Traditionally, Australia has a long history and love affair with seafood. It’s been a big industry here for a long time, as well as part of our culture. ‘New Australians’ have also brought their own spin on seafood, which has influenced how we consume seafood at home and in restaurants. But could all that change with continued exploitation of our oceans and current consumer habits?

Consumer drive seems to demand a fairly limited variety for our tables – both at home and commercially. Demand is growing partly because the world population is growing, but mostly because people are becoming wealthier, so affording more and better seafood.

A number of critical challenges now face the world when it comes to seafood consumption. These include:

1. Overfishing – many species are now extinct and many more endangered because of overfishing with no regard for sustainability. 3.5 million fishing vessels now fish the world’s oceans. Only 1% of these are massive commercial trawlers from different countries (the size of ocean-liners), but which catch up to 60% of all seafood caught globally. These vessels are truly huge and can net and ‘vacuum’ an area – water and seabed – of everything living.
2. High or unacceptable by-catch – ‘by-catch’ covers all the species of seafood also caught with the targeted species. Some of these are kept and used for various purposes. Others are simply thrown back, most often injured or dead. An extremely sad and alarming fact is that around 20 million tonnes of by-catch seafood is wasted (dead) each year – which is equal to 25% of all seafood caught. If that doesn’t strike a cord with you, something is wrong.
3. Habitat destruction – various types of fishing methods have varying affects on marine habitats, including destruction of seabeds, reefs and mangroves, which further threatens species of fish and seafood. Imagine massive tractors that can plough up the seabed, taking every living creature in their path and leaving behind a destroyed seabed.
4. Secondary destruction – certain commercial fishing practises also injures and kills countless other species who inhabit our oceans. For example, long-line fishing annually kills more than 300,000 seabirds, including 100,000 albatrosses (19 of the 21 albatross species are now at serious risk of extinction), plus tens of thousands of turtles, dophins and small whales who drown in nets.
5. Illegal, unreported and unregulated catches – the value of these catches are estimated to be between $4.5 and $9.5 billion worldwide.

What can we do?

1. Become more educated and ethical about the seafood you eat – take an interest in seafood sustainability when you have time, rather than at the shop counter when you’re in a hurry.

2. Be alert to ‘self claims’ – seek third-party verification.

3. Ask your fish monger where fish comes from: is it from a sustainable source and is it Australian? Retailers don’t always or often know or have all the answers, but more people asking will drive sellers to be more product-smart.

4. Armed with more awareness, start making smarter, more ethical choices about the seafood you buy. Choose sustainable species and avoid buying and eating the ‘same old’ varieties. Try new varieties if it means being more sustainable. Did you know that, realistically, you could eat three different species of seafood each week, every week, all year, without necessarily ever eating the same species twice a week?

5. Don’t support fish mongers who sell seafood from irreputable and questionable sources, including seafood coming in from China and Southeast Asia, among other countries. Also avoid supporting restaurants who sell sharkfin soup. Removal of a shark’s fins is done while the shark is alive. The shark is then most often thrown overboard, with no ability to swim, sinking to the bottom to face a slow, agonising death. Too many shark species are now at risk of extinction.

To understand more about shark finning watch this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2UKgLsOhRM&feature=related (Warning: it may be graphic to some viewers)