Ignorance is not bliss when shopping for seafood and saving our oceans

Translating the desire to protect marine biodiversity into every day purchasing patterns isn’t happening and we can change this by asking questions as consumersHow seafood is traded, what’s caught and what’s not, is largely determined by our buying patterns. Picture: 123RF / BELCHONOCK

Ignoring the issue is almost a survival technique. In the posh fishmonger, I watch seafood from super-sustainable mussels and hake to less happy orange-listed gurnard and very questionable crayfish being bought with equal, unhesitant zeal. My visit to the posh fishmonger made it clear how this can happen: nobody behind the counter could identify some of the fish in the fridge for me. Two large fish — squatting in a crate fresh from Mozambique — were definitely not what I was told , and one which I identified later on from my favourite fish book, was a threatened species and shouldn’t have been there at all.

Whether it’s a supermarket or a mom and pop scale food business, money matters will always be pitted against “doing the right thing”. If prawn curry is the top seller on a menu, it’s going to take an awful lot for a restaurateur to remove it. What it will take, in fact, is for the eater, the buyer, to actively support the better moves and make noises about the worse ones. How seafood is traded, what’s caught and what’s not, is largely determined by our buying patterns.

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