7 ms·

Is there anything we can do as consumers to promote ethical fishing practices? For example, there are certifications and accreditations fisheries can obtain to

Is there anything we can do as consumers to promote ethical fishing practices? For example, there are certifications and accreditations fisheries can obtain to prove that eco-friendly methods are used.

jnmandal 4y ago
To be honest, this has very little to do with fishing practices. It's more about the temperature of the ocean. There are some folks who think by catch (a very destructive externality from ocean floor trawling) has an impact on this fishery but unfortunately that's more of a guess. The science certainly shows that the temperature anomaly literally preempts reproduction. So heat waves eviscerated an entire generation, perhaps multiple generations. So can you affect the temperature of the ocean? Not anymore than you can stop global warming. Even if you did everything to become carbon negative, it's gonna be getting warmer before it gets back to normal temperatures. But stopping eating seafood would be a good start. Lowering demand for them means that they have a chance of surviving through to a time when climate change could be reigned in, maybe in several decades.
- standardUser 4y ago
  Or eat more farmed seafood, or seafood that we have high confidence can be safely harvested, per the link I posted above.
  - dathos 4y ago
    Or just dont eat seafood, even farmed Salmon is having a massive impact on nature around it
    - saiya-jin 4y ago
      Not only that, its meat is much lower quality / health benefits compared to wild salmon, much closer to pork. Eating BIO variant won't help that much with that
    - standardUser 4y ago
      What an oddly narrow comment. Many types of seafood are farmed and very few have the environmental concerns that Salmon has when it is farmed adjacent to natural waters. It's almost like you lead with cynicism and then leave no room for facts.
  - liotier 4y ago
    Farmed seafood requires protein input, which currently is mostly wild fish. Expanding insect production for animal feed would be significant progress.
    - codeisawesome 4y ago
      That's interesting; when searched there seems to be very little mainstream media coverage of the concept. What are some of the disadvantages of the insect feed approach for aquaculture?
      - liotier 4y ago
        Large scale insect production for animal feed has only been going for about a decade, so not much hindsight - but so far it is looking great: https://www.science.org/content/article/feature-why-insects-could-be-ideal-animal-feed https://www.science.org/content/article/feature-why-insects-...
standardUser 4y ago
The Monterey Bay Aquarium has a program called Seafood Watch that publishes consumer guides. I used to carry around a business-card sized version. Now they have versions for different US regions and one for sushi... https://www.seafoodwatch.org/recommendations/download-consumer-guides https://www.seafoodwatch.org/recommendations/download-consum...
- defrost 4y ago
  In (or from) Australia: https://goodfish.org.au/ https://goodfish.org.au/ eg: https://goodfish.org.au/species/barramundi/ https://goodfish.org.au/species/barramundi/ https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-04-04/the-great-barramundi-debate-free-or-farmed/6370360 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-04-04/the-great-barramundi-... https://www.humptydoobarramundi.com.au/ https://www.humptydoobarramundi.com.au/
adrianN 4y ago
The best thing we can do is to eat less fish. There is no ethical way to fish from an overfished ocean. A distant second is to eat fish like sardines which are further down the food chain than, say, tuna.
- kortilla 4y ago
  Abstinence doesn’t work. The best thing we can do is heavily promote farmed fish. Heavy heavy taxation on anything wild.
  - barbazoo 4y ago
    > Abstinence doesn’t work Why do you think that?
    - RGamma 4y ago
      The planet may be limited but consumer entitlement is not.
    - drewm1980 4y ago
      It was news to me until recently, but the shifting of blame for destructive business practices onto the consumer is extremely well documented to be greenwashing. i.e.: https://www.vox.com/22429551/climate-change-crisis-exxonmobil-harvard-study https://www.vox.com/22429551/climate-change-crisis-exxonmobi... It's not inconsistent to boycott destructive products as an individual, but political pressure should focus on flat out banning destructive business practices. The electoral system failed to prevent another oil-drilling president from entering office, but it's still possible his administration will be successfully sued in court under USA's (admittedly weak looking) version of Duty of Care laws. The TLDR is that ~some democracies have it baked into the constitution that the government must act in the interests of the citizens, and are getting successfully sued in court to do so, despite regulatory capture and corrupt politicians.
      - evandijk70 4y ago
        I have read this argument many times and I still don't understand it. You can attack emissions by limiting supply (stopping new oil drilling projects) or by limiting demand (flying less / driving less etc.). Both should work, since supply and demand are generally balanced. Reducing supply without reducing demand (what you seem to be proposing) will lead to massive price increases and energy poverty. This is confirmed by the energy crisis in Europe this winter, which was the result of a sudden decrease in supply. Reducing demand without reducing supply will lead to massive price decreases, which should increase demand from those that are less worried about climate change. The transition to renewables can only be done by reducing both supply (less oil drilling) and demand (consumers and industry). I don't see how advocating for flying less, eating less meat, buying heat pumps etc. constitutes greenwashing, even if it oil companies co-opt it to deflect attention from themselves.
drewm1980 4y ago
The way certifications and accreditations work in the fishing industry is covered in the documentary Seaspiracy.
- batmaniam 4y ago
  And to sum it up: basically the entire sustainability accreditations have been taken over by corporate interests. So the label itself on every seafood item is super inaccurate and doesn't actually save the planet or the fish population at all. Not even a dent.
lm28469 4y ago
Eat less of it and buy the expensive stuff. Expensive = better margin = less fish needed to pay the wages, and 99% of the time expensive = high end sustainable It's not bulletproof but it's a good rule of thumb, I eat fish once in a blue moon, last time it was a can of "traditionally hand fished" tuna, 40 euros a kilo If it's cheap as fuck there is no way it's sustainable, you're either abusing nature or fellow humans, or both
- peanuty1 4y ago
  I'm less bothered with "abusing" fellow humans than destroying nature.
  - lm28469 4y ago
    We're part of nature. If the "us vs them" is at that level now we're fucked
    - toomuchtodo 4y ago
      Can we not admit we’re fucked and any effort at this point is to take the edge off the pain we’re going to experience globally over the next century or two?
    - modo_mario 4y ago
      A quick google top result check shows: "all natural phenomena and plant and animal life, as distinct from man and his creations" I dare say that's the way it was used and intended so semantics doesn't really bring anyone forward here. I'm also not really sure what you're alluding to with the "us vs then" bit.
    - red-iron-pine 4y ago
      There is no shortage of humans. Arguably too many. There is a shortage of nature. On top of that, the ecosystems are changing, and once they're gone they're probably not coming back. We could lose half of the population tomorrow and still, eventually, hit that predicted 10 billion souls -- it would just take a lil longer. If WA and BC turn into chaparral things like Salmon and Snow Crab ain't gonna live there any more, and never live there again.
FuriouslyAdrift 4y ago
https://www.msc.org/what-you-can-do/eat-sustainable-seafood/fish-to-eat https://www.msc.org/what-you-can-do/eat-sustainable-seafood/... Herring is a good bet long term. China will fish the Pacific to death.

jnmandal 4y ago

To be honest, this has very little to do with fishing practices. It's more about the temperature of the ocean. There are some folks who think by catch (a very destructive externality from ocean floor trawling) has an impact on this fishery but unfortunately that's more of a guess. The science certainly shows that the temperature anomaly literally preempts reproduction. So heat waves eviscerated an entire generation, perhaps multiple generations. So can you affect the temperature of the ocean? Not anymore than you can stop global warming. Even if you did everything to become carbon negative, it's gonna be getting warmer before it gets back to normal temperatures. But stopping eating seafood would be a good start. Lowering demand for them means that they have a chance of surviving through to a time when climate change could be reigned in, maybe in several decades.

standardUser 4y ago
Or eat more farmed seafood, or seafood that we have high confidence can be safely harvested, per the link I posted above.
- dathos 4y ago
  Or just dont eat seafood, even farmed Salmon is having a massive impact on nature around it
  - saiya-jin 4y ago
    Not only that, its meat is much lower quality / health benefits compared to wild salmon, much closer to pork. Eating BIO variant won't help that much with that
  - standardUser 4y ago
    What an oddly narrow comment. Many types of seafood are farmed and very few have the environmental concerns that Salmon has when it is farmed adjacent to natural waters. It's almost like you lead with cynicism and then leave no room for facts.
- liotier 4y ago
  Farmed seafood requires protein input, which currently is mostly wild fish. Expanding insect production for animal feed would be significant progress.
  - codeisawesome 4y ago
    That's interesting; when searched there seems to be very little mainstream media coverage of the concept. What are some of the disadvantages of the insect feed approach for aquaculture?
    - liotier 4y ago
      Large scale insect production for animal feed has only been going for about a decade, so not much hindsight - but so far it is looking great: https://www.science.org/content/article/feature-why-insects-could-be-ideal-animal-feed https://www.science.org/content/article/feature-why-insects-...

standardUser 4y ago

The Monterey Bay Aquarium has a program called Seafood Watch that publishes consumer guides. I used to carry around a business-card sized version. Now they have versions for different US regions and one for sushi... https://www.seafoodwatch.org/recommendations/download-consumer-guides https://www.seafoodwatch.org/recommendations/download-consum...

defrost 4y ago
In (or from) Australia: https://goodfish.org.au/ https://goodfish.org.au/ eg: https://goodfish.org.au/species/barramundi/ https://goodfish.org.au/species/barramundi/ https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-04-04/the-great-barramundi-debate-free-or-farmed/6370360 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-04-04/the-great-barramundi-... https://www.humptydoobarramundi.com.au/ https://www.humptydoobarramundi.com.au/

adrianN 4y ago

The best thing we can do is to eat less fish. There is no ethical way to fish from an overfished ocean. A distant second is to eat fish like sardines which are further down the food chain than, say, tuna.

kortilla 4y ago
Abstinence doesn’t work. The best thing we can do is heavily promote farmed fish. Heavy heavy taxation on anything wild.
- barbazoo 4y ago
  > Abstinence doesn’t work Why do you think that?
  - RGamma 4y ago
    The planet may be limited but consumer entitlement is not.
  - drewm1980 4y ago
    It was news to me until recently, but the shifting of blame for destructive business practices onto the consumer is extremely well documented to be greenwashing. i.e.: https://www.vox.com/22429551/climate-change-crisis-exxonmobil-harvard-study https://www.vox.com/22429551/climate-change-crisis-exxonmobi... It's not inconsistent to boycott destructive products as an individual, but political pressure should focus on flat out banning destructive business practices. The electoral system failed to prevent another oil-drilling president from entering office, but it's still possible his administration will be successfully sued in court under USA's (admittedly weak looking) version of Duty of Care laws. The TLDR is that ~some democracies have it baked into the constitution that the government must act in the interests of the citizens, and are getting successfully sued in court to do so, despite regulatory capture and corrupt politicians.
    - evandijk70 4y ago
      I have read this argument many times and I still don't understand it. You can attack emissions by limiting supply (stopping new oil drilling projects) or by limiting demand (flying less / driving less etc.). Both should work, since supply and demand are generally balanced. Reducing supply without reducing demand (what you seem to be proposing) will lead to massive price increases and energy poverty. This is confirmed by the energy crisis in Europe this winter, which was the result of a sudden decrease in supply. Reducing demand without reducing supply will lead to massive price decreases, which should increase demand from those that are less worried about climate change. The transition to renewables can only be done by reducing both supply (less oil drilling) and demand (consumers and industry). I don't see how advocating for flying less, eating less meat, buying heat pumps etc. constitutes greenwashing, even if it oil companies co-opt it to deflect attention from themselves.

drewm1980 4y ago

The way certifications and accreditations work in the fishing industry is covered in the documentary Seaspiracy.

batmaniam 4y ago
And to sum it up: basically the entire sustainability accreditations have been taken over by corporate interests. So the label itself on every seafood item is super inaccurate and doesn't actually save the planet or the fish population at all. Not even a dent.

lm28469 4y ago

Eat less of it and buy the expensive stuff. Expensive = better margin = less fish needed to pay the wages, and 99% of the time expensive = high end sustainable It's not bulletproof but it's a good rule of thumb, I eat fish once in a blue moon, last time it was a can of "traditionally hand fished" tuna, 40 euros a kilo If it's cheap as fuck there is no way it's sustainable, you're either abusing nature or fellow humans, or both

peanuty1 4y ago
I'm less bothered with "abusing" fellow humans than destroying nature.
- lm28469 4y ago
  We're part of nature. If the "us vs them" is at that level now we're fucked
  - toomuchtodo 4y ago
    Can we not admit we’re fucked and any effort at this point is to take the edge off the pain we’re going to experience globally over the next century or two?
  - modo_mario 4y ago
    A quick google top result check shows: "all natural phenomena and plant and animal life, as distinct from man and his creations" I dare say that's the way it was used and intended so semantics doesn't really bring anyone forward here. I'm also not really sure what you're alluding to with the "us vs then" bit.
  - red-iron-pine 4y ago
    There is no shortage of humans. Arguably too many. There is a shortage of nature. On top of that, the ecosystems are changing, and once they're gone they're probably not coming back. We could lose half of the population tomorrow and still, eventually, hit that predicted 10 billion souls -- it would just take a lil longer. If WA and BC turn into chaparral things like Salmon and Snow Crab ain't gonna live there any more, and never live there again.

FuriouslyAdrift 4y ago

https://www.msc.org/what-you-can-do/eat-sustainable-seafood/fish-to-eat https://www.msc.org/what-you-can-do/eat-sustainable-seafood/... Herring is a good bet long term. China will fish the Pacific to death.