sustainable seafood

In the three months since Hugh's Fish Fight screened on Channel 4 there's been a frenzy of activity in the fish trade, thanks to Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's investigation into the way our fish is caught and sold. If you missed the series the first time round and are wondering what all the fuss was about, the series is being repeated starting tonight at 10pm on More 4.

Yesterday, some of my colleagues met with executives from Princes to discuss the problems with their tinned tuna. It was the first meeting for several months and certainly since Princes came bottom of our league table. Needless to say, there was a lot to discuss.   

It's been a good week for seafood sales. The Guardian reports that supermarkets have been doing brisk business in "sustainable seafood", particularly those featured in the various Big Fish Fight shows on Channel 4.

Two whole years in the making, Princes' new 'sustainable seafood statement' was supposed to address many issues. Specifically it was supposed to be explaining just what the company intended to do to drag itself from the bottom of our tinned tuna league table by explaining the measures they were implementing to ensure they were sourcing their tinned tuna responsibly.

Handing out sustainable seafood guides on the streets of Tokyo (c) Sutton-Hibbert/Greenpeace

There's a common comment in this part of the world, often repeated on the internet especially, about sorting out the seafood problem: namely, we have to change minds in Japan.

Whilst it's a simplistic generalisation, there is a lot of truth in that. Seafood is a global commodity and a global problem. The big markets for seafood are (perhaps unsurprisingly) North America, Europe, and Asia.

Is removing salade nicoise from the menu better than searching out sustainable tuna supplies? (Photo (c) FotoosVanRobin)

When you get a bit close to a subject, you get geeky. Before you know it you are scoffing at how other people could possible not know something, because you do. Yet of course it's true that the vast majority of the public are very much in the 'don't know' camp.

I was gearing up to write something on the interesting new report by the New Economics Foundation (Nef) on how the EU is becoming more reliant on fish from other parts of the world, when my attention was drawn to a piece by the BBC's Richard Black who explains far more eloquently than I ever could what 'fish dependence day' is.

Nef has compared the amount of fish caught within the EU with the amount we consume to find out when - if we only ate our own, EU-caught fish from January 1 - we would have to start using fish supplied by other countries. This year, that day was last Friday 9 July or 'fish dependence day' and, like the global ecological debt day which Nef also computes, it's getting earlier each year as we import more and more fish. Or eat more. Or both.

Like I say, Mr Black covers all the main points and more on a sobering thought exercise.