The gleaming cod delivered whole from Paul Mettivier's Debra Ann II to shareholders in the Cape Ann Fresh Catch program were pulled from the ocean just hours earlier and only a few miles from the dock.
That would seem to epitomize the ideal of locally harvested, sustainable food.
But according to the expert authors of a growing number of "eco-friendly" seafood guides, the Fresh Catch cod, like most New England seafood, is best avoided if you care about the health of the oceans.
From environmental nonprofits to food conglomerates, celebrity chefs to aquariums, the business of "greening" seafood has taken off in tandem with trendy calls for socially-conscious eating and dire predictions that the seemingly limitless stocks of fish are verging on collapse.
Even Wal-Mart has promised to sell only "sustainable seafood" by 2011.
But who decides what's sustainable seafood and how?
In the United States, the publication with the most pull is the Seafood Watch pocket guide produced by the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California. Primarily funded by the Packard and Pew foundations, the aquarium has become a campus center of commercial fishing opponents and has close ties to Jane Lubchenco, the activist and academic chosen by President Obama to head the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Monterey Bay's Seafood Watch divides seafood purchases into three categories "Best Choices," "Good Alternatives" and "Avoid."
The only New England fish among the 19 species qualifying for the "Best Choices" label are striped bass and longfin squid. Swordfish qualifies only if it is caught with a harpoon or handline.
In the "Avoid" category are Atlantic cod, haddock (unless caught with hook and line), flounder, halibut, monkfish, skate and shark, including dogfish. These are to be shunned because they're "caught or farmed in ways that harm other marine life or the environment."
That's despite a tripling of the Gulf of Maine cod population since 1994, and a doubling of Georges Bank cod population since its low point in 2005, according to figures cited last year by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Monkfish, meanwhile, was hailed as a "success story" by NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service this year because of its recovery status, along with sea scallops and bluefish, both of which could only make the middle category, "Good Alternatives."
Read the complete story at The Gloucester Daily Times.