May 7, 2012 – Whole Foods recently became the first major North American retailer to stop selling unsustainable, or red-listed, seafood. The red listing, as determined by the Monterey Bay Aquarium and the Blue Ocean Institute, indicates that the fish species is being overfished or that current fishing methods harm non-target marine life or habitats. Fish that'll no longer be available: gray sole, skate, Atlantic cod (trawl-caught), Atlantic halibut, octopus, sturgeon, tautog, turbot, imported wild shrimp, and several species of tuna. Fortunately, a wide range of similar, but sustainable, alternatives will continue to be.
A growing demand for seafood, combined with lax or non-existent fishery management in many parts of the world, continues to drive fish populations and ocean ecosystems toward the brink of ecological ruin. Half of all marine fish species are fully exploited and another one-third are declining or collapsed, according to the FAO. It takes more and more effort by larger numbers of fishermen to catch the same amount of fish as populations decline year after year.
While stronger laws and regulations have begun to reverse this trend in some countries like the United States (see my earlier blog on the success of U.S. fisheries policies), this is only part of a global solution to the fisheries crisis. In places lacking the governance capacity, changing market demand may provide the greatest leverage for on-the-water improvements and meaningful fisheries conservation.
Many tools are readily available to guide our seafood choices and drive market demand for sustainable seafood. Consumer seafood guides from the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch and the Blue Ocean Institute can help us choose fish at healthy populations being caught using more benign gear, much the same way Whole Foods is now doing.
Read the full story at the National Resources Defense Council.
Analysis: While the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) hails the decision by Whole Foods to stop selling seafood rated as unsustainable by the Monterrey Bay Aquarium and the Blue Ocean Institute, it ignores several flaws in the rankings’ methodology. Specifically, the organizations’ objection to trawl-caught fish like cod and sea scallops does not take into account scientific data that questions its sustainability rating.
Monterrey Bay Aquarium and Blue Ocean Institute’s seafood rankings rate scallops as “yellow” (“good alternative”) and trawl-caught Atlantic cod as “red” (“avoid”) partly because of what it claims is the harm that dredging causes to the surrounding marine environment. They write, “Dredges cause significant habitat damage when dragged along gravel and rocky bottoms. Dredges also smooth out sandy and muddy bottom habitats, removing or smothering a variety of animal and plant life.”
This greatly overstates the long-term impact of trawling on sand and gravel habitats. A study by the School of Marine Science and Technology (SMAST) at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth found that sandy habitats are able to recover from the effects of trawling in a matter of days. Gravel-based habitats also have a short recovery time, as these types of habitats also experience a great deal of natural disturbances. The vast majority of fishing in Georges Bank and the Mid-Atlantic takes place in habitats comprised primarily of sand or gravel, meaning that the long-term impact of trawling in these areas is limited.
The rankings also fail to account for the progress made in reducing the bycatch from trawling, the other reason Monterrey Bay Aquarium and Blue Ocean Institute consider trawling to be unsustainable. Most notably, in recent years the industry has worked to change its gear to avoid the unwanted catch of endangered sea turtles, which often turned up as bycatch in the scallop fishery.