In May 2003, I had the great honor of meeting the legendary Harvard
scientist Dr. Edward O. Wilson. When I thanked him for signing our
letter calling on the UN to institute a moratorium on longline fishing
in the Pacific to prevent the extinction of the Pacific leatherback,
his reply was, “It’s a no-brainer.”
Industrialized fishing fleets that will leave depauperate, unhealthy
oceans for future generations are destroying marine biodiversity.
Industrial longline fishing boats on the high seas set 5 million baited
hooks every day, more than 2 billion each year, to catch the great fish
of the world—including swordfish, tuna, and sharks.
These fish are the lions and tigers of the sea—the top predators of
the marine food chain, the keystone species that maintain and regulate
the ocean’s food webs. We need to stop eating these species. A growing
human population will continue to rely on the marine ecosystem for
sources of protein.
If eating swordfish and tuna is out of the question, what marine
animals can we eat? Different environmental organizations offer various
answers to this difficult question, and some have issued seafood guides
based on criteria including:
Research into these criteria for popular seafood
choices is conducted and ranked with a recommendation as to whether a
species is a best choice, a species to avoid, or somewhere in between.
I think two very important criteria have been left out of the equation:
What role does the species play in the food chain, and is the species
healthful for human consumption?
For example, some of these seafood guides don’t place some populations
of swordfish, tuna, and shark in the “avoid” category. Yet these fish
are currently on the FDA and EPA list of species that children and
women who intend to reproduce shouldn’t eat because large fish at the
top of the food chain concentrate mercury in their flesh. These same
species are caught by industrial longline fishing, which has been
identified as the primary cause for the decline of the critically
endangered Pacific leatherback turtle, and the 90 percent decline in
giant fish recently reported in Nature.
Twenty years ago, Francis Moore Lappé wrote Diet for a Small Planet,
a book that sold three million copies and helped an entire generation
understand the social and personal significance of our everyday food
consumption habits. Lappé taught us that it takes ten pounds of grain
to produce one pound of beef, and that if we eat lower on the food
chain we can improve our own health as well as the health of our
environment.
If we are going to co-exist with healthy ocean ecosystems, we need a “seafood diet for a small planet.”
The seafood guides represent the first attempts at moving seafood
lovers in the right direction. But to date, no single list incorporates
a holistic view that encourages consumers to eat lower on the seafood
chain (for example, small fish and shellfish harvested by acceptable
methods), avoid fish with high levels of toxins, and also recognize
that our overall seafood consumption must be reduced.
As for not eating mercury-tainted swordfish, tuna, shark, and king mackerel? That’s a no-brainer.
Todd Steiner is a biologist and the director of Turtle Island Restoration Network (www.seaturtles.org),
which works to preserve and restore marine biodiversity. He has been
actively involved in many of the major fisheries issues of the past two
decades, including tuna/dolphin purse seining, sea turtles/shrimp
trawling, mercury in seafood, and the impacts of the growing longlining
fleet on a number of target and bycatch species.
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