Mote Marine Laboratory

What's the Catch?

By: Nadine Slimak

New federal rules may help consumers hook into sustainable seafood sources

Talking about sustainable seafood is one thing, but finding out where the fish you pick up at the market came from isn’t always easy. Just ask Carole C. Baldwin, co-author of The Smithsonian sustainable seafood cookbook “One Fish, Two Fish, Crawfish, Bluefish.”

“When we were putting the cookbook together, one of the biggest complaints we had was that people couldn’t find out where their seafood came from,” she says. “If you ask a retailer, they almost never know where their fish came from.”

New federal rules should help change that when they go into effect in the spring. Under the 2002 Farm Bill, most seafood will have a label telling consumers at most markets what country the fish or shellfish came from and whether it was farmed or caught in the wild. (The rules don’t apply to restaurants.) In seafood, such information is increasingly important as Americans realize that oceans don’t have an endless supply of fish and decide to become environmentally conscious diners.

By choosing sustainable seafood — seafood that is caught or farmed in environmentally friendly ways — consumers can help protect ocean resources.

Dr. Kevan Main, director of Mote’s Center for Aquaculture Research and Development, which is on the cutting edge of developing environmentally friendly fish farming techniques, thinks the new rules are a good start to creating informed consumers and could help U.S. producers — like Mote — promote their products as well. “This rule will enable consumers to identify the origin of the seafood products they are purchasing and will help the U.S. producers to identify their products uniquely from foreign imports,” Main says. “This should be a plus for the U.S. producers.”

Download a Seafood Guide at www.mbayaq.org/cr/seafoodwatch.asp  or pick one up at Mote Aquarium.

Learn more about: Aquaculture