{"id":4883,"date":"2013-06-04T14:04:33","date_gmt":"2013-06-04T18:04:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/edfish\/?p=4883"},"modified":"2014-10-10T14:36:51","modified_gmt":"2014-10-10T18:36:51","slug":"seafood-selector-helps-you-have-your-hake-and-eat-it-too","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/edfish\/2013\/06\/04\/seafood-selector-helps-you-have-your-hake-and-eat-it-too\/","title":{"rendered":"Seafood Selector helps you have your hake (and eat it too)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Environmental Defense Fund recently released the latest version of its popular\u00a0Seafood Selector<\/strong><\/a>, a tool to help make consumers aware of critical ocean conservation issues through the fish that they and their families eat.\u00a0Today I want to take a moment to remember what life was like in 2001, when our first version came out as a\u00a0small black-and-white paper cutout\u00a0in the organization’s quarterly member newsletter.\u00a0(I know it\u2019s hard to believe, but most people still received their environmental news by snail mail back in those days).<\/p>\n

Back then, most people still didn\u2019t have cell phones, and those that did just kept them in their gloveboxes for emergencies. I was a graduate student at the University of Hawaii, studying shark ecology and physiology. Even as a young marine biologist, I was largely unaware of the impacts of our personal choices on the health of the oceans.<\/p>\n

Raising consumer awareness of ocean conservation issues was no easy task 12 years ago \u2013 and is still a challenge today \u2013 given the complexity of how most fish makes it to our plates. For example, here are some interesting facts you might not know about the U.S. seafood market:<\/p>\n