Seafood Watch 2020: Making Sustainable Seafood Choices

For example, for salmon there are six types—Atlantic, Chinook, chum, Coho, pink and sockeye. You also need to find out if it’s domestic or imported, and if it was farmed or wild. Let’s say you look at farmed Atlantic salmon, the first option on the list. If it’s raised in an indoor recirculating tank, it’s a Best Choice. Or if it’s by Norway’s Salten Aqua Group under the Nordic Blu brand, it’s on the Best Choice list. Other brands and locations may have more concerns, and they go into detail about why on the app and website.

Seafood Watch ® Consumer Guides

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Sheila explains a large, and largely unseen, part of their work: “Around 90% of North America’s seafood is imported, so to foster those recommendations we have people working in faraway places.”

The two big focus areas right now are shrimp and salmon. The biggest US source for shrimp is from Southeast Asia, and the biggest source for farmed salmon is Chile, so Seafood Watch has people out working with companies in these areas. “Getting things right there is a big win for everyone.”

Obviously people eat more than shrimp and salmon, but Seafood Watch can’t do everything. After all, they only have around 20 employees. Drawing a circle in the air with one hand, Sheila says, “We can take care of this area,” then drawing another circle next to it, “And others [sustainability-focused organizations] can take care of this area.” Divide and conquer to bring sustainable seafood to as many people as possible.

Best Choices Might Be Farmed Fish

It might surprise some people what sustainability looks like—it does involve farming seafood. There is often the idea that farmed fish is bad and wild is better. In some cases that’s true, but a quote from Paul Greenberg’s book Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food sums up the dilemma, using salmon as an example: “It would be wonderful if all the salmon we eat could be wild. But as one marine ecologist said to me recently, to continue to eat large wild fish at the rate we’ve been eating them we would need ‘four or five oceans’ to support the current human population.”

Farmed fish has been vilified in the past, and in the cases of the most intensive, high-chemical, high-density farms, that’s fair. Sheila breaks down the reality around farmed fish: “That destructive model, which is a 20- to 30-year-old approach centered on salmon, is still out there. But so many of our Green list items are farmed.” (Being on the Green list means they’re well managed and caught or farmed in ways that cause little harm to habitats or other wildlife.)

And those mistakes of the past, she hopes will be avoided as aquaculture continues to grow. “We’ll see countries like India, which is emerging as a major shrimp source, and Mexico skip the environmental destruction phase and build based on the best practices of today.”

Widening the Net for 2020 and Beyond

Moving forward, Seafood Watch also wants to work on spreading awareness and communication about sustainable seafood. “As other groups take on seafood assessment roles, we’re going to step in to what we do best, which is communication.”

They’ll continue to update the app and have partner restaurants and businesses. Just a few examples from Silicon Valley include restaurants like Flea St. Café, Tacolicious and Pacific Catch, and markets like New Seasons Market and Whole Foods Markets, who have pledged to not sell anything from the Avoid list. But along with the partnerships, they want to do more to talk directly to the public with events and social media engagement. Giving people the knowledge of how to talk about seafood is giving them the tools for making better choices. 

Making those better choices means taking longer with your menu to figure out not just what sounds like it will taste good, but what will do some good for the planet. “Ask the wait staff. If you want a cleaner fish, sustainable fish, the only way you’ll get it on the menus is if you ask them,” suggests Sheila. She’s also received calls from restaurants saying that a customer left a copy of the Seafood Watch consumer guide with their check, and the restaurant wants to know more about the program. It’s a low-effort way to use your voice for good, and it’s important to realize that small steps can help spur big change. The more consumers understand what the best choices are, the more likely businesses will provide those options. 

Along with making a smart choice from a restaurant menu, it’s good to know what to get for your kitchen. “Around 80% of the seafood eaten in the country is not cooked by the consumer. A lot of people are afraid to cook it,” notes Shelia. If they do, out of habit and comfort it’s often the same species like salmon, shrimp and tuna. Seafood Watch is trying to help out there as well. On their website, there’s a section of chef-created recipes like Arctic Char with Potato-Morel Salad and Leek Vinaigrette and Spiced Catfish Tacos with Pickled Shallots and Chipotle Crema.