Latest / How To Protect The Ocean / How to Read the Seafood Counter Like a Marine Biologist

Transcript

How to Read the Seafood Counter Like a Marine Biologist · How To Protect The Ocean

• 0:00
  I want you to picture a big sign over the seafood counter,
• 0:02
  like just a huge, huge thing.
• 0:04
  We support sustainable fishing, and right underneath it, on ice, is a fish that
• 0:09
  every independent guide says to avoid.
• 0:12
  Nobody broke a rule, in most countries, anyone can call seafood sustainable,
• 0:16
  and here's how to see through that sign and why it matters more than you think.
• 0:21
  We're gonna cover all this on this episode of How to Protect the Ocean podcast.
• 0:24
  I'm your host, Andrew Lewin, marine biologist and science communicator,
• 0:27
  here to give you information all about the ocean and how to protect it.
• 0:31
  So we cover ocean news, ocean science, ocean conservation so that you can
• 0:35
  learn more about the ocean, make better decisions, and maybe feel a little less
• 0:40
  anxious around the ocean and climate change and all that kind of stuff.
• 0:43
  Now, for the last week, we've been talking about sustainable seafood.
• 0:46
  We started with the interview with David Shiffman, where he talked about his
• 0:49
  book, Why Sustainable Seafood Matters.
• 0:52
  You can pre-order that book.
• 0:53
  I'll put the link in the show notes.
• 0:55
  But also, we talked a lot about, how many we can fish, how we can use
• 1:00
  excluder devices to protect specific animals, and other devices that we can
• 1:05
  use or other fixes that we can use.
• 1:06
  And then yesterday, we talked all about, like, the type of gear that
• 1:10
  we use that could harm places, but also some areas it might be okay.
• 1:14
  And today, we're gonna be talking about what's behind that seafood counter and
• 1:18
  what's at that seafood counter, and how to behave around that seafood counter,
• 1:21
  'cause often, I'm gonna tell you, when I walk up to a seafood counter,
• 1:25
  even locally here in Burlington, I'm like, "Oh, that looks really good.
• 1:28
  That looks really good.
• 1:29
  How was this fish caught?" And I take out my app, I open up the Seafood Watch
• 1:33
  app from the Monterey Bay Aquarium, and I say, I ask them, "How was this fish
• 1:37
  caught?" 'Cause I look it up, and I'll say, "Okay, so let's look at grouper.
• 1:41
  How was it caught?" They're like, "I don't know." "Where is it from?" "I don't know."
• 1:46
  " Okay, well, I'm not gonna buy that 'cause you don't know.
• 1:48
  Is there something you do know to make sure that it's sustainably caught?
• 1:51
  I wanna make sure.
• 1:52
  I have this app here to tell me all that stuff." And sometimes they don't
• 1:55
  tell me, and I'll say like, "Look, I can't order from you because you can't
• 1:59
  tell me where any of this is caught.
• 2:00
  Is there someone else that could tell me?" And it makes a big kerfuffle, and you feel
• 2:04
  bad, and you're like, "Is it really worth getting this?" Like, that's how I feel.
• 2:09
  I don't know if you get the same thing.
• 2:10
  Like, is it wild?
• 2:12
  is it farmed?
• 2:12
  Which ocean does it come from?
• 2:14
  Like, what's the label?
• 2:15
  sometimes it's just not there.
• 2:17
  Even if you get it right, the voice in your head is like, I'm one person.
• 2:21
  Does my dinner really matter if I get sustainable or not sustainable?" And
• 2:25
  today we answer both of those questions, how to choose and why it matters.
• 2:29
  Now, I've spent years helping people turn ocean worry into small specific
• 2:33
  actions, and this is the one I recommend often because it happens every week.
• 2:37
  A lot of people like seafood.
• 2:39
  In the United States and Canada, there's no standard legal definition
• 2:43
  for sustainable on seafood, the same goes for responsibly sourced.
• 2:47
  So compare that with labels that are regulated if a package says
• 2:52
  wild-caught and the fish was farmed, that's breaking the rules.
• 2:55
  Sustainable, though, works differently.
• 2:57
  Like a store can say it, a brand can say it, and even every independent
• 3:01
  expert disagrees, nothing happens.
• 3:04
  So treat the sign over that counter as marketing, it's potentially greenwashing,
• 3:08
  and get your facts from the tools that we're gonna be talking about below.
• 3:12
  So the good news is that there are independent groups that
• 3:13
  have done the research for you.
• 3:15
  So eco labels on the packages, the Marine Stewardship Council's blue fish tick for
• 3:20
  wild seafood, the Aquaculture Stewardship Council's label for farm seafood, which
• 3:25
  we touched upon in the last episode about fish farms and protected areas.
• 3:29
  Each fishery or farm is assessed against a public standard, and the
• 3:32
  reports are free for anyone to read.
• 3:35
  Now, the seafood guides, most coastal regions have one, but the one that we
• 3:39
  recommend the most is Seafood Watch from the Monterey Bay Aquarium in the US.
• 3:43
  Ocean Wise has one in Canada, the Marine Conservation Society's Good
• 3:47
  Fish Guide has one in the UK, Good Fish in Australia, and several WWF
• 3:52
  offices run guidance elsewhere.
• 3:54
  Most rate seafood as a best choice or good alternative or one to avoid.
• 3:59
  That's tends to be like the gambit of what the differences are, so
• 4:02
  avoid, best choice, good alternative.
• 4:06
  Now, MSC-certified fisheries now account for about 19.5% of
• 4:10
  the world's wild marine catch.
• 4:12
  Every US McDonald's Filet-O-Fish has carried the MSC label since 2013, and
• 4:17
  large retailers like Costco lean heavily on certified or approved seafood.
• 4:22
  Now, with that said, I've been to my local Costco, and that
• 4:26
  tick is not always on there.
• 4:28
  I'm gonna tell you that right now.
• 4:29
  So make sure you see that tick.
• 4:31
  If you don't, tell them behind the counter.
• 4:33
  I've told them behind the counter, and they've actually gone and brought it
• 4:36
  up to the higher-ups, and then I saw, like there's something on there now.
• 4:40
  So hopefully that's the right thing.
• 4:42
  Now, here's the part that might surprise people.
• 4:45
  A good guide splits tuna by species and by the ocean it
• 4:49
  came from and how it was caught.
• 4:51
  So skipjack caught by pole and line in one ocean might be a best choice.
• 4:56
  Another tuna caught by a different gear somewhere else might be one to avoid.
• 5:01
  So remember that episode on bycatch, like the gear is often the whole story?
• 5:05
  That detail isn't always on the label.
• 5:09
  So what you wanna do is you wanna check the package and the guide
• 5:11
  together, check the store and/or the brand website if you're unsure.
• 5:15
  Like these are the little things you have to do as you go through this.
• 5:18
  Ask the person behind the counter and ask nicely.
• 5:21
  don't be rude about it.
• 5:22
  and like they may be on minimum wage at the end of a long
• 5:25
  shift, so have an understanding.
• 5:27
  And like if you've ever been to a Costco, they have a lot of patience already.
• 5:30
  So if they don't know, choose something else.
• 5:33
  They're not the villain.
• 5:34
  The people behind the counter that work there, it's not up to them.
• 5:37
  It's up to the retailer to say, "Hey, here's the information that
• 5:41
  you need. Here's the seafood guide watch, and this is what we follow." In
• 5:44
  practice, almost every grocery store has some sort of sustainable options.
• 5:48
  Plenty of options won't be sustainable, and you may have to give up on a few
• 5:52
  of your favorite for a while, like until you know that they are but I
• 5:55
  wanna go over a little story here.
• 5:57
  A diver gets on a boat in the Caribbean, heading out for a morning dive,
• 6:01
  on the reef.
• 6:02
  On the ride out, he tells everyone how much he loves coming to the islands
• 6:05
  because he can eat all the fresh fish, locally caught fish he wants.
• 6:10
  Like, he lives for that stuff.
• 6:11
  it's good stuff.
• 6:12
  It's fresh.
• 6:13
  They dive, and on the ride back, there seem to be a lot fewer
• 6:16
  fish on the reef than I remember.
• 6:18
  Local might be wonderful, but it can also mean pressure on a small reef
• 6:21
  that feeds a lot of hungry tourists.
• 6:24
  So check the guide even on vacation.
• 6:27
  It's something that we have to do all the time.
• 6:29
  And don't forget to eat the invaders.
• 6:31
  Invasive species like lionfish in the Caribbean and in the Western Atlantic,
• 6:34
  and blue catfish in the Chesapeake Bay.
• 6:37
  These predators don't belong there, and they eat native fish and crabs.
• 6:41
  So when you eat them, overfishing is the point with invasive species,
• 6:45
  so it's okay to overfish them.
• 6:47
  Prevention is still the best tool, so eating them is far
• 6:50
  better than doing nothing,
• 6:52
  so obviously, we need to stop them from coming in, but we can eat them.
• 6:55
  Eat them as much as you want.
• 6:57
  Now, when it comes to sharks, overfishing is the top threat to
• 7:00
  sharks, and many species are in serious trouble because of it.
• 7:04
  So some of the guys tell you to avoid all sharks, and a few shark
• 7:07
  fisheries are well-managed enough to earn a MSC certification, so a Marine
• 7:11
  Stewardship Council certification, or a good guide rating at least.
• 7:15
  So some are sustainably managed.
• 7:17
  you can never choose to eat shark because you love them, and that's,
• 7:20
  like, a fair personal choice.
• 7:21
  It's a different claim from no sustainable shark fishery exists,
• 7:25
  and accuracy matters for credibility, you wanna know which shark species is
• 7:31
  sustainably fished and where they are.
• 7:33
  And you may not believe it, and that's fine.
• 7:35
  If you don't believe it, you don't have to eat shark.
• 7:36
  It's really up to you.
• 7:37
  Now, I wanna kind of go back to the voice in your head.
• 7:40
  Does one person matter when you're choosing this?
• 7:44
  if you're the only person in the world skipping a red-listed fish, the
• 7:48
  fishery, eh, it's not gonna notice.
• 7:49
  It's not gonna be that big of a deal.
• 7:51
  But when tens of thousands of shoppers and the rest of retailers buying on their
• 7:56
  behalf follow the same kind of guide, the fishery notices pretty quickly.
• 8:00
  Like, here's exactly what that looks like.
• 8:01
  In 1987, Louisiana passed a law to stop state officers from enforcing
• 8:06
  the federal rule requiring turtle excluder devices and shrimp.
• 8:10
  Those are the trap doors from that bycatch episode we did a couple days
• 8:13
  ago that let sea turtles escape.
• 8:15
  So Louisiana became the only state refusing to enforce the rule.
• 8:19
  On October 2013, Seafood Watch put Louisiana shrimp on its red avoid
• 8:23
  list, specifically because of that law.
• 8:26
  It was the only state to get that rating.
• 8:28
  Now, the market responded after 13,000 restaurants and stores across the
• 8:32
  US that followed the guide stopped sourcing Louisiana caught shrimp.
• 8:36
  The shrimp industry, which had backed the original law, now wanted it gone.
• 8:41
  In 2015, the Louisiana legislature passed House Bill 668, repealing the
• 8:45
  ban on enforcing sea turtle excluder devices, and it became law that July.
• 8:51
  And the shrimpers changed because their customers were paying attention,
• 8:55
  all the way from not just the customers, but from the retailers.
• 8:57
  Retailers are, like, the first point of contact with the customers.
• 9:01
  If customers are demanding Seafood Watch and sustainable stuff, they
• 9:05
  are saying, "Hey, we're gonna have to listen to this, and we can't buy
• 9:08
  from, fisheries that don't show that they follow these types of rules."
• 9:12
  That's a whole series in one story, a science-based rating, shoppers
• 9:16
  who used it, and a fishery that improved so it could keep selling it.
• 9:19
  If everybody did just a little better at the seafood counter, it would buy time
• 9:24
  for the bigger fixes, the catch limits, the better gear, the real protected areas.
• 9:29
  If we stop the demand for unsustainable fish, we can really make a difference,
• 9:33
  even if it's just one individual, but you multiply that by hundreds of thousands,
• 9:37
  and you're making a huge difference.
• 9:40
  So before your next seafood purchase, download your country's seafood guide
• 9:43
  and look one item up before you buy it.
• 9:46
  Seafood Watch in the US, Ocean Wise in Canada, the Good Fish Guide in
• 9:50
  the UK, Good Fish in Australia, or whichever guide covers your region.
• 9:54
  One item, one look up, do it once, and you'll be surprised
• 9:58
  how quickly it becomes habit.
• 9:59
  I remember when Seafood Watch was in its, early days.
• 10:03
  Smartphones weren't a thing at that point, and they had this, like, little
• 10:06
  booklet, and you had to open the booklet, and they would send new booklets every
• 10:09
  year, and you would have everything, like the avoid, the good, what they
• 10:13
  recommend and all that kind of stuff.
• 10:14
  Now it's on the app.
• 10:15
  It's so easy.
• 10:16
  All you do is type in the fish, where it's from, and it
• 10:19
  gives you all the information.
• 10:20
  It's so easy.
• 10:22
  When you're able to demand this, and you're able to focus on this,
• 10:27
  things like Louisiana shrimp, that changed because thousands of buyers
• 10:31
  looked something up, it really is.
• 10:33
  so your lookup is a part of that same pressure.
• 10:35
  It's a very important part So look, we did four episodes on
• 10:39
  sustainable seafood, plus we did an interview on sustainable seafood.
• 10:42
  By the way, you can pre-order Dave's book there's a link in the show notes.
• 10:45
  Fishing is the biggest pressure on ocean life.
• 10:49
  And when we follow the science, stocks rebuild, as well as we
• 10:52
  follow the laws and the policy.
• 10:54
  The cod came back.
• 10:56
  Still not there yet, but it came back.
• 10:59
  Most bycatch has a gear fix, and the fixes work pretty well.
• 11:04
  Turtles swim out that trap door and, they're saved, and we're
• 11:08
  starting to see that applied to more and variety of different, trawls.
• 11:13
  And where we fish matters as much as how much, and real protected areas lets
• 11:17
  reef recover and the seafood counter is where it all connects back to you.
• 11:21
  This is one of the biggest things that I recommend, is to
• 11:24
  make sure you follow the apps.
• 11:26
  The ocean can recover, and the people who depend on it can keep fishing
• 11:29
  when we use the tools that we have.
• 11:31
  It really comes down to that.
• 11:33
  It's a full participation from everybody.
• 11:36
  Now, if, it's a Saturday morning and you go to a fish counter 'cause
• 11:39
  you want seafood on your Saturday night, someone pulls up their phone,
• 11:42
  types in a fish, sees the rating, and chooses something else because they're
• 11:45
  saying, "Hey, I'm not gonna go for that," it takes 10 seconds to do that.
• 11:49
  Multiply that by a few million shoppers, somewhere, like a fishery
• 11:52
  manager reads the sales numbers and calls a meeting about switching gear.
• 11:55
  That's really what it comes down to, and one good question before you
• 11:58
  buy, that's all it takes, And that's all the ocean is asking of you.
• 12:02
  It's that simple.
• 12:03
  And I wanna thank you for listening because you are doing the work.
• 12:06
  You are doing the work to make sure that you are educating yourself on the ocean,
• 12:09
  so you can feel better about the ocean and less anxious about the ocean and
• 12:13
  climate change and all that kind of stuff, but you can do better for the ocean, and
• 12:15
  you can have some really good seafood.
• 12:17
  So if you love a sustainably caught seafood in particular, let me know
• 12:22
  in the comments whatever app you're listening to on, or if you wanna hit
• 12:25
  me up on my socials, the links are in the show notes or in the description.
• 12:29
  I wanna thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of the How
• 12:31
  to Protect the Ocean podcast, and thank you for joining me this week.
• 12:34
  I'm your host, Andrew Lewin.
• 12:36
  Thank you so much.
• 12:37
  Have a great weekend.
• 12:38
  I'll talk to you on Monday, and happy conservation