![Monkfish on Victor Hugo market, Toulouse France. From www.noodlepie.com [179x240, 28K]](http://farm1.static.flickr.com/130/405524064_c14b1712aa_m.jpg "DSC06852.JPG, by noodlepie, http://www.flickr.com/photos/noodlepie/405524064/")
“Monkfish on Victor Hugo market, Toulouse France. From www.noodlepie.com“
Flickr photo: DSC06852.JPG, by noodlepie
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Monterey Bay Aquarium recently launched their online guide to sustainable sushi. It is part of their overall Seafood Watch program that aims to raise public awareness of sustainable fishing and consumer best practices. This monumental effort involves scientists, managers, citizens and fisherfolk working together to make recommendations on where and what to eat. You can read about all the steps and criteria for ranking in this handy PDF. Suffice to say, it seems thorough and it condenses all the information down into one of three recommendations: Best Choice; Good Alternative; Avoid. These are printed in an attractive format that fits in your wallet or mobile device. And after all that effort to make the decision easy, you’d think I’d be happy. But I am not.
It is because I recently had the option to order the monkfish. It is an animal whose name belies how truly monstrous it appears. Rather than being a sedate and cloistered creature, the monkfish looks as if it might consider me for a meal instead. But not knowing if it was better, best, or bad, I opened up the Seafood Watch Web site to check. After squinting at the margins and mashing the wrong link a few times, I eventually found out monkfish is a bad choice and avoided it and in so doing decided never to order seafood again.
For you see, I am tired of having doubts about what to eat from the sea. Call it blue-green ennui or environmental fatigue, it feels the same. That moment with the monkfish merely made me conscious of a preexisting behavior—I’ve been avoiding seafood for some time. Given the ocean of options at the fish counter, doubt inevitably washes over me and I instead settle for the tilapia or the “Delacata” because I think they are safe. With the snapper, the roughy or the hake, I am never sure. True, I could reference a handy guide, but no matter how sustainable it seems on paper, in practice I know that mongers will lie.
To be clear, I do not think that catfish are sea kittens. For me, it isn’t about the ethics of eating animals or if fish have feelings too. And I am not advocating a piscine proscription for anyone else. Instead, it’s about the recognition that I have too many doubts about what I am eating, more than any card or pamphlet can allay. I am not eating seafood now nor feel the need to eat it in the future and that is a decision which is, by default, sustainable. So, given the choice of A, B, or C, I am opting for D, none of the above. And I am happy with that.
Nom On
But let’s say you are someone who is inclined to nom on fish flesh. What to do? Of course, you can start by consulting the various online guides. And if that does not suffice, try a helping of Jacqueline Church’s blog where she is collecting sustainable seafood recipes to be published later this month. Or join an ocean wise Podmob and try to make a difference en masse.
Great post– I too have avoided seafood for environmental reasons, since the tuna/dolphin fiasco more than 30 years ago, then there’s the shrimp/turtle thing. Never being sure those folks who “manage” the ocean know what they are doing– or care–to global ecosystems we depend on more than we realize. And now Omega 3s– have you blogged that yet? I’ll have to look.
In recent years, I’ve gone back to a few, occasionally and never with a sense of comfort… But realizing that none of our food choices can be truly moral, ecological, or comfortable these days, I’m for going back to the land.
I’m so sorry to hear you giving up on seafood. But I do realize it can be challenging. We struggle with it ourselves as we try to summarize the information into the guides.
We’ll be redoing the seafood guide portion of the Seafood Watch website over the coming months. Any thoughts on how it can be made better are welcome.
Humberto Kam
Sr. Manager Online Communications
Monterey Bay Aquarium
Humberto - Thanks for stopping by. As I said, I like the Seafood Watch concept and Monterey always does a spiffy job of making the site look good. However, viewing the site on a mobile device, even an iPhone, is not a stellar experience. It would be nice to have the information optimized for mobile browsing. Or better yet, make an iPhone app focused on sustainable dining. I have yet to hear of anything like that and it could be a source of revenue too.
SLW - The notion of thinking globally and eating locally comes to mind. However, even that is not always an easy answer, as this interview with Bill Nye illuminates. It seems that many pork producers add fish protein in their animals diet. The fish protein comes in the form of imported South American anchovies. Bill suggests that folks only eat pork from grain-fed pigs or better yet, skip the middle mammal and eat anchovies directly. Increased demand for anchovies would theoretically increase the price of the fish and so make them less attractive as a supplemental protein source for make pig meat. The world is weird.
While I haven’t gone to completely giving up on seafood yet, I have started eating much further down the food chain. Aquacultured bivalves are big on my list and for fish it tends to the Sardines and Anchovies. You would be surprised to find out how much corn and anchovie/sardine the average American eats without even knowing it!
Sustainability of fisheries isn’t possible. The unknown variables just from local land use practices brings out the lie. Fisherman can be as easy on the catch as they want and they still won’t counteract the impact of our land use practices. Fish should only be eaten as emergency protein sources while other sources are developed. This is the time for a reorganization of our dietary desires. Its quite clear that we have abused our water environment to the point of near collapse and efforts to extend that abuse under the guise of “best, good alternative, and bad” are laughable in the face of reality. Don’t be a Greenlander.
Rabdex Za - I don’t think the Seafood Watch and allied efforts are laughable. For me, those programs are not as much about the end recommendations but the whole process of accessing how we use the ocean environment. As I intimated, there seems to be a lot of work that goes into each suggestion. They consult with as many interested parties as possible to come up with an answer. And for most people, efforts like Seafood Watch are a stab at giving some power, some hope of understanding and controlling what is otherwise an overwhelming situation. Rather than striking notes of despair and paralyzing helplessness, they are trying to give people a measure of control while also communicating some sense of of the scale of the problem. It is not a perfect solution, but it is proactive, engaging, tactile and positive. And that last bit is what is missing from far too many environmental messages.
But you are absolutely right that any decisions we make as consumers pales in comparison to the land use issues that impact our oceans.
Here’s a nice backgrounder from the Inkling Magazine on the Omega-3 matter that SLW mentioned.
Also from Inkling, a great post on the cons and pros of eating sushi. Summary: for all the yummy fish fats you get, there is still the risk you could end up eating parasitic worms.
Although I applaud the efforts of the folks at Seafood Watch there is another source of information for those wanting to make their own decision about what to eat based on the latest stock assessments. The site is: http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/fishwatch/
Not sure how good it is with mobile devices.
Brain - Thanks. I missed that one. Know of any others?
I can access the FishWatch site on my iPhone, but it is not optimized for mobile browsing. Which is really the other part of this story. It does not matter how thorough and accurate the information is, if it is not easily accessible at the moment of purchase, then it is effectively useless.
A Seafood Snob Ponders the Future of Fish - a related piece from the New York Times by Mark Bittman. Includes multimedia and easily digested infographics.