How To Choose Sustainable Seafood

Eating seafood is a habit that reaches out to the beginnings of human history. We have depended on seafood to provide valuable nutrients, but recently our increasing consumption of this valuable natural resource and the pollution from our own activities has endangered this resource. Because of toxic pollutants in the environment, such as mercury and PCBs, there are certain seafood that you should avoid eating. In addition, some populations of seafood are in such pressure of going extinct that you should avoid eating to help them bounce back to sustainable levels.

One of the main reasons why you should avoid eating some seafood is becaue they can accumulate mercury and other toxic substances. This means that when you consume fish and other seafood with high concentrations of toxic chemicals, you are more likely to have severe consequences because the concentration of those substances will be even higher in your body. For example, it has been found that certain species of fish that bioaccumulate mercury has led to increases occurrences of cancer among humans.

Another reason why we shouldn’t consume some fish is that we have already depleted many of the main fisheries around the world. This deterioriates the provision of environmental services by marine ecosystems and puts many species at risk of extinction. Ultimately, we cannot continue consuming fish indefinitely if we do not farm and harvest them sustainably.

If you would like to choose seafood that is sustainable, there is a very handy Pocket Guide from the Monterey Bay Aquarium that provides details about what seafood you should avoid eating and which is safe. Click here to check it out!