Photo by Nika Boyce/Humble Garden.
More than 18,000 people from 120 countries are attending this year’s International Boston Seafood Show, which wraps up today on the city’s waterfront. Every year, the glass-enclosed, aquarium-like convention center becomes a spectacle of sushi, salmon, scrod, and the people who import, export, wholesale, retail, filet, package, refrigerate, and ship them.
In the past, there was little mention of sustainability amid all the buying and selling, says Katie Semon, of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association’s (NOAA) fisheries service. I found her manning a booth at the outer edge of 1,700 displays laid out in a rectangular grid the size of several city blocks. “It’s everything now,” she says.
And she has a point. You hear the term “sustainable” a lot as food-service reps stroll and sample crab cakes, roe, and marinated squid. But even as 70 percent of the world’s marine fisheries are depleted or fully exploited, global implementation of science-based management remains uneven. And hard to track.
It’s no wonder consumers are confused. There are more than 30 dif... Read more
