consciouseating
The truth is that no one fi sh can be seen as a sustainability darling, because if it is, it’s sure to be overfi shed.
~
DailyFinance.com
Safe & Safe & Susta nable SEAFOOD
ainablei
Navigate Today’s Best Choices Using Updated Guides
by Judith Fertig
We love our seafood, a delicious source of lean protein. The latest data reports U.S. annual consumption to be more than 4.8 billion pounds of it, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, with the average American eating 3.5 ounces of seafood a week. About half of the catch is wild-caught and half farmed. How do we know which fi sh and shellfi sh are safe to eat and good for ocean ecology?
T
he best approach is to choose seafood carefully. Oil spills, waste runoff and other environmental disasters can compromise the quality of seafood with toxic contaminants like mercury and other heavy metals and industrial, agricultural and lawn chemicals. These pollutants can wash out from land to sea (and vice versa). As smaller fi sh that have eaten pollutants are eaten by larger ones, contaminants accumulate and concentrate. Large predatory fi sh like swordfi sh and sharks end up with the most toxins.
Beyond today’s top-selling shrimp, canned tuna, salmon and farmed tilapia, more retailers and restaurants are also providing lesser-known seafood varieties like dogfi sh and hake as alternatives to overfi shed species such as sea bass and Atlantic cod. These new-to-us, wild-caught fi sh can be delicious, sustainable and healthy.
Choices Good for Oceans An outstanding resource for choosing well-managed caught or farmed seafood in environmentally
26 Central Florida natural awakenings
responsible ways is Seafood Watch, provided through California’s Monterey Bay Aquarium. Information on the most sustainable varieties of seafood is available in a printed guide, updated twice a year. The pocket guide or smartphone app provides instant information at the seafood counter and restaurant table. Online information at
SeafoodWatch.org and via the app is regularly updated. The Blue Ocean Institute, led by MacArthur Fellow and ecologist Carl Safi na, Ph.D., supports ocean conservation, community economics and global peace by steering consumers and businesses toward sustainably- fi shed seafood. It maintains a data base on 140 wild-caught fi sh and shellfi sh choices at
BlueOcean.org. Hoki, for instance, might have a green fi sh icon for “relatively abundant” and a blue icon for “sustainable and well-managed fi sheries,” but also be red-fl agged for containing levels of mercury or PCBs that can pose a health risk for children. As species become overfi shed, rebound or experience fl uctuating levels of contaminants, their annual ratings can change.
Choices Good for Us To help make choosing easier, Seafood Watch has now joined with the Harvard School of Public Health to also advise what’s currently safe to eat. Entries on their list of “green” fi sh, which can shift annually, are low in mercury, good sources of long-chain omega-3 fatty acids and caught or farmed responsibly. If the top-listed fi sh and shellfi sh
aren’t locally available, look for the Seafood Safe label, started by EcoFish company founder and President Henry Lovejoy, which furnishes at-a-glance
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