EDFish

Selected tag(s): Fish

Seafood Fraud: What You Order Isn’t Always What You Get

By / Bio / Published: April 9, 2012

Plated seafood. Image by Eliza Adam (Creative Commons License)Mislabeled seafood, or seafood fraud, is a hot topic in the fish world these days. Recent exposés by the Boston Globe and Consumer Reports have revealed an alarmingly high rate of seafood  deception in restaurants and markets. Conducting DNA testing on fish from local restaurants, the Globe found that about 50% of tested fish were mislabeled. What does this mean? Well, for the average seafood consumer, it means that the fish you pay for is often not the one you actually get.

Seafood fraud can result in adverse health effects, reinforce the market for illegal fishing, and perpetuate false information about the true state of the marine environment.

But unless you’re a marine biologist, fisherman or seafood purveyor, it can be hard to tell the difference between wild and farmed salmon, red snapper and tilapia, or grouper and Vietnamese catfish (aka basa). The FDA has a list of the most commonly substituted seafood items, but good luck finding this posted anywhere that you buy fish. Read More »

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New England Catch Share Fishermen Serving Up Fresh, Traceable Fish Directly to Restaurants

By / Bio / Published: August 11, 2011

Stuffed Flounder © 2010 Eliza Adam

A group of fishermen in Rhode Island who helped establish the groundfish and fluke catch share fishery management programs are now able to go back to the days when fishermen sold their fish directly to restaurants versus solely through wholesalers.  Selling directly increases the prices fishermen can get for their catch and also means customers are eating the freshest fish.

Chef John Vestal from New Rivers in Providence, Rhode Island who is a customer of the new fishermen’s distribution company Wild Rhody told The New York Times, “I have been buying all the seafood for the restaurant for over a decade, and what I saw amazed me. The fish was the absolutely most beautiful, fresh, cleanest seafood I had ever seen.”

In a recent article in The Providence Journal, fisherman Chris Brown described why it was difficult to sell directly under the old fishing derby system before the switch to catch shares: “’Used to be, years ago, they would say, ‘the season is open, go,’ Brown said. ‘There was a race to fish. We wouldn’t have been able to do something like this. Now we can fish to the prompts of the market.’” Read More »

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EDF Scientist Participates in Planning UN Report on Biodiversity

By / Bio / Published: June 12, 2009

Jake Kritzer is a Senior Scientist for EDF’s Oceans program.

Hong Kong-based and Chinese-flagged cargo ship Heng Chang going through the canal past the town of Gamboa showing the jungle comes right down to the banks of the canal.In anticipation of the International Year of Biodiversity in 2010, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) is preparing a major report on the role of biodiversity and ecosystem services in sustaining natural resource-based industries in Latin American and the Caribbean. 

The report will have an economic focus and speak to policymakers, highlighting how a shift from “business as usual” management practices that fail to value and protect biodiversity and ecosystem services ultimately lead to higher costs, declines in long-term employment opportunities, and poorer overall economic performance.  Economic sectors to be covered include agriculture, forestry, tourism and, of course, fisheries.

UNDP recruited EDF to help with the fisheries chapter in the report.  So, I traveled to the small rainforest town of Gamboa in Panama’s Canal Zone to meet with experts from across Latin America and around the world to plan the report.  The setting was somewhat surreal, given that we were surrounded by thick, lush jungle, with an array of colorful tropical birds darting about, and the occasional herd of capybara (the world’s largest rodent) wandering into clearing to graze. All of this while with massive cargo ship slowly traversing the Canal while pushed by powerful tugs. 

Hong Kong-based and Chinese-flagged cargo ship Heng Chang going through the canal past the town of Gamboa showing the jungle comes right down to the banks of the canal.The workshop participants were very interested in hearing about the potential for catch shares to achieve sustainable harvest levels of fish stocks, reduce bycatch and habitat impacts, and create a community of fishermen-stewards who will advocate for habitat protection, improvement of water quality, and other needed ecosystem-based management practices. 

Latin America presents many fisheries management challenges, for fisheries in the region are not only an important source of employment in many countries, but also a major source of protein, particularly in small coastal subsistence fishing communities.  Fortunately, the region can look to several successful examples of catch shares management, including both the large ITQ-managed fisheries in Chile and the smaller coastal fisheries managed by “cooperativas” (cooperatives) or territorial use rights (TURFs) in Mexico, Uruguay and other countries. 

As EDF looks to expand upon its existing Latin American efforts in Mexico, Belize and Cuba, this new partnership with UNDP, guided by the course charted in this report, will open exciting new possibilities.

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Selecting Sustainable Seafood: The Challenge for Consumers

By / Bio / Published: June 10, 2009

Diane Regas is Associate Vice President for EDFMaking sustainable seafood choices at the fish counter and at restaurants are daunting tasks for most people, even for experts such as New York Times food writer and cookbook author Mark Bittman. In his recent article, Bittman acknowledges the challenge of being a seafood consumer interested in both taste and environmental ethics.

“The buying has become a logistical and ethical nightmare,” Bittman states.

I’m glad that Bittman refuses to give up either eating fish or factoring sustainability into what he buys.  He tries to keep his selection of sustainable seafood simple with a few rules of thumb focused on staying away from the most troubled fish stocks.

When we all demand sustainable seafood, I think it will help support some of the tough decisions that need to be made to get the oceans healthy again.  Scientists tell us that the two best solutions are protecting the sensitive places in the ocean and managing the fish we catch properly through catch shares fishery management.

It is absolutely amazing that all the fisheries in the world are either fully fished at capacity or have been fished to collapse.  Yet strong evidence published in the journals Science and Nature show that catch shares end, prevent and even reverse the collapse of fisheries. In addition to ending overfishing and rebuilding fish stocks, well designed catch shares provide economic stability for fishermen and fishing communities.

Fortunately for the environment, fishermen and consumers alike, support for catch shares management continues to gain momentum and is being considered in all coastal regions of the country. The new NOAA administrator Dr. Jane Lubchenco is demonstrating unprecedented support for studying, implementing, and funding catch shares management. Just yesterday the House of Representatives appropriations committee included a big increase in the budget to make catch shares happen.

With continued support from fishermen and even consumers, this momentum and support for catch shares can lead to a new era for fisheries management that protects our oceans and make eating seafood all the more enjoyable.

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