Why sustainable sourced fish isn't completely sustainable

When was the last time you enjoyed eating fish, like sushi, fish and chips, or a fish burger? For most Lakesiders, not too long ago. However, overfishing is a big problem, and the voids where fish once lived are being taken over by squid and jellyfish. This is bad because seals and other marine life cannot be sustained without fish, and neither can we. (And while you might argue that calamari might have some health benefits, it is overall less healthy than fish and high in cholesterol.) We have taken some measures to stop overfishing and bycatch (stuff that gets caught in fishing nets and killed that was not intended to be there) like turtles, dolphins, seals, and whales. However, it’s not enough.

 A lot of fish packages say, “sustainably sourced fish,” or that the fish are raised in farms so they don’t reduce wild stocks. Even with those measures, however, they are not completely sustainable. For example, farm-raised fish are often fed fishmeal, a cheap protein source made from fish. Fish are farmed to make food to feed fish! Indeed, 20 percent of fishmeal is made of fish from the herring family farmed off the coast of Peru. They are vastly overfished and then ground into a powder. This ground-up fishmeal makes food for farmed fish like salmon and aquarium food like betta pellets as well as fish flakes, pig food, and fish oil for human consumption. There is virtually no sustainable fishmeal, so for the most eco-friendly fish foods, try daphnia or bloodworms.

The least eco-friendly fish is tuna of all forms. Tuna overfishing has led to a 85 percent decrease in fish stocks in the past 80 years from them being fished from the sea at this tremendous rate. If you want to be an eco-friendly fish consumer, try to avoid tuna. The exception is rod-caught tuna, which has zero bycatch because it is caught one at a time with a fishing rod, meaning that other animals cannot be caught in nets. It also has less chance of overfishing as bycatch (for any fish) includes sharks, turtles, dolphins, and even seabirds. 

Cod and pollock are usually sustainable when caught with U.S. regulations. About 26 percent of all fish in the U.S. is illegally caught, however, which is never sustainable even if the seller marks it as such. Many may be advertised as sustainable, but while it may be sustainable to the species being fished, bycatch is unavoidable. Around 300,000 whales, dolphins, and porpoises are killed as bycatch yearly. Bycatch kills other animals by getting them entangled in nets. They starve and dry out when the net is pulled above water. This means we have to be vigilant about which brands we are buying from.

 Though the fishing world seems horrible, it's not all bad. We put lights on nets to divert sea turtles. In 1990, the Atlantic cod population was 3,000 individuals, just 1 percent of their healthy usual population of 300,000. Efforts have been made to save the cod, and they should be back to their original stocks by 2030. 

That being said, fishing for food can be a tricky thing. Fish stocks have fallen greatly, and we need to find more eco-friendly ways to collect the sea’s fruits if we want them to keep providing us with what we need. So next time you’re out buying or eating seafood, make sure it’s sustainable!