Eating with Intention: Imperfect Solutions for an Imperfect Food Chain
Fish
In this part of my first quarter blog, I’ll be focusing specifically on fish as they relate to sustainable seafood. I’ve come across several sources on opposite sides of the spectrum just regarding the concept of sustainable seafood. There are those who believe that the notion of sustainable seafood is ridiculous, and there are those that espouse it. The people and organizations that think the concept of sustainable seafood is absurd point to the fact that roughly 90 million tons of wild fish are harvested from oceans each year¹⁵. Combine that with the fact that certain marine wildlife species aren’t recovering and in its most literal sense: it is not sustainable. The ocean cannot maintain viability of all fish species for continual reuse at the rate at which we are pulling those fish from the ocean. I don’t think those facts can be argued, but I also think it is important to distinguish between commercial fisheries and small scale fisheries, one of the most important elements in order to make a sustainable choice. However there are so many other factors to consider as well, in this blog I hope to share what those are and distill how we can identify the best sources and best species to make the most realistic and readily actionable choices for our health and the intrinsically tied health of our planet.
As I defined in my Introduction, the elements that may affect most people’s decision to buy a certain type of seafood include nutritional value, sustainability, ethical concerns, and cost. My consumer packaged goods career and extensive research have helped me understand these elements and how they are intertwined with marine ecology, sourcing, wild caught versus farmed seafood, and much more. In early 2023 I listened to an incredible and heartbreaking podcast called Outlaw Ocean hosted by Ian Urbina. I recently finished a fascinating book called Four Fish by Paul Greenberg. I’d highly recommend both, they approach seafood consumption from entirely different angles.
Outlaw Ocean brought the ethical considerations of seafood consumption into focus for me in a way that was entirely new. It is not for the faint of heart, I had to break up listening to it because it was emotionally draining. Having said that, I learned so much. The depth of the reporting and commitment to finding the truth was astounding. There was a very specific moment in listening to this podcast that shook me on a personal level. In one of the episodes, the host, Ian Urbina, stated that there was a huge shift as Americans moved away from eating meat to eating more seafood at the beginning of the 21st century¹⁶, this aligns exactly with the timeframe that I made that change. As a result of this shift, demand for seafood in the US skyrocketed. This led to many questionable, and downright criminal, practices put in place in order to meet consumer demand. I needed to take a moment to realize and accept that I was one of the consumers contributing to the skyrocketing demand that led to some of those practices which include devastating sea slavery, overfishing, and an abhorrent disregard for environmental standards. There is incredibly detailed and moving reporting in this podcast, and while it can be very hard to listen to, we can't be afraid to educate ourselves on those topics which challenge us.
Seafood consumption in the United States has steadily increased over time (per capita seafood consumption went up 75% between 1968 and 2020), however perceptions and consumption patterns regarding wild-caught versus farmed fish have shuffled quite a bit. This relates to public concerns regarding fishing practices, overfishing, the impacts of farmed fisheries and more. Below I’ve drafted a simple timeline to view these trends over the last 50+ years.
The fact that farmed fishing is a common practice today does not necessarily mean it is a good one. There is significant disagreement with regards to its environmental and economic sustainability. Let’s define some basic terms before we discuss the arguments in favor of consumption of farmed fish, and the arguments being made in favor of consumption of wild-caught fish.
Wild-caught: this means it is caught from a natural habitat (such as an ocean or a river). There are many methods for catching seafood in the wild but generally they fall into one of two categories: nets, or lines.
Nets. over 80% of fish are caught via nets. There are several different types, including:
Purse seine (one end of a net is placed around a school of fish and back to the fishing vessel, the ends of the net are synched together like a drawstring bag) is the most common way¹⁰.
Trawling (dragging a net through the water behind a boat) has a few types:
Bottom trawling involves weighing a net down to the seafloor then dragging it across the bottom to scoop up fish. This can do extensive harm to bottom habitat (most notably, deep-sea corals)⁹.
Midwater trawls, which capture fish by towing a net at a depth that is higher in the water than the bottom of the ocean.
Gillnets, which are basically nets that make a wall with holes in it where fish get stuck.
Line fishing. Examples include:
Longlines are very long fishing lines that have a hook every few feet. This can lead to a lot of bycatch, the lines can literally be miles long¹¹. For those not familiar, bycatch occurs when fishermen catch a species they weren’t intending to catch by accident. Often this results in the fish that was caught inadvertently being thrown back into the ocean dead once they collect the fish they were intending to catch in the first place. Therefore of course bycatch is a bad thing.
Pole & line is exactly what it sounds like, each fish is caught individually using hand held (or mechanically operated) fishing poles. There is little concern about bycatch and habitat damage with pole & line fishing, as well as with trolling (see next bullet).
Trolling is when a boat slowly drags a line of hooks through the water.
I have several different sources of the above information, one of which is the Marine Stewardship Council. At the same time as I was consulting the MSC website for definitions, and facts & figures with regards to marine wildlife, I learned more about how the organization was formed, and I think it’s responsible to share it here in brief. In 1995 Unilever purchased the seafood brand Gorton’s of Gloucester. This purchase was finalized just after a large cod fishery called Georges Bank closed. Unilever was suddenly in the middle of an uproar as conservationists reacted to the fisheries crisis. Unilever developed a partnership with the World Wildlife Fund to make a new nonprofit: the Marine Stewardship Council. MSC describes their organization this way: “We're the Marine Stewardship Council, an international non-profit on a mission to end overfishing. We set the world's leading standards for sustainable fishing and assurance within the seafood supply chain.” Initially MSC certified small fisheries but Unilever needed fish in great bulk that would qualify as sustainable. This turned into a bit of a fox-guarding-the-henhouse situation, with the MSC certifying fish species as sustainable that shouldn’t have been certified. I do not know how much this maneuvering still affects the certification methods that MSC uses today, but it does make me seriously question the organization’s legitimacy. Further, all of the additional research I have done regarding the MSC has not instilled any confidence whatsoever that they are being transparent with regards to their practices and what truly drives the decisions they make. If you want to restrict yourself to the most sustainable seafood options, simply adhering to products with the MSC certification will not be sufficiently rigorous.
Getting back on track, let’s review farmed fishing, what it is and the various types, noting that over 50% of fish in supermarkets globally is farmed¹⁴. Farmed fishing, or aquaculture, refers to fish that have been raised in large tanks. There are two main types:
Marine aquaculture produces numerous species and is typically done in net pens, or in tanks.
Freshwater aquaculture produces species such as catfish and trout, and primarily takes place in ponds or other man made systems¹.
I haven’t made a note about what aquaculture is the most / least sustainable because that is a loaded question. One could easily argue that all farmed fish are bad because fish are living animals. They are wildlife, not food, and should exist in their natural habitats to live their lives as they are naturally supposed to. An opposing viewpoint is that as a society we are not going to eliminate seafood from our diet anytime soon. The devastating effects of wild-caught fishing on certain species is so damaging to the marine ecosystem, that if we farmed just a few fish which met certain criteria for farmed sustainability and efficiency, that would be a better alternative.
From a nutritional standpoint, the density of nutrients of course varies by species, and there are conflicting reports as it pertains to intraspecies nutritional content in wild caught versus farmed fish. To use salmon as an example, recent research by Stefanie Colombo, an associate professor and research chair in aquaculture nutrition at Dalhousie University in Canada, found that farmed Atlantic salmon only had slightly lower levels of omega-3s, proteins and other healthful nutrients than wild salmon had⁷.
However, other sources state that the fat content of farmed salmon can be three times that of wild salmon, and that these are not the healthy fats we should be eating in volume¹⁴. Not to mention the parasites and diseases pervasive in salmon farming. Perhaps there is conflicting information on this topic because it varies by farm and/or varies by geographic location. I was unable to find a definitive conclusion that there is a substantial difference in nutritional content, but it doesn’t mean there aren’t other reasons to avoid farmed salmon. Farmed Atlantic Salmon is readily available and relatively inexpensive so the temptation to purchase it may be strong, however I want to review in more detail the reasons to avoid it.
Farmed salmon required as much as six pounds of wild fish, ground up and turned into pellet feed to produce one pound of edible flesh⁴. This exemplifies the inefficiency of trying to farm carnivorous fish in general.
The tamed salmon genome is different from the wild salmon genome, so when farmed salmon escape they can significantly harm the wild population by interbreeding and creating a species that cannot survive in the wild⁴.
There are extremely high rates of disease at salmon farms as thousands of fish swim through their pens. This is not only disgusting, but it is another way farmed fish can destroy local wild fish as they swim into the waste and pathogens from the farmed fish.
A few other serious offenders, fish you want to avoid entirely, are outlined below.
Eel ranks among the worst seafood choices from an environmental perspective. European eels face many hazards, including changes to ocean currents caused by climate change, pollution, poaching and obstacles in waterways8. Attempts have been made to farm eels, however they are super adept at escaping captivity. They are also carnivorous, which means they are far more complicated to grow in captivity and also means they are environmentally inefficient from a feed standpoint (it takes more wild fish to feed them than they themselves produce).
Orange Roughy can live up to 150 years. This makes them vulnerable to overfishing, and they are caught primarily by bottom trawling, a method that as previously noted is harmful to the ocean floor habitats. Because of their long lifespan, Orange Roughy have been exposed to elements like mercury for a very long time (these are not healthy to consume in high levels).
Avoid all tuna caught in the Indian Ocean, this is relevant to ethical fishing concerns.
Do not consume bluefin tuna. Because of overfishing, the species is disappearing. The fact that they are also a top predator in the marine food chain means that they are critically important to maintaining balance in the ocean.
The more I researched about bluefin tuna the more I realized I didn’t know if what I was consuming was bluefin or not when dining out. Because it is expensive, most restaurants will specify that they are serving bluefin tuna because it commands a premium price point. However the tough part is that it isn’t always specified. Let’s use Japanese restaurants as an example. Hon maguro is how you would know that it is bluefin tuna if you were in Japan (the word “hon” means “true” or “real” which means it is bluefin). However in the US yellowfin tuna may be labeled maguro or it is possible that bluefin is labeled as maguro, there are no legal standards for this. My conclusion here is that if you want to eat maguro, you should ask the server what type of tuna it is. Likely you won’t be able to get an answer with regards to how or where it was caught, but at least you can avoid eating bluefin.
Bluefin tuna should be avoided entirely but sadly its purchase is still widely celebrated. The Toyosu Market in Japan is legendary for its tuna auction. When the market opened for the 2024 New Year’s auction the team of seafood wholesaler Yamayuki and sushi chain operator Onodera Group paid $788,440 for a 525-pound giant bluefin tuna, the fourth-highest total on record⁶.
I’d like to discuss which fish I believe possess the combination of factors that make them the most sustainable options for consumption. Aside from nutritionals, we have to consider wild-caught and farmed fish and how damaging they are to the environment, and we also must consider if they pose ethical risks. I’ve put together the below table to serve as an at-a-glance resource. I’ve attempted to marry all of these elements to suggest what I believe are the best options for consumers today. This table does not consider costs because there are too many unknown variables (i.e. fresh versus frozen versus canned, where you reside, where you shop).
Below is an explanation as to why each of the above is an option that I would recommend.
Wild-caught Alaskan Salmon sourced from small scale hook-and-line fishers, which have a lower environmental impact, is the best option for salmon. Wild salmon is seasonal; there are just a few weeks in which they’re abundantly available each year in their natural habitat, so strictly speaking, wild salmon cannot be eaten frequently in fresh form simply because of this fact. This should make us think about what a true delicacy wild-caught fresh salmon is. If we accept nothing less than the highest standards for wild salmon, it would be cost prohibitive for most people to eat it with the frequency so many of us do now. I don’t see this as a bad thing, I view it as reconciling the actual costs associated with only bringing sustainability, quality fish to consumers. I want to recommend two brands where you can find extraordinarily high quality, ethically sourced seafood:
Sitka Seafood Market maintains strict sourcing standards, and work only with small-boat, independent fishermen. Their King Salmon, specifically, is caught by hook and line method only which meets the highest standards for ethical sourcing. In speaking with their Director of Product and Experience, Alana McKeever, I learned that Sitka has three primary areas of sourcing criteria: Ecological (the fisheries they work with are evaluated on their impact on the stock and on the ecosystem), Quality (maintaining food safety and quality standards for their processing partners and ensuring true traceability), and Social (fishery community and processing community impacts).
Sea to Table strives to bring the highest quality, responsibly-caught seafood from healthy oceans to consumers’ homes. Their King Salmon and Coho Salmon are troll caught in Alaskan waters (trolling is a type of hook and line fishing where hook(s) are dragged slowly behind a boat).
Wild-caught Pacific Cod caught off the coast of Alaska, California, Oregon or Washington should also be sourced from small scale hook-and-line fishers. The passing of the Sustainable Fisheries Act in 1996 allowed cod to begin a great recovery however all farmed versions should be avoided.
Farm-raised Barramundi is a fantastic option, although it may be more difficult to find. Barramundi spawn in saltwater and live their lives in freshwater, this mimics a properly managed farmed fish environment. Barramundi are very fertile and naturally disease-resistant; they can live on vegetarian feed which makes them far more efficient as well. Barramundi have a very unique trait: they can make omega-3 fatty acids from vegetarian oils.
Farm-raised Striped Bass is a sterile hybrid, this means it cannot interbreed with the wild population of striped bass. This is important because if escape occurs, it doesn’t threaten the wild populations.
Farm-raised Tilapia have the ability to multiply very quickly making them a good alternative for an industrial whitefish to meet consumer demand. Tilapia is not “fishy-tasting” which makes it a more neutral fish with mass appeal. It has no impact on wild fish populations since it is grown in fresh water with no interaction with the ocean and it’s efficient given that it eats vegetarian feed in captivity. Purchasing Tilapia from a farm in Mexico (or the US, if you are able to find it) is important; there has been a lot of press regarding fish farms in Asia (more specifically, China) where they feed manure to tilapia, so take care to avoid fish from that region.
Farm-raised Kahala was determined to be an ideal fish for aquaculture after meeting the principles of domestication which, in short, state that animals we seek to domesticate should be hardy, like humans, love comfort, be able to breed freely and need minimal tending. Kahala are part of the same family of fish as yellowtail and amberjack and have dense flesh similar to tuna’s. Kahala was never fished because the flesh can poison human beings. However, when they are fed a specific diet and isolated from tropical reefs, they do not contain that poison. Kahala have one of the best feed-conversion ratios: the amount of fish required to produce a pound of Kahala is between 1.6 to 1 and 2 to 1. Kahala were named Kona Kampachi in an effort to make them more appealing from a marketing standpoint, but I’m not sure how readily available these fish are in the marketplace today.
There is one accessible fish I have made no mention of thus far: tuna. I have separated notes for tuna because it is challenging to summarize all of the factors at play. I don’t think it is useful for me to include tuna caught in hyper specific ways because that information isn’t made available to consumers; in other words, there is no sense in me recommending something so specific that you can’t verify it. The best I can do is distill my recommendation to the following:
Buy canned tuna when these terms are on the label: pole-caught / pole-&-line-caught, or troll-caught, and FAD-free
Buy albacore, skipjack, and yellowfin tuna species wild-caught by small US fisheries
Below is a chart dedicated solely to premium canned tuna brands to use as a purchasing guide. I personally don’t trust the information provided by the big brands. If you read the content on their sites, their described commitment to sustainability initiatives is cursory and there is a lack of real transparency in the prioritization of these initiatives.
The brand of canned tuna you choose depends on your priorities and price sensitivity. If money is no concern, American Tuna and Scout are the best option in terms of environmental impacts, sustainability, and safety. If mercury is a health concern, Safe Catch has the lowest levels on the market, so although I consider it a “No” by strict sustainability & ethical standards, it might be a good option for some.
I’ll close out with a summary, so if you are looking for action steps you can implement here is the bottom line:
When buying wild caught fish your best options are Alaskan Salmon and Pacific Cod off the coast of CA, AK, OR and WA sourced from small fisheries.
When buying farmed fish your best options are Barramundi and Striped Bass from the US, Tilapia farmed in Colombia, Mexico, or the US, and Kahala farmed in Hawaii or Mexico.
Avoid consuming Bluefin Tuna, Eel, Orange Roughy and farmed Atlantic Salmon at all times.
Sources: Eating with Intention, Q1 2024
