Indeed, Seattle is the logistical hub to some of the world's best-governed fisheries: most of Alaska's prolific harvest comes through our town, and so does a lot of fish from healthy fisheries in the Northwest and British Columbia. Virtually all the halibut, pollock, wild salmon, Pacific cod, herring, black cod, pink shrimp, spot prawns, Dungeness crab, and coastal albacore tuna you're likely to find in fine seafood markets and restaurants around here comes from fisheries that earn high marks for sustainability. Seattle is one of the best cities on Earth for a seafood lover who wants to eat in good conscience. A seeker of sustainably produced seafood can choose many ways to find it, but in Seattle the simplest method is just to embrace the old slogan: "buy local." The Northwest and Alaska are home to many fisheries that are well known for careful, science-based controls on fishing and its environmental impacts.

Indeed, Seattle is the logistical hub to some of the world's best-governed fisheries: most of Alaska's prolific harvest comes through our town, and so does a lot of fish from healthy fisheries in the Northwest and British Columbia. Virtually all the halibut, pollock, wild salmon, Pacific cod, herring, black cod, pink shrimp, spot prawns, Dungeness crab, and coastal albacore tuna you're likely to find in fine seafood markets and restaurants around here comes from fisheries that earn high marks for sustainability. Alaska alone produces more than half the total U.S. catch and about 70% of the world's supply of fish that are certified under the rigorous standards of the Marine Stewardship Council, the leading international eco-labeling organization for seafood.

Lots of fisheries around the world are in serious trouble, and there are fish I won't buy. But there are ways to find the good ones. Depending on how deeply you want to pursue it, choosing sustainably produced fish can be quick and superficial or a fascinating inquiry into where our food comes from.

Ultimately, this isn't just about dinner. It's also about how a surging population of more than 6.5 billion people can best make use of the oceans that cover 70 percent of the Earth. Should we rely on hunting wild fish to feed ourselves? Should we turn the ocean into pasture for swimming livestock? Are we wise enough to do either one well?

Dinner, however, is always the immediate concern. If you want a more varied seafood menu than Northwest and Alaska fisheries can provide, there is no shortage of guides to help you evaluate fish from around the world. They don't all share the same ideas about what "sustainability" means, and there is legitimate room for debate on that point. In fact, many self-appointed arbiters of sustainability among environmental groups - often referred to as non-governmental organizations (NGOs) - lack coherent, publicly disclosed methods for determining which fisheries they will approve and revealing how they arrived at their judgments. The Marine Stewardship Council is a notable exception. "This is the most transparent NGO out there: everything they do is on their website," observes Jim Cannon, a technical advisor to MSC and founder of the Sustainable Fisheries Partnership, which provides basic factual information on fisheries' environmental performance to seafood buyers and NGOs.

For practical purposes, most experts would agree that being "sustainable" requires, at minimum, two kinds of avoidance: no overfishing (meaning the catch does not deplete the fish stock), and no pushing any endangered species toward extinction (for example, by incidentally entangling and wiping out a rare seabird population). Here's a quick rundown on a few major information sources that a conscientious seafood lover can use:

photos by Brad Warren

The Seafood Watch guides from the Monterey Bay Aquarium (mbayaq.org/cr/seafoodwatch.asp) are among the best-known tools for consumers who want to avoid environmentally harmful seafood products. To simplify decision-making for diners and shoppers, the aquarium's staff applies a coarse screen and offers straight-up recommendations: a green label for approved fish, yellow for those to be eyed with caution, and red for those to avoid. Farmed salmon and shrimp? Both are red listed: "Avoid." Atlantic cod? Same thing. These judgments are useful for people who need to make a quick choice, but they do cause some "collateral damage." For example, if you look for it, you'll find there is a small amount of farmed salmon that's produced under organic standards by conscientious, green-minded growers. Likewise, some Atlantic cod comes from fishermen whose catches and methods are rigorously controlled and sustainable. Of course, it's fair to point out that many of the North Atlantic's cod fisheries have been miserably managed, even by governments that know better. Those fisheries amount to a black mark on the credibility of fishery management worldwide.

The Blue Ocean Institute (blueocean.org) offers similar guidance to that provided by Seafood Watch, but Blue Ocean makes it easier to dig into the details of how fisheries perform on key measures of sustainability. For example, both organizers give a green light to pollock, the abundant white fish you find in many fish and chips shops; but Blue Ocean's website shows how it scores this fish based on factors such as its fecundity, its abundance, its habitat quality, the impact of fishing gear used to catch it, and the bycatch of other species taken while harvesting pollock. Experts might take issue with some of Blue Ocean's judgments, but at least the thinking behind them is explained.

FishSource (fishsource.org), a new program of the Sustainable Fisheries Partnership, does not give "buy" or "avoid" recommendations. Instead it summarizes the scientific information that knowledgeable seafood buyers - including those at major seafood companies and retailers - use to form their own judgments about fisheries. Unlike sustainability arbiters such as those mentioned above, FishSource provides information on fisheries, not on species. This makes it a useful tool for those who want to avoid the problem of "lumping" together well-managed fisheries with dismal fisheries that happen to catch the same species in different places. This way, for example, it's possible to find sources of Atlantic cod that are doing a good job. With its developing system of expert editors, authors, and user reviews, FishSource is on track to becoming virtually a peer-reviewed journal of fishery evaluation, and a premier information source for professionals in the field. As of July 2007, FishSource only covers major whitefish (cod, pollock and similar fish), but it is rapidly growing and adding more species. DC

EDITOR'S NOTE: Brad Warren has spent most of the last 25 years writing about fisheries and the measures necessary to make them last. He has been an advisor on these issues to government agencies, industry and conservation groups, including the Sustainable Fisheries Partnership.

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