Guide to Seafood

The National Audobon Society has a Guide to Seafood to educate consumers about the impact of various fishing operations.  Fish are conveniently rated into “red”, “yellow”, and “green” categories, and information is further broken down by population status, management status, and bycatch and habitat concerns.  Not surprisingly, shark, swordfish, and orange roughy top the list.  As I mentioned on my veganism blog, orange roughy can reach 150 years and do not reach sexual maturity until age 30, leading to a rapid depletion of the species.  Shark and swordfish populations are also being severely depleted.  Shrimp, surprisingly to me, entail the highest bycatch (incidental catch of non-target species) of any seafood.  On average, for every pound of shrimp retrieved, seven pounds of other sea animals were accidentally killed and were then shoveled overboard.  Groupers are subject to the same low growth rates as orange roughy, and even if measures are in place to “toss back” juveniles caught, they frequently die anyway due to pressure changes when they are pulled up from their deep water habitat.  Anyone following the saga of British cod fisheries knows that Atlantic groundfishes (including cod, haddock, and monkfish) are in critical danger.  Chilean seabass have almost disappeared and suffer from rampant illegal fishing.

Some species are in slightly less dire straits but are still poorly managed, in decreasing supply, or entail significant habitat disruption: salmon, tuna, red snapper, Pacific red snapper, and lobsters fall into this category.  Species that are generally safe to eat are halibuts, mahi mahi, mackerels, squid (calamari), farmed tilapia (also known as Nile perch), crabs (other than Alaska king crabs) and striped bass.

The society provides a whole website dealing with this topic, including “seafood cards” that can be printed and kept in one’s wallet or purse to help one remember which are safe species, and a FAQ list that will help you with advocacy in your local restaurants and grocery stores.

If you eat seafood, please take a moment to commit this information to memory or download one of the memory aids.  As the Audubon society says, “Your choices can help make our oceans healthy again.”