“There are only so many fish in the sea … Millions of animals are wasted each year … Your choices matter.” This sums up the message of the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch Program.
The mission of the program is twofold:
- To raise consumer awareness of these issues and
- To get savvy consumers to “step up to the plate,” by making choices that are good for them and the oceans.
The Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch program has compiled a series of guides recommending which seafood items are “Best Choices” or “Good Alternatives,” and which ones you should “Avoid.” According to information on the Monterey Bay Aquarium website, these recommendations are “science-based, peer reviewed, and use ecosystem-based criteria.”
The guides are continually updated. The newest versions were released just last week.
The guides are also available as mobile apps for your Android or your iPhone. The mobile versions include the Project Fish Map, a database of locations where “Best Choices” and “Good Alternatives” can be found. With this app you can help Seafood Watch “put ocean-friendly seafood on the map!”
There are even tools for chefs:
You can read more about Seafood Watch here and more about the Monterey Bay Aquarium in Monterey, California here.
Please step up. Together we can make a difference.
Why Saturday Short Subjects? Some readers may recall being dropped at the movie theater for the Saturday matinee — two action-packed feature films with a series of short subjects (cartoons or short movies, sometimes a serial cliffhanger) sandwiched in between. Often the short subjects were the most memorable, and enjoyable, part of the morning. That explains the name. The reason behind these particular posts is that we are all short on time. My Short Subject posts should not take me as long to write or you as long to read (or try).
