What’s On Your Plate?
From the other current BioBulletin stories, you can see that various fish species are in real trouble. Consumer demand and destruction of aquatic habitat have seriously depleted many populations. If this concerns you, but you love to eat fish and shellfish, there is a way to make a difference: choose carefully when it comes to shopping at the fish market or picking an entrée at a seafood restaurant.
Following is information on various popular food species, excerpted from the AudubonGuide to Seafood. This guide was designed to help seafood lovers make sound decisions by informing them of the ecological costs associated with getting various species onto their dinner plates. Based on data involving the population health, management effectiveness, and indirect environmental impacts of different fisheries, species have been ranked into three categories. These range from food fishes whose capture entails severe ecological damage, to those that are less problematic but still of significant concern, to those that can be guiltlessly consumed.
|