1 Fish, 2 Fish, 3 Fish, No Fish

If you're a fan of seafood like me, I'm sure that you are aware by now that there seems to be a push in Australia to buy wild-caught marine produce, rather than what is farmed or less popular, or "less palatable". The most obvious aspect of purchasing wild-caught fish is the price; farmed and more sustainable produce are by far the cheapest sources of seafood, however, people are actually preferring the more expensive, less sustainable options. This might have something to do with providers flying a banner of "FRESH!" over all the overfished keystone species, a marketing scheme to encourage sales of more expensive seafood that I'll admit I am often tempted by. I mean, sure, if the other stuff is NOT fresh I will pay more for the fresh product out of fear of food poisoning.

Bluefin tuna: "FRESH!"

Why is farmed seafood considered less fresh? Of course, it is against food handling and safety regulations for suppliers of seafood to provide any potentially old or poorly fish for human consumption. Quite often I hear of the public misconception of farmers raising stressed animals, over-using antibiotics, and rearing animals in cramped conditions in fouled water. Having studied aquaculture and biotechnology in Australia, this is definitely not the case. Farmers are very concerned for the well-being of their livestock, and will go to great financial lengths to fund researchers to find the best ways to keep fish calm and happy even during the harvesting process. The belief that farmed produce is less fresh is a a fallacy; there is no difference between flesh quality of wild-caught and farmed seafood, if any, it is the wild-caught seafood that is of lesser quality. And this leads to the next question, why is it that farmed produce is always cheaper? The real reasons farmed seafood in Australia is so cheap is because it is struggling to compete with public misconceptions and the prices set by fisheries that catch their product from the wild.

There are also a myriad other reasons why wild-caught stock are relatively expensive. Feel free to post any questions below, but essentially I want to make the point that there is no reason why people shouldn't buy farmed seafood unless they are concerned about water pollution or the sustainability of fishmeal used to feed aquatic livestock. There are, of course, seafood that is not farmed and can only be wild-caught. In this instance, I recommend that before you buy seafood from anywhere it is worth asking a a few questions about it. You could ask when buying seafood "Is this species overfished?" to assess how vulnerable the desired product is in the wild, "Where was this animal caught?" as local produce does not always mean that it is not vulnerable, and "Is it a deep sea or a long-lived species?" to see if it may be a species that is potentially vulnerable to fishing (long-lived and/or deep sea species tend to reproduce slowly, so overfishing of sexually mature adults could lead to major drops in population size).

Orange roughy is a deep sea, long lived fish. They don't become sexually mature until they are between 30-50 yrs old!

There is also a free iPod app called Australia's Sustainable Seafood Guide compiled by the Australian Marine Conservation Society. For more information on what is sustainable, a good place to first check out is GoodFishBadFish.

Images:
Bluefin tuna image accessed 18.10.2011, URL: http://thewe.cc/thewei/_/images10/valued_life/bluefin-tuna_greenpeace.jpe
Orange roughy image accessed 19.10.2011, URL: http://australianmuseum.net.au/Uploads/Images/3298/255%20Hoplost%20atlanticus%20S07_.jpg