Sustainable Fish Shopping
You’re no doubt aware of the concern of over-fishing, illegal fishing, and pollution further endangering fish numbers.
As always, you and I can both do our part to help by shopping responsibly when buying fish.
We need to do our best to protect fisheries in the Pacific, as the Pacific region contains one of the last healthy tuna fisheries left in the world… but is threatened by overfishing. A huge number of fleets from nations around the globe are overfishing in the region – sometimes illegally.
The Australian Marine Conservation Society has put together Australia’s Sustainable Seafood Guide available for a small investment of less than $10 – which is packed full of useful information. So you might like to get your hands on that.
In the meantime, here are some guidelines to follow:
- Avoid all Bluefin Tuna as all stocks are endangered.
- Avoid Bigeye and Yellowfin Tuna as all global stocks fished are at their limits. Please note, that most canned tuna is Skipjack, but be sure to check on the tin that the ingredients say Skipjack just to make sure.
- Avoid Skipjack caught on fish aggregation devices due to the high level of by-catch. It is not easy to find out if this is the case. The only way to really discover is to call the number on the can and ask.
- ‘Dolphin safe’ does not mean it is sustainable! The fish stock can still be a threatened species, and ‘dolphin safe’ doesn’t mean that other marine life is safe during the fishing process.
Thank you so much to Isobel Lindley of Greenpeace for her help on this article.
Personally, we don’t eat fish. Ever since LTSH (Long Term Suffering Husband) and I visited the Northern Territory years ago and waded in the ocean to handfeed mullet, Barramundi, Milk Fish, and baby Stingrays, we’ve loved the little guys. Although I must admit only I went into the water. LTSH stood on the sideline, snapping at me not to go out so far, and ready to leap on the back of any huge four legged reptile with big teeth that might grab me and begin a death roll. Poor LTSH, I think I dragged him to the fish handfeeding every day for about a week – and he needed a holiday by the end of the holiday!
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Trevor | Jun 25, 2009 | Reply
Commercial overfishing in some areas is a real concern. And there are species that have been fished at unsustainable levels. But getting accurate data is difficult, given the amount of emotion (often irrational) that surrounds fishing activities.
Many species of fish and other marine life that is claimed to be endangered by Greenpeace and other groups are in fact not endangered at all. Many lies are told about numbers of species, Grey Nurse Sharks being a prime example in Australia.
From what I have seen of the Australian Marine Conservation Society, they are just a glorified, government funded anti-fishing group. They have refused to listen to unbiased scientific evidence on a number of different occasions that I am personally aware of. In fact, they remind me of a slightly less media savvy version of P.E.T.A.
Unfortunately this clouds the real issues, creating an ‘us vs. them mentality’. Moreton Bay is a prime example, where commercial and recreational fishing bans have been put in place, even though independent scientific evidence had found these bans to be completely unnecessary (AMCS actually wanted the ‘no fishing zones’ to cover an even larger area in spite of this evidence). So fishing gets banned, but meanwhile delicate mangrove areas where fish spawn are being destroyed in the name of development, huge amounts of pollution continue to flow into the bay and dredging will soon commence to remove 150,000 tonnes of sand from the Bay to build the 2nd airport runway. The building of which will destroy an environmentally sensitive creek known as a fish breeding area. Yet the Australian Marine Conservation Society say nothing against this.
Did I mention that they are government funded?
Greenpeace are also known for having some very extreme views. Which once again is unfortunate as they also do some good work as well.
Anyway, glad I could share these views with you, and good to hear that you were not taken by any floating handbags whilst up north. Happy to share an alternative view on fishing for future articles, which I hope will not contain any reference to the extremist, anti-fishing AMCS.
Love the site by the way.