The more you learn about your carbon-footprint, the more you’ll realize that it’s weighed down as much by food choices as by what car you drive and your home energy program.  Food production comes with a cornucopia of green issues, from pesticide use to deforestation to global shipping.

No food issue, though, is more important than choosing the right fish to eat. Seafood merits special attention, because the fish varieties that we’re consuming could be on the brink of survival.  Ocean ecosystems are being wrenched apart by the overfishing of certain species and the destructive fishing techniques used to harvest others.

Fortunately, there’s help out there to assist you in sorting out what you can responsibly buy and what you should avoid.

Seafood Watch is a current, easy-to-use table of contents to the marine menu. It breaks down your seafood options into three categories, “Best Choices”, “Good Alternatives” and “Avoid.” These lists are kept and updated by the Monterey Bay Aquarium, an authority on marine health. You can download a pocket guide to use while shopping or use the iPhone application, handy for dining out.

For those who want to know why and how their favorite menu pescatarian choices have been graded, click through on any given species and find out more. Haddock, for instance, is considered either a “Good Alternative” or a fish to “Avoid” depending on the fishing technique used to catch it. Haddock caught the old-fashioned way, with a hook and line, are considered to have been reasonably harvested. Trawled Haddock, however, represent a destructive practice that’s harmful to coral and the ocean’s floor.

Now this gets to be a deep subject, so a new fish selector service has launched. FishChoice.com aims to help commercial buyers like restaurants and retailers hook up with sustainable fishing enterprises, so that the seafood industry can steer a new course. FishChoice.com is starting as a non-profit, funded by foundations and donors, but expects to earn some operating money from subscriber fees at a later date.

“It’s been difficult to find sustainable seafood at the right commercial quantities,” said Richard Boot, Founder & President of FishChoice.com, in a news release announcing the new service today.

“FishChoice.com provides a business solution to an environmental problem by creating a crucial link in the supply chain to connect buyers and sellers of sustainable seafood,” said Boot, a former chef who previously worked with a fishery advocacy group.

Soon maybe you won’t need that pocket guide.

(Image credits: Haddock, Monterey Bay Aquarium; FishChoice.com logo)

Greenpeace followed up the release this week of its latest Carting Away the Oceans scorecard with a friendly and fishy demonstration outside Trader Joe’s stores in San Francisco.

Greenpeace members, two of whom dressed as orange roughy and others who parodied Trader’s by wearing Hawaiian shirts mimicking the store’s trademark uniform, handed out information on why its important to select and buy seafood that can be replenished and also asked prospective customers to sign petition postcards to privately held grocery company.

California-based Trader Joes is a grocery with more than 300 stores that caters to people looking for natural and organic and specialty items at reasonable prices. It prides itself on selling “unconventional and interesting products.” But Greenpeace has ranked the store dead last among national grocery chains for its conventional approach to selling seafood, specifically its lack of attention to seafood sustainability. The advocacy group says Trader Joes (which ranked #17 on the seafood scorecard) has no apparent plant to assure it is buying reputably fished and farmed seafood and sells “Red Listed” fish that are endangered by overfishing or habitat loss.

Orange roughy are on Greenpeace’s Red List, which includes several jeopardized fish that marine experts have identified as needing time to recover from over-harvesting and whose populations are at risk of collapsing.

Trader Joe’s has not replied to a query for response.

To keep the heat up on the chain, Greenpeace also opened a website, called “Traitor Joe’s” where a cartoon pirate welcomes people to his “one stop shop for ocean destruction.” The site further explains Greenpeace’s seafood campaign.

Greenpeace is urging consumers to buy from stores that are trying to minimize their impact on the oceans by selling sustainably farmed or caught fish. It’s new rankings released this week commended Wegman’s, Ahold USA, Whole Foods and Target for doing the best job to maintain an eco-friendly seafood counter. Safeway, Harris Teeter and Wal-Mart also received acceptable marks. But Greenpeace listed nine grocery chains, national and some regional, as doing little to help save the oceans and urged consumers to not buy seafood from those retailers. (Trader Joe’s was last among national chains, with three regional chains ranking lowest on the 20 store list.) For more details on Trader Joe’s response to Greenpeace’s seafood campaign, see the listings on the seafood scorecard.

The company responded to Greenpeace’s query for information on its seafood practices by saying its policy is guided by “listening to its customers” but declining to give any more information, according to Greenpeace’s report card. Greenpeace concludes in its report that the chain is not affiliated with any conservation groups, has no discernible seafood policy to reduce environmental harm and in addition, that signs posted in some of its stores suggesting that its seafood is environmentally friendly appear to be mere marketing ploys.

The company’s stated reliance on customer input helped shape Greenpeace’s decision to have Trader Joe’s customers sign petition postcards asking for strong seafood policies, a spokeswoman explained.

(Photo credit: Greenpeace, San Francisco.)

When you fish for seafood at your local grocery, it can be difficult to tell whether you are supporting sustainable fishing practices.

Was the snapper you selected caught using legal, sustainable fishing practices? Should you even be buying it? Is the Chilean Sea Bass you just purchased on the “Red List” of jeopardized marine species? Does the grocery you’re patronizing buy seafood certified by the Marine Stewardship Council?

Greenpeace is trying to help you sort it all out – and assure that groceries do not ignore the need to keep our oceans and fisheries healthy.

The worldwide conservation group published its third “Carting Away the Oceans” scorecard on Tuesday, outing several grocery chains that flout efforts to support sustainable seafood methods and lauding the stores that are helping conservationists.

The group is calling on customers to stop shopping for seafood at the lowest ranked stores, which have made little or no effort to support ocean ecosystems by selling sustainble seafood, including such large chains as Costco, Publix and Trader Joes.

The scorecard assessed and ranked the top 20 U.S. grocery chains on their green seafood credentials, giving top marks to Wegmans, Ahold USA, Whole Foods, Target, Safeway, Harris Teeter and Wal-Mart. These stores have all made strides toward responsible seafood buying and selling, though they may be innovating in different ways, Greenpeace reported.

Wegman’s, which was ranked number one on the list, for instance, has created a public sustainable seafood policy and supports a variety of initiatives aimed at supporting practices that preserve ocean ecosystems. The New York-based chain’s seafood policy dictates that wild-caught fish be properly reported and that capture methods meet certain standards; the store also buys from aquaculture groups that aim to avoid using pesticides, antibiotics and wild fish as feed. It actively seeks out items that have been certified by the Marine Stewardship Council and has removed several red list seafood species, though not all, from its inventory.

Privately owned Wegman’s, which operates 70 stores in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states, provides in-store information to educate customers about seafood sustainability.

Ahold, listed number two on the Greenpeace list, operates as Stop & Shop, Giant and Martin’s Food Markets and is owned by Royal Ahold of the Netherlands. It deserves good marks for developing the “Choice Catch” program under which it avoids buying illegally caught seafood and takes ecological impacts into account, Greenpeace reported.

Ahold also gives preference to farmed seafood that is pesticide and antibiotic-free, but could do a better job of in-store education, according to the score card. Ahold has announced they will no longer sell Chilean sea bass, orange roughy and shark (they already have stopped sales of bluefin tuna and Atlantic halibut) but still sell other jeopardized seafood, the report said.

Whole Foods and Target (third and fourth on the Greenpeace list) also have worked to eliminate many unsustainable items from their inventory, though fast-growing Whole Foods, which previously ranked number one on Greenpeace’s seafood score card, continues to offer “a tremendous amount of red list seafood options.”

Given the enormity of climate change, it’s not always easy to calculate how we individuals can make a contribution that matters. In honor of World Oceans Day (June 8), the Nature Conservancy has assembled a list of a few concrete ways we can help heal, or at least minimize the damage to, our marine world.

The list is a testament to our connectedness here on planet Earth — did you realize that the nitrogen fertilizer you dump on the yard could be part of the pollution overpowering streams and rivers; winding up in the ocean where it creates algal “blooms” that starve marine life of oxygen? Ah, right. That’s not what you were thinking of when you cracked open the bag of weed-and-feed. Heavy stuff, yes, but the sort of thing we humans need to think on. That lovely green turf comes with an environmental price tag — unless and until you find other ways to feed the lawn, like using lower nitrogen-content organic food.

Or take plastic. It’s nice to think it’s recycled. But fact is, the majority is not recycled, and somehow we consumers of bottled water and soda and all manner of plastic packaging and goods have generated a giant ball of plastic trash about the size of Texas that bobs around in the Pacific Ocean, a trash monument to the 20th Century.

Ok, so you see how what we do plays out on the larger canvas. Now consider these ideas for making changes from the Nature Conservancy:

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

The U.S. Geological Survey has released a study showing an increase in mercury emissions from human sources is affecting the fish population in the Pacific Ocean.

Scientists have predicted a 50 percent increase in mercury levels in the Pacific Ocean by 2050, if mercury emission rates continue as projected. Human contribution to mercury pollution includes coal burning power plants and waste incineration. The water sampled for this study — released May 1 — shows that the mercury levels in 2006 were already approximately 30 percent higher than the same samples in the 1990’s.

The paper presents the first evidence linking current atmospheric mercury deposition to methylmercury (the compound that mercury gets converted into) in Pacific Ocean fish. Scientists say it is plausible that a reduction in ocean mercury levels would follow if mercury emissions were decreased.

In the U.S., about 40 percent of all human exposure to mercury is from tuna harvested in the Pacific Ocean. Other previous studies have shown that 75 percent of human exposure worldwide to mercury is from the consumption of marine fish and shell fish. In 2004, the EPA and FDA released guidelines on fish consumption for pregnant women and children.

Many studies have been conducted involving mercury levels in freshwater; but less is known about mercury in marine environments. This study was one of the first to thoroughly analyze mercury levels in ocean waters, concluding that the methylmercury contamination could not just be from natural sources, as some have theorized.

According to the study, methylmercury is produced at mid-depth ocean waters from mercury that “originates from atmospheric fallout to the ocean surface”, and taken up the food chain by predators like tuna. For this study, scientist sampled Pacific Ocean water from 16 different sites. The results showed the increased mercury emissions were particularly high in off the coasts of Asia.

“It appears the recent mercury enrichment of the sampled Pacific Ocean waters is caused by emissions originating from fallout near the Asian coasts,” said USGS scientist and coauthor of the study David Krabbenhoft.

Don’t forget to read our story on How to shop for seafood before you head to the store.

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

(Photo credit: NOAA)

The world’s shark population is dropping rapidly, and the primary reasons are humans’ increasing hunger for both a Chinese delicacy and an alternative medicine: shark fins.

Between 1970 and 2005, some shark species’ populations have dropped 99 percent, in large part due to ”finning,” according to a report in the journal Science in 2007. Fishermen slice off the valuable fins (they can cost up to $300 a pound) and toss the sharks’ bodies back into the ocean. By tossing the shark – either alive or dead – the fishermen do not have to transport large, heavy carcasses, plus the price of shark meat is dramatically lower than that of the fin.

Shark fins are prized as a key  ingredient in costly shark-fin soup favored by the Chinese around the world.

The U.S. has had a shark-finning prohibition since 2000, but that law will be strengthened with the introduction of the Shark Conservation Act of 2009 by Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) last week. Rep. Madeline Bordallo of Guam has already introduced similar legislation in Congress, and that bill received unanimous approval.

The older law contained loopholes that at least one American ship took advantage of when they were discovered carrying the fins of about 30,000 sharks. They appealed on the basis that they were a “transport” ship, not a “fishing” vessel, a distinction specified in the earlier law’s language.

The new legislation will close that loophole, along with a ban on importing any shark products that come from countries without shark conservation efforts.

At the same time, the European Union is looking at similar measures to strengthen an existing EU ban on shark finning. One of the conservation act’s proponents, The Pew Environment Group, released a statement that the regulations, if approved, would be a concrete step to stop the slaughter of sharks.

Of the 591 shark and ray species examined by an international group of conservation scientists, 21 percent are “threatened with extinction” and 18 percent have “near-threatened” status, according to the Pew group. The difficult task of tracking so many shark species likely misses about 35 percent of the shark and ray population, researchers say.

One species, the dusky shark, has declined in population off America’s East Coast by more than 80 percent since the ‘70s, and will take about 400 years to rebuild, according to the Pew group.

Because sharks are slow to reproduce, the populations will not recover easily. A loss of sharks, the sea’s most storied predators, alters the delicate ecosystem of the world’s oceans by over-population of fish that would normally fall prey to sharks.

“Approximately 100 million sharks are being killed every year, with potentially enormous negative consequences for the global marine food chain. Every country that allows shark fishing will need to adopt strong conservation measures if sharks are to be saved,” said Joshua S. Reichert, managing director of the Pew Environment Group.

The journal Science has numerous studies related to the world’s declining shark population.

For more information about how to eat seafood selectively, avoiding fish like shark that are endangered, see our story, How to shop for seafood.

(Photo credit: Whale shark (at top) and bags of shark fins (above) © 2009 The Shark Alliance.)

Copyright © 2008 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

For most of us, walking into a seafood store is an exercise in both ignorance and hope: we’re ignorant of what’s available but we hope we’ll leave with what we want. We all know fish come in two colors: the red one is salmon and the rest are white. Here is what you should know about fish:

Mark Musatto, a partner at Airline Seafood in Houston, says “There are three basic feelings I want every customer to have when they enter my store: they should feel, smell and see the freshness; notice that fresh fish has a sheen and a translucency and I want customers to tell me how they plan to cook their fish and we can talk about the best fish for that method.

“Some fish are better for grilling, others for sautéing, and others for frying.”

There are some basics to consider and ask about when you shop for fish:

• Do you know the store to be safe and reputable?

• Is the seafood fresh or “previously frozen”?

• Where was it caught — Is it local or shipped in from afar?

• How was it caught — is it from open waters or farm-raised?

• And, the increasingly vital question: Is the store selling varieties of seafood that are endangered?

A seafood store must have some basics that make it a good, safe place to shop. The smell should be clean, not too “fishy”; there should be constant filleting of fish so the fish is always fresh, not dry or brown from exposure to the air; fish must be left on the bone as long as possible and those handling the fish should be able to answer any questions you have.

A question to help separate the average shop from the superior one: Is this a store where restaurants buy their seafood? The answer must be “yes.”

How to tread lightly when dining on seafood

The word “seafood” doesn’t define only fish. Seafood includes scallops, lobster, oysters, clams, mussels, crawfish, crab, shrimp and other non-fish creatures. And among these are endangered varieties.

The Environmental Defense Fund has put together a Seafood Selector (available as a pocket guide) that will tell you everything you want or need to know about the status of fish and seafood stocks around the world. They have grouped seafood into three categories: Eco-Best, Eco-OK and Eco-Worst. But there is always a dispute among fishermen, governments and private organizations about which varieties of seafood fall into which category. And restaurants don’t always abide by the warnings about over-fished species.

For example, Chilean Sea Bass is on just about every Eco-Worst list but it’s still on many menus. Bluefin Tuna, the staple of sushi, is also on that list but every sushi bar in the world serves it.

Some Salmon are endangered, some not. Some trout are threatened, others not. Ask your fish-seller and your restaurant waiter if you have any doubts or questions. Don’t fall for something that is out of season (”wild” Alaska Salmon in winter) or is a substitute for the real deal (farmed White Bass or Catfish for Grouper).

(Note: Chilean Sea Bass, Bluefin Tuna and Atlantic Salmon are all considered in jeopardy, and they’re fish that tend to carry high mercury concentrations, so staying away from these varieties provides a double benefit.)