Green Leaf Report

I spent the first twenty two years of my life in New Orleans, living the culture of locally harvested seafood cooked to perfection.  I miss those years, but I can no longer guarantee the source of my seafood, and have stopped eating it.  Europe is also having problems verifying the source of their seafood, though the culture has not changed yet to accommodate these issues.  How soon will extinction come?  Here’s a few highlights from this excellent NY Times article:

Huge boats, owned by companies in China, South Korea and Europe, fly flags of convenience from other nations. They stay at sea for years at a time, fishing, fueling, changing crews and unloading their catches to refrigerated boats at sea, making international monitoring extremely difficult…

While small local fishermen in West Africa tend to fish sustainably, large seagoing boats use practices that are dangerous to the environment, particularly the use of vast nets to trawl the sea bed. The nets destroy coral, and unsettle eggs and fish breeding grounds. They gulp up fish that cannot be sold because they are too small. Their competition decimates local fishing industries.

By the time huge mechanized vessels have thrown the unsalable juveniles back into the sea, they are often dead, bringing stocks another step closer to extinction. Of the estimated 90 million tons of fish caught worldwide each year, about 30 million tons are discarded, Ms. Vesper of the World Wide Fund for Nature said…

To many traders, the origin of the fish hardly matters. “We try to do something, but once it’s here, my attitude is that if it’s been caught it should be sold.” Mr. Fawcitt said. “I’d hate to see it being thrown away.”

We need to bring responsibility in as consumers of fish, and acknowledge that the world cannot some cultural practices on such a massive scale. No more fishsticks for junior, no more shrimp cocktails at happy hour.  Europe is not alone in supporting these fishing problems, the US also needs to take a close look at the source of our food.