Saving Seafood

Canada disputes U.S. environmentalist claims on right whale protections

October 7, 2022 — The federal government is challenging charges from U.S. environmentalists that it’s not doing enough to protect critically endangered north Atlantic right whales, claiming measures taken since 2018 have reduced the risk of entanglements in the critical Gulf of St. Lawrence snow crab fishery by 82 per cent.

The new statistic was unveiled by Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) at a parliamentary committee meeting held after the latest environmental condemnation — a red rating from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch — recommending consumers avoid buying Canadian snow crab and lobster because of the risk posed to right whales from entanglements in fishing rope.

“We disagree with it,” said Adam Burns, an acting assistant deputy minister.

Burns was repeatedly questioned about the red rating on Sept. 27, the first of six meetings planned on right whales by the DFO committee.

“Canada worked to ensure that [Seafood Watch] had the necessary information to make a fair and balanced assessment of Canada’s management regime. Unfortunately, we do not believe that they took all of that into consideration in their findings and did not recognize the differences in Canada’s regime from those in the U.S.,” Burns testified.

DFO is not disputing that north Atlantic right whales are imperilled.

Read the full article at CBC News

Tilapia has a terrible reputation. Does it deserve it?

October 24th, 2016 — When it comes to fish, no species brings out the haters like tilapia.

Read up on it, and you’ll find tilapia described with words like “muddy” and “earthy”; there are entire forum threads devoted to its inferiority. This very newspaper, back in 2007, called it “the fish that chefs love to hate.”

Should we really be so hard on this fast-growing freshwater fish?

In the world of food, there aren’t too many propositions that get universal agreement, but here’s one: Our oceans are overfished. If we’re going to continue to eat fish, and to feed it to the people scheduled to join us on this planet in the coming years, we have to farm it. And if we’re going to farm fish, an adaptable, hardy fish like tilapia is an excellent candidate.

Yet a combination of rumors and credible reports works against it. Perhaps you’ve heard that tilapia are raised in cesspools and live on poop? Even the USDA says there is — or, at least, used to be — some truth in that. The agency’s 2009 report on Chinese imports notes that “Fish are often raised in ponds where they feed on waste from poultry and livestock.”

Before we meet that fact with a chorus of “ewww,” it’s worth noting that turning feces into fish would be the agricultural equivalent of spinning straw into gold. Although there are important safety concerns in that kind of system, if you can manage those risks, you’ve got one of the most sustainable foods going. It’s a downright Rumplestiltskinnian miracle, and we should root for it, not against it.

The question is whether that still happens. To find out, I went to the source: Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch program, which rates seafood choices based on whether they have been responsibly fished or farmed. Seafood Watch lists tilapia from nine different sources. Four (from Peru, Canada, Ecuador and the United States) are rated “Best Choices,” another four (from China, Taiwan, Mexico and Indonesia) are “Good Alternatives,” and only one (from Colombia) is rated “Avoid.” I asked Ryan Bigelow, the Seafood Watch program’s engagement manager, to give me a rundown on the sustainability issues.

Read the full story at The Washington Post