Surprisingly, many of us don’t.
The tuna you had on the salad last night may have been from waters off the coast of India. Your farmed raised tilapia may have been raised on a farm in Indonesia. At the end of the day, what safe fish options do we actually have?
I know there are many of you that do not eat any kind flesh, including fish, but many of us enjoy the bounty of the seas.
So what is a greeny to do?
There are quite a few things we can easily do, the most obvious of which is reading labels. Some labels are a bit deceiving, however, so the fantastic people at the Monterey Bay Aquarium have made it easy on everyone. They have created a program called Seafood Watch and pretty much everyone I know has an amazing guide in their pockets as a quick reference. They even have it set up for mobile access. You can send in the type of fish and the reply is everything you need to know about that type of fish and whether or not it is a sustainable choice.
If you are really trying to live green, buying local isn’t the only thing you have to worry about. A large part of it is knowing the methods involved in sustaining that product. Having a pocket guide is a handy way of checking if the choices your making are going to be the right ones. Fish are very important- not just as a food source, but for many other things as well.
Fish make up more than half of all documented species of vertebrates and teach us a lot about many things. Some of the things fish are useful for in science include:
-how to freeze cells
-morphology
-hydrodynamics
-survival (lost at sea?)
-bioluminescence
-reproductive strategies
… and more.
While aquaculture seems to be better than over-harvesting the oceans, some fish are not well farmed. Recently science has been finding greener ways of farming certain fish. This does seem to be the most feasible solution, but there is still a lot of tweaking to do.
Let us not forget the aesthetic beauty the oceans provide us with as well! The photo at the start of this post is from a reef right off shore at one of the beaches here on island and is one of my favorite snorkle spots.
So, go! Enjoy your fish! Just do it in a way that promotes the sustainable lifestyle, that way we can all enjoy the bounty of nature’s breadbasket for generations.
An original 5 Minutes for Going Green post. Read more from Marizela and her love of all things science-related (with occasional pictures of her doggy) at her personal site, Potspoon!
And remember, the Bummas Giveaway is going on until Sunday March 1st at 7pm EST, and all you have to do to enter is comment on the giveaway post with a valid email address; if you haven’t entered yet, what are you waiting for?
