Smoked salmon (hot or cold) is popular in many places around the world. Sustainable Sources of Fish. Barramundi has a delicate texture and a sweet, mild taste. If you still have a hankering for tuna, look for canned products that indicate “pole and line” or “one by one” fishing methods. Avoid trawl caught sablefish and long-line fish from California, Oregon, and Washington which results in bycatch of vulnerable species. Shellfish farms are beneficial to the environment because they filter water. She’s especially keen on finding alternatives to superstar species like tuna and salmon. So looking for that little label on the packaging is simple, right? Related Pages toggle items. Not only are these species over-fished and over-consumed, many lesser-known alternatives are just as delicious. These shellfish can also be grilled, steamed, broiled or cooked in a braise or stew. It’s hard to find all three in one product.”, That might mean prioritizing one facet of sustainability over others. Salmon, Tuna, Sardines: This Is Your Complete Canned Fish Guide, The 8 Best Places to Buy Seafood Online in 2020, How to Cook Pacific Cod and Alaskan Pollock Fish, The 11 Best Speciality Food Stores of 2020. Jump to section. And in 2017, seafood watchdog SeaChoice released a report on Canadian eco-labels, critiquing the MSC for—among other things—re-certifying fisheries that failed to meet MSC requirements, and allowing overly generous timelines for improvement. In general, techniques that recreational anglers use are the most sustainable, so catching your own fish is the best option if you can. In the near future, look for sablefish produced with commercial marine aquaculture. Mackerel is very popular in Europe, especially Great Britain and Scandinavia, and the Japanese love it for sushi but it is just catching on in America. It goes well with white wines. © Copyright 2020 St. Joseph Communications. Saving money and reducing waste are among the many cogent reasons we should be eating more bycatch and fish that gets thrown away. Buying fish and shellfish can be complicated. Seafood export is a huge industry in southeast Asia, but human-rights problems are rampant, including chattel slavery (forced labour) and child labour. Leave the skin on—it crisps up nicely. Sardines, think BBQ's in the sun in the Mediterranean. Resources from our world’s oceans are not as unlimited as we once thought. Spain's favorite fish is gaining popularity with chefs in the States, look for hake to be the next trendy thing in restaurants. It has almost 50% more Omega-3 than salmon. If you’re unwilling to exclude marine species from your diet entirely, you can make sure to consume only those species that currently deemed sustainable. “That won’t be the same if you’re in Toronto.”. Sardines have a rich, strong flavor that is sometimes minerally. Pacific Sardines (wild-caught) Generally speaking, the smaller a fish is when harvested, the more quickly it can reproduce and the more sustainable it is. Here are five fish that should never, ever appear on your plate again. Cooking Dungeness Crab: Available live, freshly cooked, frozen or canned, this sweet and rich crab is great year round. Imported, longline mahi-mahi, or dolphinfish, is rated as one of the least eco-friendly fish by the Environmental Defense Fund. Choose high, fast heat like grilling, roasting, broiling, and pan-searing or long, slow preparations, such as braising. The federal government has mandated a “one-up, one-down” approach, meaning your grocer should be able to tell you the last place the product came from. Silver Hake (also known as Atlantic Whiting) is a wonderful white fish alternative to cod and haddock. 1. Wild and some cold-water shrimp (look for the tiny pink ones from Canada in the freezer section) Wild salmon, either pink (a very sustainable variety found in cans) or Alaskan. Buying fish can feel like an ethical land mine. Canada’s sustainable fisheries. It is an excellent substitute for red snapper, grouper or Chilean sea bass. The meat of the Dungeness crab is snow-white, sweet and juicy. Fish farming’s bad rap is due in large part to offshore, open-net pens, which allow waste, chemicals, pesticides and parasites like sea lice to become concentrated in one area, or enter the wild. Avoid fish labeled "white hake.". They also create the potential for farmed fish to pass disease to wild populations nearby, or even escape. Bailey suggests choosing smaller fish like smelts, sardines or anchovies. It's also great on the grill. Cooking Sardines: Whole sardines can be cooked on the grill (be sure to remove the scales and guts). Pole catching eliminates bycatch of species like dolphins. Try a piccata sauce on … There are a few sustainable Canadian shrimp farms out there, however, including Ontario’s Planet Shrimp and British Columbia’s Berezan Shrimp, which sell their products mostly at fishmongers and high-end grocers. As the global population continues to grow, the need for sustainable and healthy protein sources is key and seafood will play an important role. GoodFish is Australia's Sustainable Seafood Guide - the first online sustainability guide for seafood consumers in Australia. Choosing not to eat fish is an option that some people choose to take to reduce demand for the resource and any associated environmental impacts or other reasons. Ocean Wise labels products as recommended or not, and products with the MSC blue fish label demonstrate to shoppers that the product has met the global gold standard for sustainability. Why it's sustainable: Dungeness is the best choice when it comes to crabs. Tapes philippinarum, Venerupis philippinarum, Ruditapes philippinarium Clams are versatile shellfish which you should only eat if they are from farmed sources (e.g. If you aren’t willing to give up meat, then it’s best to opt for the most sustainable meat you can find that fits your budget. Scallops are also often a good choice, especially if they’re diver-caught (try to avoid dredged bivalves and shellfish because of the damage it causes to the area.). Bottom trawling (used sometimes in cod and rockfish fisheries) scrapes the seafloor clean. Hake are members of the cod family and can be found at depths of over 1,000 metres. But it is possible to enjoy your seafood without a side of guilt—if you know what to look for. Look for Dungeness crab that is trap caught in Canada, California, Oregon and Washington. In general, the types of fish that are most popular in Canada are also relatively low in mercury. Why it's sustainable: Look for long-line caught sablefish from Alaska or the Canadian Pacific which is carefully regulated. Wild salmon is a classic staple of the chef's kitchen and much superior in flavor to the farmed variety. So can eating fish ever be sustainable? On this page. Pout, like Pollock is in the Cod family, so has a firm white flesh without bones in the fillet. Longlines, which are used to catch such fish as halibut and black cod are barbed with thousands of hooks that indiscriminately kill sharks, seabirds and anything else that swims by. Albacore tuna is subtle, white meat that can be flavored with practically anything, even strong flavors like lemon, black olives, tomatoes, and capers. Very very cheap, get them fresh and baste in garlic oils over the hot coals in summer . we are catching too many). Cod Haddock Herring Hoki Mackerel Shrimp/Prawn Salmon Sardine Tuna Halibut Home ; Eat sustainable seafood ; Sustainable fish to eat ; Hake; What is hake? Farmed oysters account for 95 percent of the world's total oyster consumption. Eco-labels are supposed to do the hard work of sifting through sustainability question for us, stamping the best products with a seal of approval. Char in particular, she says, is underappreciated. In the past few years, technological advances have made land-based aquaculture—which eliminates the risk of escapes and interaction with wild populations—much more cost-effective. We are proud of the fish and seafood that come from them. “They all have sustainable procurement policies,” says Arnold of the major chains, “but whether they’re following their own commitment is another question.”, “There are different dimensions of sustainability,” says Megan Bailey, an assistant professor and fisheries expert in the Marine Affairs Program at Halifax’s Dalhousie University.