Green Options

Does proximity to the sea give a city an advantage when it comes to sustainability rankings?

According to SustainLane who just released their 2008 Sustainable City rankings, city traits that are already set in stone like geography and layout play a huge role. Take the greenest cities in America: Portland, San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago and New York. Four out of the five them are situated on the coast and were built before suburbia existed.

This post is by Environmental Defense Fund scientist Tim Fitzgerald.

The recent The New York Times story about two high school students who did DNA testing on fish shines a light once again on one of the seafood industry’s dirty little secrets — fish fraud. They found that one fourth of 60 samples of seafood taken in New York City restaurants and seafood markets were mislabeled.

But with lax FDA regulations and virtually no enforcement, the practice is more common than one would hope. In recent years, there have been numerous reports of fraud occurring around the country. Three years ago, a Times investigation also found that fish sold as wild Alaskan salmon by high-end New York City markets was mostly cheaper farm-raised salmon, selling for as much as $29 a pound. (See my previous post Plenty of Safe, Eco-Friendly Fish in the Sea.)

The U.S. Food Drug and Drug Administration, which oversees the safety of our seafood supply, defines fraud as the substitution of a less expensive fish for a more expensive kind, for example, tilapia for red snapper, farmed salmon for wild from Alaska, or basa or tra (Vietnamese catfish) for grouper.

Checklist: How to spot fish fraud

Being informed and knowing your seafood is the best way to arm yourself against fraud. Some things that should raise red flags are:

According to this year’s report, Americans consumed a total of 4.908 billion pounds of seafood in 2007, slightly less than the 4.944 billion pounds in 2006. The average American ate 16.3 pounds of fish and shellfish in 2007, a one percent decline from the 2006 consumption figures of 16.5 pounds. But what most concerns scientists is the growth in imported farm-raised seafood coupled with declines global fishstocks.

When my publisher and literary agent were speaking with various people about providing an endorsement for my cookbook, The Sustainable Kitchen, I received an interesting response from an older 70’s/80’s television chef. His note said he would be happy to endorse my book but only if we changed our view on sustainable seafood and aquaculture. His position was seafood, in general, is a high-protein, low-fat food. For health reasons, people need to eat more seafood in order to increase their intake of omega-3 fatty acids (the good fat) and reduce their intake of omega-6 fatty acids (the bad fat). Now, I am not one to contradict a celebrity, of course they must be right, but seems a bit short sighted to me.

What do you do when fisheries collapse? With a quarter of the world’s fish stocks depleted, there’s concern that by 2050 we’ll have no other fish to fry. This may be the biggest fish crunch in history. Still, it’s not the first.

When fishermen in Sinnam, South Korea started pulling up empty nets, they did the only logical thing. Finding themselves in a hard place, they erected huge penis statues.

It turns out that not long before the fishing scare, a young woman–still a virgin–had drowned near the village within sight of her lover. Locals feared that her frustrated spirit was spooking the fish away.

Today’s guest blogger is Environmental Defense scientist Tim Fitzgerald.

As a marine scientist who has been researching seafood sustainability and health issues for a long time, I’ve known for a while that bluefin tuna not only has high mercury levels but is severely depleted, too.

These magnificent fish are highly prized for their rich, buttery flesh. The global sushi market can’t get enough bluefin, and as a result, exorbitant prices and severe overfishing are driving bluefin tuna to the brink of extinction.

I love sushi as much as the next person, but given its dire population numbers and high mercury levels, maybe its time that we all lay off for a while.

Now making big headlines is a New York Times report that found that much of the bluefin sushi served in upscale New York City restaurants actually exceeds the Food and Drug Administration’s “action level” for mercury. (The threshold is 1 part per million.)

To reiterate: It’s no surprise that bluefin tuna has high levels of mercury – it’s one of the largest and most predatory fish species in the ocean. What is surprising is just how many New York City restaurants are serving the really high-mercury tuna.

This post is by Leslie Valentine, Online Writer and Editor at Environmental Defense.

1

Rank of shrimp in popularity among all types of seafood Americans eat

4.4

Pounds of shrimp the average American consumed in 2006

10%

Share of shrimp sold in the U.S. that comes from the Southeast U.S. (Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean), where fisheries and farms are held to stricter standards

90%

Share of shrimp sold in the U.S. that comes largely from Southeast Asia

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A few months ago, in an effort to green up my health and beauty products, I ran across National Geographic’s The Green Guide. The site included a handy wallet-sized guide called The Dirty Dozen in Personal Care Products, which allows me to pick products that don’t contain harmful chemicals.

Then last week, my issue of Whole Life Times included a tear-out seafood guide. It lets me know what to

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Fish is a source of healthy omega-3 fatty acids, but unfortunately because of the pollution in our waters, fish and other seafoods also contain toxins such as mercury and PCBs. Then there’s also the issue of overfishing, and the debate between wild-caught and farm-raised fish to consider. So how do you know what fish choose?

To help you sort out the "good" fish from the "bad" fish, Environmental

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According to the USDA's annual statistics survey, 10 billion animals are killed for human consumption every year in the United States. (Worldwide, I believe it’s 45 billion.) However, it is more accurate to say that “10 billion land animals are killed for human consumption every year"; otherwise, we’re disregarding the billions of aquatic animals killed for the same purpose – to satisfy human appetites. Although the number of aquatic animals killed for consumption in

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By Timothy Fitzgerald, Environmental Defense fisheries scientist

Long the provender of imperial banquets and champagne tastes, beluga sturgeon caviar from the Caspian Sea has been called the Rolls Royce of caviar. But therein lies the problem. Likened to black gold and magic pearls, the eggs of the beluga sturgeon are so prized that this bony ancient fish, going back 200 million years to the age of dinosaurs, has been

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