For many Australians, the day before Christmas is the fishiest time of the year. The Sydney Fish Market is famously open for a marathon 36 hours straight, as is Kailis Bros fish market in Perth and Conway Fish Trading in Melbourne’s Footscray.
But in addition to wondering where you can get seafood, when you can get seafood and how much you’ll have to pay for your seafood (more than usual, this year), many Australians are also unsure of how to get seafood that is sustainably sourced. A recent survey by YouGov, on behalf of the Marine Stewardship Council, found just 33% of Australians knew where to purchase sustainably sourced prawns.
Given seafood is the most globally traded food commodity, according to the World Trade Organisation, this shouldn’t be surprising. “The Australian fishing industry imports 70% of our seafood by volume, but exports about 50% by value,” says Adrian Meder, the sustainable seafood program manager of the Australian Marine Conservation Society.
Thanks to seafood’s complex supply chains and the sheer variety available, making choices that have a light impact – in terms of stock levels and collateral damage to protected species and to the marine environment – might seem daunting.
There is also internal debate within the marine sciences about what should and should not be considered sustainable. This means sustainability advice can be contradictory, as different bodies have different methods for assessment. So, where does that leave you?
When a cod is not a cod
“Around a third of seafood globally [is] being mislabelled or misdescribed,” says Alex Webb, of the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC). The council is a not-for-profit organisation, primarily funded by logo licensing and donations, which sets global standards for sustainable wild-caught seafood and offers a global labelling program called the “blue fish tick”. The program has a sister organisation, the Aquaculture Stewardship Council, which offers certification standards and a tick for farmed fish.
In order to qualify for a blue fish tick, fisheries have to undergo multiple stages of assessment, undertaken by an independent third party. According to the MSC, about 80% of applicants to the program drop out at the pre-assessment phase. At present, 15% of the global wild-caught fish supply by value is certified by the MSC, while in Australia that figure rises to 38%.
The certification process places a high standard on correct labelling and provenance, Webb says. “Our traceability system almost eradicates that issue. We do DNA testing that shows in over 99% of cases, seafood with that blue fish tick is what it says it is.”
Meder agrees mislabelling is “a really serious issue in Australia”. He gives the example of fish-and-chip shop flake, which should be gummy shark but could just as easily be mako or even “an endangered hammerhead shark”.
“That’s actually a great thing that the blue tick does: it provides a really high standard of traceability for a fish,” he adds. “It’s very difficult to buy a fish with a blue tick that isn’t well accounted for.”
When enough is not enough
While the Marine Stewardship Council and Australian Marine Conservation Society are aligned on issues of traceability, they take different approaches to their recommendations.
The Australian Marine Conservation Society (AMCS) tries to provide a rating system that covers the vast majority of local and imported fish available in Australia, via a website and app – the Sustainable Seafood Guide. Fish are ranked on a traffic-light system of red “say no”, amber “eat less” and green “better choice”. With the AMCS guide, “fisheries don’t have a choice per se as to whether they go under the ruler”, Meder says.
Some fish that are red – based on the AMCS guide – still receive a blue tick from the MSC. Webb says the guidebook approach, which is used by the global seafood ratings alliance, of which the AMCS is a member, “may inadvertently stigmatise entire species”.
“What we’re saying is a fishery has been looked at independently by a team of scientists and there’s the traceability too, so when you see the blue fish tick it’s a really easy choice,” he says.
Last year, however, the MSC faced criticism internationally, including by one of its founding stakeholders, the World Wildlife Fund.
“A certification scheme, because they work closely with industry and government, may have more access to more information,” Meder says. The Marine Stewardship Council “tend to deliver ... with a requirement to make a certain amount of progress … whereas we tend to look just at the environmental outcomes are being met right now”.
Is no seafood at all the most sustainable choice?
Meder and Webb are both keen to emphasise it is possible to eat seafood sustainably. Meder says abstaining is “a valid choice, but for someone like myself, I work in this field, I’m passionate about marine conservation, and a big part of that connection with the ocean ... comes through fishing and eating seafood”.
Webb says: “Should we stop eating fish? No, we don’t believe so, because not only do jobs and communities depend on the fishing industry, but if we were to just stop eating fish right now then we’re only going to move that protein demand on the land. In terms of animal protein, fish is a low carbon protein.” This suggestion dovetails with research from the journal of Global Environmental Change, which suggests a “low food-chain diet” that includes forage fish and mollusks is second only to veganism in terms of its low carbon footprint.
A prawn that ticks both boxes
When it comes to making a sustainable choice, using either the blue fish tick or the Sustainable Seafood Guide is certainly better than using neither. Both Webb and Meder say consumer demand has driven significant advances in the sustainability of fisheries over the past few decades.
If you want to be really certain about your seafood, using both the blue fish tick – to guarantee supply chain traceability – and the AMCS guide at once is the best bet. For wild-caught Christmas prawns, that means buying from the Spencer Gulf of South Australia. That fishery has earned a blue fish tick and is the first wild-caught prawn fishery to earn a green rating in the Sustainable Fish Guide.
“It’s really wonderful that, come Christmas time, we can tell Australians about a wild prawn fishery that’s made our green list,” Meder says. “If you asked me that question 10 years ago, I would have struggled to recommend fisheries.”