Countries can prevent markets from being utilized to off-load those fish. It's not entirely preventable, but it can be made difficult enough to not be profitab

Countries can prevent markets from being utilized to off-load those fish. It's not entirely preventable, but it can be made difficult enough to not be profitable. The sad, unfortunate, fact is that some countries' (Japan, China, for two examples, EDIT: but certainly some citizens from nearly all countries) citizens care far less about the sustainability of their fishing, and more about having what they desire, when they desire. Should the price go up due to under-population? They're OK with that too. There are already systems in-place for tracking sustainable fish, and ensuring that each fish was sustainably harvested (my gulf wild is one such: http://mygulfwild.com/ http://mygulfwild.com/), but until the consumers in most markets demand them, they won't take off. For our family, we have a simple rule: we don't buy fish (based on species) that aren't as a rule sustainably harvested. Dead-stop. We don't buy them at restaurants either. Dead-stop. We prefer fish we catch ourselves, over all other fish, and secondly fish that are harvested and sold through markets which monitor for illegal behavior, where we know the operators of the market. I rarely eat fish from a restaurant where the chef doesn't know the chain from which that fish was supplied. Around here, there are enough good fish places and markets that a chef can't argue they couldn't know.