aquaculture

Stone Gossard sings of salmon in Seattle

At a recent music-and-food-related gathering in Seattle, Pearl Jam guitarist (and Grist BFF) Stone Gossard sang about salmon. His little ditty was inspired by his work with the Wild Salmon Center and focuses on the issue of hatcheries. He says in the song’s intro that he even went so far as to speak with several […]

Environmental NGOs present sustainable-sushi guides and delicious raw fish at a New York event

A lot of people I know seek out meat, eggs, and dairy from pasture-raised animals and vegetables grown without chemicals, but they do not question where their seafood comes from unless they’re worried about mercury. The concept of sustainable seafood is a revolutionary idea that I hope catches on the way dolphin-safe tuna fish has. […]

Most ubiquitous fish in American diet 50 percent below last year’s levels

Here’s a guest post from Jennifer Jacquet of the Sea Around Us project at the University of British Columbia, and blogger-in-chief of the Shifting Baselines Blog. —– Ask a scientist to give a good example of a well-managed fishery, and they often will cite the Alaska pollock fishery. But John Hocevar of Greenpeace-USA prefers to […]

Putting cow hormones into fish food makes them balloon

Update [2008-8-22 13:20:9 by Tom Philpott]:I was alerted to the rBGH-tilapia news item by this blurb in the Organic Consumers Association news feed on Aug. 19. But when you click on the link provided by OCA, you’re taken to a source dated 2003. Unlike reader Mr. Mean, who (very cordially) comments below, I sloppily didn’t […]

Amid collapsing fisheries and factory-farmed salmon, how to choose sustainable seafood

In Checkout Line, Lou Bendrick cooks up answers to reader questions about how to green their food choices and other diet-related quandaries. Lettuce know what food worries keep you up at night. Hello Grist, The food worry that keeps me up at night is how best to buy fish. Should I buy “wild caught,” with […]

The toll of the shrimping industry on Southeast Asia

Southeast Asia would have fared better during the tsunami and the recent cyclone if the majority of the region's coastal mangrove forests were intact. Everyone accepts that. But many of the mangroves have been cut for firewood, largely to make way for shrimp farming. The cost of the mangrove-loss to coastal fisheries is great, since much of the food chain spends its early years amongst the trees' roots.

But the human cost, besides those lost in the flood waters, is also great: Labor abuses in the farmed shrimp industry are rampant. Read "The True Cost of Shrimp" (PDF) for details on the child labor, human trafficking, beatings, torture, and murder associated with these farms. There are also toxins that farm workers get to enjoy spraying into the shrimp pens to keep the critters from succumbing to infections. So, what to do?

USDA considers first-ever organic standards for farmed fish

You may have seen "organic salmon" on the menu in your favorite seafood restaurant or counter. Guess what? It's not organic, according to the USDA. It turns out that some fishmongers have been promoting their fish as organic with definitions of their own.

This week, a USDA advisory panel will consider a key element of the country's first-ever standards for "organic" farmed fish, including salmon. The surprising news is that this standard -- if adopted -- could be a boon for both seafood consumers and conservation.

Chilean salmon-farming industry in a sad state

A virus called infectious salmon anemia is sweeping through Chile’s fisheries, bringing attention to the condition of the country’s third-largest export industry. On expansive salmon farms, fish are bred in crowded underwater pens. Fish poop and food pellets contaminate the water. As many as 1 million nonnative salmon escape each year, gobbling native species and […]

How the Monterey Bay Aquarium makes its safe-seafood list

When it comes to safe seafood, the list-makers don’t horse around. Photo: SqueakyMarmot Back in the late 1990s, I happened to attend an exhibit at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California called “Fishing for Solutions.” The experience profoundly changed my attitude toward seafood and the supposedly limitless abundance of the sea. The exhibit focused not […]