My colleagues at the Room for Debate blog have initiated a valuable discussion around this question:
Fish plays a starring role in the?Mediterranean diet?that?s supposed to keep us healthy. And yet it?s a?disappearing commodity. Meanwhile, there is growing concern about?what is sustainable, or even?identifiable. Is there a way to meet consumer demand for quality seafood and protect threatened marine life at the same time?
The conversation includes two of my favorite fish mavens ? Paul Greenberg, the author of ?Four Fish,??on the role of sustainable aquaculture (a particular focus of mine) and Callum Roberts, the author of??The Ocean of Life: The Fate of Man and the Sea,??on the value of no-fishing zones.
But there are other important contributions, including a push to re-examine the size limits on lobsters in Maine and other states from?Diane Cowan,?a senior scientist at?The Lobster Conservancy:
The intent of a minimum size is to give lobsters a chance to reproduce at least once. Unfortunately, extreme harvest rates targeting one-pound and 1.25-pound lobsters have led to a situation in which size limits fall short of their aim to increase reproductive output. While part of the problem is that harvest rates minimize the number of lobsters growing to sizes exceeding the maximum, the larger problem is that a vast majority of harvested lobsters are too small to have borne offspring. Worst of all, while lobsters can reach sizes exceeding 40 pounds, intense fishing ? targeting lobsters weighing as little as one pound ? has truncated the size structure of the population in favor of small lobsters.
What she says about lobsters applies to many fish species, as well. In both cases, the goal should be to make sure the sea retains plenty of ?BOFFs,? an acronym used by marine conservationist Carl Safina and Jane Lubchenco, the former administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, to describe the ?big old fat females? that are huge egg producers and the cornerstone of healthy marine species populations. Here?s the explanation of this concept that Safina provided while we were fishing for striped bass several years ago:
Head to ?Too Few Fish in the Sea? back at Room for Debate for the rest of the discussion.
If consumer concern about the environmental impacts of seafood choices rises, there?s ample evidence that better practices will follow. The best and worst practices are starkly different. For the down side of Asian shrimp farming, watch ?Cheap Shrimp, Hidden Costs,? an excellent documentary produced by University of British Columbia journalism students:
To see how shrimp farming can be done without antibiotics and mangrove destruction, watch ?Linda Thornton: Seeking Sustainability, One Shrimp at a Time,? the documentary shot by my Pace University documentary students:
Source: http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/04/sustainable-seafood-seas-optional/?partner=rss&emc=rss
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