Seafood is often called brain food. It’s a good source of many different nutrients, including long chain omega-3 fatty acids. Eating fish — or taking fish oil supplements — has been linked to a number of cardiovascular and neurological benefits. For this reason, most health experts and the U.S. government’s dietary guidelines encourage people to eat more seafood.

However, a new study in the journal of the Canadian Medical Association calls this recommendation into question, contending that the health benefits of omega-3’s have potentially been oversold while the ocean’s ability to provide them is failing.

The bottom line? The jury is still out on how much fish we should eat, so making eco-friendly choices is essential.

The study’s authors accurately point out that the oceans can no longer provide us with fish (and fish oil) at the current pace. Barely one-quarter of U.S. fisheries are known to be sustainably fished, and the United Nations reports that 80 percent of the world’s fisheries are now either fully fished (i.e. incapable of providing more) or overexploited.

Read more of this story »

The harvest of soft shell and peeler blue crabs in Chesapeake Bay has been declared a commercial fishery failure by the U.S. Government. The federal declaration is an important step in providing economic assistance to the communities reliant upon crab production.

The governors of Maryland and Virginia requested that the Secretary of Commerce determine a disaster in the blue crab fishery and applied for more than $15 million to offset the economic impact of new limits on the bay’s crab harvest. The harvest value of soft shell crabs in Maryland and Virginia has declined by 41 percent from the late 1990s, according to NOAA’s Fisheries Service.

Read more of this story »