Mark Bittman wrote an article yesterday in the New York Times addressing the challenges sourcing sustainable seafood. He made many good points about the difficulties making responsible choices, and ultimately the ineffectiveness of wallet cards. Unfortunately Mark Bittman failed in his attempt to create an original piece on sustainable seafood. The content of Bittman’s (and many other’s) article has become particularly monotonous, and doesn’t educate consumers on the origins of our existing conundrum. In the midst of all this talk, do people really recognize the issues with our oceans, how ineffective regulations are, and in due course how commercial fishing as a worldwide industry begs to be reformed? The sustainable seafood rhetoric must evolve to focus on two areas; the vast amount of waste/bycatch (i.e. dead fish) created within capture fisheries as well as the role that aquaculture will play in our near future.
Waste is the appropriate word to use when describing the act of catching fish only to throw them back into the ocean dead. The FAO estimates that eight percent of the world’s marine fisheries catch is discarded, which means 7.3 million tons of fish or protected species are thrown back every year . The practice of catching fish only to throw away and kill a large portion of that catch is absurd. On land, any system that breeds such gratuitous waste would shut down in a day. In the ocean there is no price tag associated with the capture of wild fish, or input in this matrix. They are effectively “free” public property to exploit. Therefore, input waste (as a financial variable) is not an element to analyze when measuring productivity as a capture fishery. As a result many (not all) wild capture fisheries manage their economies/industries in such as way as to ignore the waste associated with their catch.
This method when applied to land-based production is virtually illegal; it stinks of greed, shortsightedness, and would be universally rejected as a model for success by even the most remedial economies. Why is it accepted in the ocean? Most likely the average consumer is not aware of the fact that in order to produce that plate of wild shrimp, swordfish or scallops, there are multiple pounds of fish that are being killed (this doesn’t include habitat damage). The paradox however, resides in the existing campaign to vilify fish farming. To state that fish farming is unsustainable because it uses wild fish to feed farmed fish is to ignore the fact that most wild capture fisheries do the same thing only in the form of bycatch.
Fishing methods should be broken down into two categories: Those that produce bycatch and those that don’t. Pole and troll caught fish for example are targeted with hook and line and do not ensnare any other species aside from those targeted. Trawling on the other hand literally drags a net across the ocean floor sweeping up every piece of living marine life in its teeth. Any species that is not part of the targeted catch is thrown overboard. Many swordfish are caught using a harpoon, targeted and caught as individuals. On the contrary, scores of swordfish fisheries use gillnets that catch, not just swordfish, but sharks, turtles, dolphins, marine mammals and various other unintended species.
It is important that these facts become part of the public rhetoric regarding sustainable seafood. Banning the use of fishing techniques that produce a large majority of unintended bycatch would add 7.3 million tons of fish to the ocean’s inventory. I applaud Mr. Bittman for touching on sustainable seafood, but I beg of him to change the course of dialogue; uncover the inherent flaws that exist in commercial fishing and offer suggestions on how to effectively change these inconsistencies while simultaneously addressing the role that responsible aquaculture plays as an effective means by which to give the oceans a break.
Tags: Aquaculture, bycatch, Fish Farming, mark bittman, sustainable seafood, unproductive
But this is the conundrum. As a consumer, what can I do? And I mean aside from going to restaurant A or B that offer sustainable seafood. Will I ever be able to eat a shrimp cocktail without swallowing my guilt along with it again?
The first step is to perpetuate dialogue by asking questions about bycatch and how a fish was farmed. By participating in this simple task, we are putting fisherman (both wild and farmed) under the spotlight. Naturally this conversation will spread until a tipping point occurs and public opinion permeates Washington. Education is essential, so continue to learn about your food by visiting objective websites such as NOAA Fishwatch, and learning about bycatch.
Then someone or some institution needs to take a leading role in educating U.S. cooks and consumers. If a loud and practical solution is proposed to the seafood consuming public, I’m sure that even Mark Bittman will hear the message and a become an advocate.