September 16, 2022 — Earlier this month, Seafood Watch, an influential seafood sustainability list published by the Monterey Bay Aquarium, changed the designation of lobster from Atlantic communities to avoid. The organization indicated that fishery management isn’t going far enough to protect the endangered right whale. Maine’s lobstermen, seafood dealers and politicians have been up in arms about the recommendation ever since.
Read on to see what the “red-list” rating really means, and how lobster ended up on the avoid list.
What does it mean to be put on the Seafood Watch “avoid” list?
The Seafood Watch list reviews fisheries and aquaculture operations to determine environmental sustainability. After those reviews, the organization divides fisheries into three different categories: best choice, good alternative and avoid. The list is used by some restaurants, seafood buyers and other companies as a guide for what seafood they should be stocking.
“Best choice” fisheries are ones that Seafood Watch has determined are well managed and caught responsibly. “Good alternative,” a category the U.S. and Canadian lobster fisheries were previously under, are good buys, but there are some lingering concerns.
The “avoid” category is a designation that Seafood Watch uses to advise customers to “take a pass” on, either because they are overfished, lack strong management practices or are caught in ways that harm other marine life.
Lobster has been downgraded to “avoid,” according to Seafood Watch, because the fishery has not dealt with its risks to the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale. In July, a federal court judge, for the second time in recent years, deemed that the federal management of the U.S. lobster fishery is not in compliance with the Endangered Species Act, forcing regulators to come up with new ways to reduce the chances the fishing lines have in hurting whales.
Who’s behind the Seafood Watch list?
Seafood Watch is a program created and run by the Monterey Bay Aquarium that has been around for 20 years.