What is sustainable seafood

Here are six practical steps to help end overfishing. Here's our complete guide to sustainable seafood in Australia and New Zealand. To have fish forever, we must fish sustainably. The sustainability of a fishery is an ongoing process. After MSC certification, fisheries are regularly audited and many are required to make improvements to retain their certificate. Scientific knowledge improves all the time and fisheries are encouraged to develop new ways of conserving marine resources for future generations.

Read more about how MSC certified fisheries are making improvements. Sustainable seafood. Jump to section Related Pages toggle items. Forced and child labour Commercial fishing. MSC Our approach What is sustainable seafood? How can seafood be sustainable? To be certified, fisheries must demonstrate that they are: Maintaining healthy populations of fish; Minimising impact on the marine environment; Fish in an area with effective, responsive, and responsible management.

YouTube Watch video. Consequently, the protein-packed barramundi has half the calories of salmon and is one one of the most pure fish available with negligible levels of mercury, PCBs and contaminants. There are many affordable options when it comes to sustainable fish which make it accessible for everyday enjoyment. Arctic char, barramundi, and trout are just a few examples. Additionally, buying sustainably farmed fish instead of more expensive wild-caught options increases demand for responsibly-raised fish; you vote with your dollar.

Many coastal fishing towns around the United States and the world depend on small-scale fisheries for both income and food. By purchasing locally-caught wild fish caught where you live or third party-certified farmed fish, you directly support such people and local economies.

Choosing sustainably farmed fish helps reduce the pressure on wild fisheries and allows populations to rebuild. Most fish are caught from the ocean using trawling methods, which use large nets to collect sea animals — unfortunately, this process is inherently unsustainable as it results in unfathomable amounts of plastic entering the oceans , and it almost always results in bycatch.

Bycatch is when trawling nets massive nets that boats — often boats the size of football fields — pull through the ocean incidentally catch non-target marine life, such as sea turtles, sea birds, dolphins, porpoises, whales, sharks, and juvenile fish. Animals caught as bycatch typically wind up dead, either due to getting tangled in fishing nets, or drowning to death after being pulled out of the water, according to NOAA.

Fishermen then throw the bycatch bodies back into the ocean, typically dead or dying. Even as fishing technologies have evolved over the years, bycatch remains a significant issue and threat to oceans, according to the WWF. When seafood packaging claims its contents are certified sustainable, it means that the fish were declared as sustainably caught by either an organization, private company, or government agency. The requirements to get a sustainable seafood certification from the varying entities differ.

For example, according to the U. If protecting the oceans was a top priority to these companies, then they would do more than simply alter their fishing practices to be just a little bit more sustainable — they would stop commercially fishing entirely. Each group has different standards for fisheries to qualify to use its label on packaging, so you can check out their websites for more information on how they evaluate fisheries.

But with fish populations declining in concerning ways, what gives humans the right to take fish from the oceans at all?