How to Read the Seafood Counter Like a Marine Biologist

0:00 I want you to picture a big sign over the seafood counter, like just a huge, huge thing. We support sustainable fishing, and right underneath it, on ice, is a fish that every independent guide says to avoid. Nobody broke a rule, in most countries, anyone can call seafood sustainable, and here's how to see through that sign and why it matters more than you think. We're gonna cover all this on this episode of How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Lewin, marine biologist and science communicator, here to give you information all about the ocean and how to protect it. So we cover ocean news, ocean science, ocean conservation so that you can learn more about the ocean, make better decisions, and maybe feel a little less 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. We started with the interview with David Shiffman, where he talked about his book, Why Sustainable Seafood Matters. You can pre-order that book. I'll put the link in the show notes. But also, we talked a lot about, how many we can fish, how we can use excluder devices to protect specific animals, and other devices that we can use or other fixes that we can use. And then yesterday, we talked all about, like, the type of gear that we use that could harm places, but also some areas it might be okay. And today, we're gonna be talking about what's behind that seafood counter and what's at that seafood counter, and how to behave around that seafood counter, 'cause often, I'm gonna tell you, when I walk up to a seafood counter, even locally here in Burlington, I'm like, "Oh, that looks really good.

1:28 That looks really good. How was this fish caught?" And I take out my app, I open up the Seafood Watch app from the Monterey Bay Aquarium, and I say, I ask them, "How was this fish caught?" 'Cause I look it up, and I'll say, "Okay, so let's look at grouper. How was it caught?" They're like, "I don't know." "Where is it from?" "I don't know." " Okay, well, I'm not gonna buy that 'cause you don't know. Is there something you do know to make sure that it's sustainably caught? I wanna make sure. I have this app here to tell me all that stuff." And sometimes they don't tell me, and I'll say like, "Look, I can't order from you because you can't tell me where any of this is caught. Is there someone else that could tell me?" And it makes a big kerfuffle, and you feel 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. Like, is it wild? is it farmed? Which ocean does it come from? Like, what's the label? sometimes it's just not there. Even if you get it right, the voice in your head is like, I'm one person. Does my dinner really matter if I get sustainable or not sustainable?" And today we answer both of those questions, how to choose and why it matters. Now, I've spent years helping people turn ocean worry into small specific actions, and this is the one I recommend often because it happens every week. A lot of people like seafood. In the United States and Canada, there's no standard legal definition for sustainable on seafood, the same goes for responsibly sourced. So compare that with labels that are regulated if a package says wild-caught and the fish was farmed, that's breaking the rules.

2:55 Sustainable, though, works differently. Like a store can say it, a brand can say it, and even every independent expert disagrees, nothing happens. So treat the sign over that counter as marketing, it's potentially greenwashing, and get your facts from the tools that we're gonna be talking about below. So the good news is that there are independent groups that have done the research for you. So eco labels on the packages, the Marine Stewardship Council's blue fish tick for wild seafood, the Aquaculture Stewardship Council's label for farm seafood, which we touched upon in the last episode about fish farms and protected areas. Each fishery or farm is assessed against a public standard, and the reports are free for anyone to read. Now, the seafood guides, most coastal regions have one, but the one that we 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 Fish Guide has one in the UK, Good Fish in Australia, and several WWF offices run guidance elsewhere. Most rate seafood as a best choice or good alternative or one to avoid. That's tends to be like the gambit of what the differences are, so avoid, best choice, good alternative. Now, MSC-certified fisheries now account for about 19.5% of the world's wild marine catch. Every US McDonald's Filet-O-Fish has carried the MSC label since 2013, and large retailers like Costco lean heavily on certified or approved seafood. Now, with that said, I've been to my local Costco, and that tick is not always on there.

4:28 I'm gonna tell you that right now. So make sure you see that tick. If you don't, tell them behind the counter. I've told them behind the counter, and they've actually gone and brought it up to the higher-ups, and then I saw, like there's something on there now. So hopefully that's the right thing. Now, here's the part that might surprise people. A good guide splits tuna by species and by the ocean it came from and how it was caught. So skipjack caught by pole and line in one ocean might be a best choice. Another tuna caught by a different gear somewhere else might be one to avoid. So remember that episode on bycatch, like the gear is often the whole story? That detail isn't always on the label.

5:09 So what you wanna do is you wanna check the package and the guide together, check the store and/or the brand website if you're unsure. Like these are the little things you have to do as you go through this. Ask the person behind the counter and ask nicely. don't be rude about it. and like they may be on minimum wage at the end of a long shift, so have an understanding. And like if you've ever been to a Costco, they have a lot of patience already. So if they don't know, choose something else. They're not the villain. The people behind the counter that work there, it's not up to them. It's up to the retailer to say, "Hey, here's the information that you need. Here's the seafood guide watch, and this is what we follow." In practice, almost every grocery store has some sort of sustainable options. Plenty of options won't be sustainable, and you may have to give up on a few of your favorite for a while, like until you know that they are but I wanna go over a little story here.

5:57 A diver gets on a boat in the Caribbean, heading out for a morning dive, on the reef. On the ride out, he tells everyone how much he loves coming to the islands because he can eat all the fresh fish, locally caught fish he wants. Like, he lives for that stuff. it's good stuff. It's fresh. They dive, and on the ride back, there seem to be a lot fewer fish on the reef than I remember. Local might be wonderful, but it can also mean pressure on a small reef that feeds a lot of hungry tourists. So check the guide even on vacation. It's something that we have to do all the time. And don't forget to eat the invaders. Invasive species like lionfish in the Caribbean and in the Western Atlantic, and blue catfish in the Chesapeake Bay. 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, so it's okay to overfish them. Prevention is still the best tool, so eating them is far better than doing nothing, so obviously, we need to stop them from coming in, but we can eat them. Eat them as much as you want. Now, when it comes to sharks, overfishing is the top threat to sharks, and many species are in serious trouble because of it. So some of the guys tell you to avoid all sharks, and a few shark fisheries are well-managed enough to earn a MSC certification, so a Marine Stewardship Council certification, or a good guide rating at least. So some are sustainably managed. you can never choose to eat shark because you love them, and that's, like, a fair personal choice.

7:21 It's a different claim from no sustainable shark fishery exists, and accuracy matters for credibility, you wanna know which shark species is sustainably fished and where they are. And you may not believe it, and that's fine. If you don't believe it, you don't have to eat shark. It's really up to you. Now, I wanna kind of go back to the voice in your head. Does one person matter when you're choosing this? if you're the only person in the world skipping a red-listed fish, the fishery, eh, it's not gonna notice. It's not gonna be that big of a deal. But when tens of thousands of shoppers and the rest of retailers buying on their behalf follow the same kind of guide, the fishery notices pretty quickly. Like, here's exactly what that looks like.

8:01 In 1987, Louisiana passed a law to stop state officers from enforcing the federal rule requiring turtle excluder devices and shrimp. Those are the trap doors from that bycatch episode we did a couple days ago that let sea turtles escape. So Louisiana became the only state refusing to enforce the rule. On October 2013, Seafood Watch put Louisiana shrimp on its red avoid list, specifically because of that law. It was the only state to get that rating. Now, the market responded after 13,000 restaurants and stores across the US that followed the guide stopped sourcing Louisiana caught shrimp. The shrimp industry, which had backed the original law, now wanted it gone. In 2015, the Louisiana legislature passed House Bill 668, repealing the 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, all the way from not just the customers, but from the retailers. Retailers are, like, the first point of contact with the customers. If customers are demanding Seafood Watch and sustainable stuff, they are saying, "Hey, we're gonna have to listen to this, and we can't buy from, fisheries that don't show that they follow these types of rules." That's a whole series in one story, a science-based rating, shoppers who used it, and a fishery that improved so it could keep selling it. If everybody did just a little better at the seafood counter, it would buy time for the bigger fixes, the catch limits, the better gear, the real protected areas. If we stop the demand for unsustainable fish, we can really make a difference, even if it's just one individual, but you multiply that by hundreds of thousands, and you're making a huge difference.

9:40 So before your next seafood purchase, download your country's seafood guide and look one item up before you buy it. Seafood Watch in the US, Ocean Wise in Canada, the Good Fish Guide in the UK, Good Fish in Australia, or whichever guide covers your region. One item, one look up, do it once, and you'll be surprised how quickly it becomes habit. I remember when Seafood Watch was in its, early days. Smartphones weren't a thing at that point, and they had this, like, little booklet, and you had to open the booklet, and they would send new booklets every year, and you would have everything, like the avoid, the good, what they recommend and all that kind of stuff. Now it's on the app. It's so easy. All you do is type in the fish, where it's from, and it gives you all the information.

10:20 It's so easy. When you're able to demand this, and you're able to focus on this, things like Louisiana shrimp, that changed because thousands of buyers looked something up, it really is. so your lookup is a part of that same pressure. It's a very important part So look, we did four episodes on sustainable seafood, plus we did an interview on sustainable seafood. By the way, you can pre-order Dave's book there's a link in the show notes. Fishing is the biggest pressure on ocean life. And when we follow the science, stocks rebuild, as well as we follow the laws and the policy. The cod came back. Still not there yet, but it came back. 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 starting to see that applied to more and variety of different, trawls. And where we fish matters as much as how much, and real protected areas lets reef recover and the seafood counter is where it all connects back to you. This is one of the biggest things that I recommend, is to make sure you follow the apps. The ocean can recover, and the people who depend on it can keep fishing when we use the tools that we have. It really comes down to that. It's a full participation from everybody. Now, if, it's a Saturday morning and you go to a fish counter 'cause you want seafood on your Saturday night, someone pulls up their phone, types in a fish, sees the rating, and chooses something else because they're 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 manager reads the sales numbers and calls a meeting about switching gear. That's really what it comes down to, and one good question before you buy, that's all it takes, And that's all the ocean is asking of you. It's that simple. And I wanna thank you for listening because you are doing the work. You are doing the work to make sure that you are educating yourself on the ocean, so you can feel better about the ocean and less anxious about the ocean and climate change and all that kind of stuff, but you can do better for the ocean, and you can have some really good seafood. So if you love a sustainably caught seafood in particular, let me know in the comments whatever app you're listening to on, or if you wanna hit me up on my socials, the links are in the show notes or in the description. I wanna thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast, and thank you for joining me this week.

12:34 I'm your host, Andrew Lewin. Thank you so much. Have a great weekend. I'll talk to you on Monday, and happy conservation