Help Protect the Health of Our Planet's Oceans:
Choose Sustainable Seafood
You can help make the oceans healthy again by choosing your seafood wisely. That's the message of the new Hawaii Seafood Watch Pocket Guide created by Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch Program and distributed locally by Pacific Whale Foundation. (Click here to download your free copy.)
The Pocket Guide lets you choose seafood that is considered sustainable. Sustainable seafood is from sources, either fished or farmed, that can maintain or increase production into the long-term without jeopardizing the affected ecosystems.
At the present, nearly 76% of the world’s fish stocks are at their maximum sustainable yield or already depleted. All the while, seafood consumption demands are increasing and resultantly pressuring fishermen to increase catch efforts. By choosing sustainable seafood, you can make a difference!
Our Restaurant Program
To encourage Maui restaurants to serve sustainable seafood, Pacific Whale Foundation has created The Maui Seafood Watch program. If you are a restaurant owner, we urge you to join! (For information, please email jniles@pacificwhale.org.) If you are a consumer, please choose those restaurants that have agreed to serve sustainable seafood.
We urge you to dine at participating Maui Seafood Watch restaurants and support their efforts to protect the ocean. Simply click on the restaurant name to visit their website.
Which Seafoods are Sustainable?
The Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch Program considers these issues when determining if a seafood is considered sustainable or not:
1. Inherent vulnerability of the species to fishing pressure
2. Status of the species population
3. Nature and extent of bycatch
4. Effect of fishing practices on habitats and ecosystems
5. Effectiveness of the fishery management
Some of the key issues used to evaluate fish farming include:
1. Use of marine resources in fish feed
2. Risk and impacts of escaped farmed fish to wild fish
3. Risk and impacts of disease and parasite transfer to wild fish
4. Risk and impacts of pollution and other impacts on habitats and ecosystems
5. Effectiveness of the fishery management
Each seafood item then receives a recommendation, either green, yellow or red.
Green means Best Choice
These are your best seafood choices. These fish are abundant, well managed and fished or farmed in environmentally friendly ways.
Yellow means Good Alternative
These are good alternatives to the best choices column. However, there are some concerns with how they're fished or farmed—or with the health of their habitats due to other human impacts.
Red means Avoid
Avoid these products, at least for now. These fish come from sources that are overfished and/or fished or farmed in ways that harm other marine life or the environment.
Learn More!
The Seafood Watch program currently has pocket guides for Hawaii, West Coast, Midwest, Southeast and Northeast regions of the U.S. These guides reflect those items most commonly found in the marketplace both at a regional and national scale. The West Coast pocket guide is also available in Spanish. A Seafood Watch Sushi Guide was recently published as well, providing information on the sustainability of common choices found on sushi menus nationwide.
Download a copy of the Hawaii Seafood Watch Pocket Guide here.
You can also visit http://www.mbayaq.org/cr/cr_seafoodwatch/download.asp to download other guides from other parts of the country.
Download Thank You cards to leave at restaurants and retailers that are promoting sustainable seafood, and Become Aware cards to leave at those that are not.
Learn about Hawaii's fish here (pdf).
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