An Evaluation of Sustainable Seafood Guides: Implications for Environmental Groups and the Seafood Industry (Thalassorama) (Report‪)‬

Introduction The mid-1990s marks the inception of the sustainable seafood movement (McGovern 2005). The sustainable seafood movement is represented by several approaches toward creating demand for sustainable seafood, including boycotts, seafood guides, and ecolabeling (Roheim and Sutinen 2006). The first sustainable seafood guide was launched in 1998 in Audubon magazine with a ranked list of seafood, intended to provide consumers with information to make environmentally benign seafood purchasing decisions (Safina 1998). Seafood guides provide a ranking process, based on methodology and criteria that evaluate environmental and biological criteria of species, fisheries, or aquaculture practices. The rankings are summarized in a traffic light system of red (items to avoid), yellow (good alternatives), and green (best choices). Some of the criteria considered for ranking each species from capture fisheries include: how it responds to fishing pressure, abundance, gear impacts, by-catch, and management (EDF 2008). Issues upon which they determine rankings for aquaculture include: system design, feed content, water pollution, risk to other species, and ecosystem effects. A red list item is subject to one or more serious problems such as overfishing; high by-catch; serious habitat damage; poor management; or farming methods that have serious environmental impacts, such as widespread pollution, the spread of disease, chemical use, and escaped fish. Yellow list items have fewer problems, but may have problems with their management, how they are caught or farmed or the health of the habitat. Green list items are either wild fish from healthy, well-managed populations, caught using fishing gear that does little harm to sea life and marine habitats; or farmed fish raised in systems that control pollution, the spread of disease, chemical use, and escaped fish.