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The Coming Green Wave
Seaweed farms have the capacity to grow huge amounts of nutrient-rich food, and oysters can act as an efficient carbon and nitrogen sink.
How Sustainable Is Sustainable Fishing?
At Whole Foods, they color-code the wild-caught fish to let you know how sustainable they are: green-coded fish are considered fine for consumption; the red-coded ones are problematic; the yellow-ones are in-between. Soon, Target will be selling only sustainable seafood. At many better restaurants, everything from the sea is sustainable. Even the European McDonald's sells sustainable seafood. We can use the Internet to download guides for the best responsible seafood for our area. . . all because the word is out: the oceans are over-fished and we need to be more responsible in how we eat our seafood.
Greenpeace says some varieties of fish have had their populations drop "by as much as 90 percent" due to overfishing. Another problem is bycatch: each day, tons of dead fish are tossed over the sides of fishing boats because of indiscriminate fishing methods, such as bottom trawling.
That would mean sustainable methods need to be expanded and that the laws restricting it have to apply worldwide. The oceans are home to millions of species--many not even discovered yet. We don't even know what's at the bottom of the sea: in other words, we don't know what we're killing.
So what do we need to do?
A lot. We need to restrict the use of plastic, which breaks down to the molecular level, stays in the oceans forever, and eventually gets in the food we eat (in the end, we could be eating plastic). We need to cut our collective carbon footprint: it leads to oxygen depletion and acidification of the seas. These are large issues and will require cooperation, worldwide. Conservation Magazine listed 10 things we need to do, right away. It's a great list, but it's four years old. And little on that list has been done yet.
And when we eat seafood, we should also start at the bottom of the chain and work our way up: eat the anchovies before heading for the sharks. It also needs to be sustainable. That means it needs to say it's sustainable, from an independent group. It's very likely that the seafood from your corner market isn't sustainable. Just remember: eating responsibly doesn't always mean eating conveniently.