February 11, 2020 — The options for eating seafood are plentiful in Miami, from beach shacks to fine-dining establishments and everything in between. Equally plentiful is the seafood caught by U.S. fishermen that I and other Florida chefs are proud to serve and promote.
The United States boasts some of the best managed fisheries in the world, making American seafood a preferred choice for sustainability advocates like myself and, increasingly, for consumers.
But this wasn’t always the case. Until the mid-1990s, many U.S. fish stocks were being caught at an unsustainable rate — depleting the ocean of many of the species we love to eat.
Fortunately, a wide range of stakeholders committed to sustaining U.S. fisheries and fishermen worked with Congress to make key changes to a federal law known as the Magnuson-Stevens Act (MSA). As a result of those changes, more than 45 of our country’s fish populations have recovered from perilously low levels, and the law ensures that they are now fished sustainably. For chefs in Florida, with more than 8,000 miles of coastline along the Atlantic and the Gulf, that means we have access to sustainable seafood on a regular basis.