As agriculture and energy production have made strides toward becoming more sustainable, the world’s fisheries have lagged behind. But restoring our beleaguered oceans to health will require an emphasis on diversification and conservation — and a more sensible mix of fishing practices.
When it comes to sustainability, use of the sea remains a step behind. There is still little penetration of locally produced seafood in most greenmarkets. Many consumers remain confused about which seafoods are safe from the threat of chemical contamination. Some strain to remember advice from environmental organizations on which species get green, yellow, or red lights for their conservation status. Others struggle to weigh the environmental effects of commercial fishing versus aquaculture in choosing which fish to buy.
Pollan and Greenberg each make recommendations. Primary for both authors is to stop subsidizing industrial-level production. The conservation group, WWF, estimates that global subsidies to commercial fisheries total $15 billion per year, with a sizeable portion going to industrial fishing fleets. The watchdog group, fishsubsidy.org, calculates that between 2000 and 2006, the European Union provided 6 billion Euros ($8.4 billion) to the fishing industry by helping fund vessel construction or subsidizing fuel. Those subsidies helped spur an expansion of EU fishing fleets in countries such as France and Spain, which is one cause of the overfishing of numerous species, most notably the giant bluefin tuna in the Mediterranean. In the U.S. alone, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) said in a 2009 report that between 1996 and 2004, the annual subsidies to commercial fisheries exceeded $700 million, much of it for fuel costs. The EWG concluded that this subsidization is equal to one-fifth the value of the catch itself and that it contributes directly to overfishing.
If seafood products from these subsidized fisheries were priced at what they truly cost, they would be less attractive to consumers, and there would be greater incentive to eat a broader array of healthier food items or products with less environmental damage associated with them.
Read the complete opinion piece from Yale Environment 360.