

What about sustainable shrimp fishing (certified by the MSC)?
Shall we throw them out with the bad guys?

I understand the attraction of a simple message, but I don't think shrimp suck is much more than a bumper sticker.