Seafood Markets Guide

‘Has the catching of this fish impacted endangered species?’ ‘Is the population of this species still healthy or has it been overfished ?’

Far too often consumers are left without answers when trying to find out if seafood products on their supermarket shelves have come from sustainable sources. Inadequate labelling and a lack of publicly available sourcing policies have made it impossible for consumers and other market players to assess the sustainability of the seafood they buy and sell.

UPDATE: The Greenpeace report 'While Stock Lasts' exposes a disturbing picture of New Zealand’s commercial fisheries and the seafood retail sector. It shows how our oceans are in crisis and supermarkets, as major buyers and sellers of seafood, have a key role and responsibility in being part of the solution. By adoptiong sustainable seafood procurement policies supermarkets have an important role to plae in protecting the future of our fisheries and marine life, the seafood industry and the country’s clean green reputation.

In recent years a global ‘sustainable seafood movement’ has thrived. Consumers, retailers and seafood processors have started asking questions. The first step has been to demand transparency. As retailers started developing sustainable seafood purchasing policies they requested more accountability. They asked for sustainable seafood that has not been caught with destructive fishing techniques such as bottom trawling, and fish that does not come from overfished stocks.

This section of the Greenpeace NZ website provides a quick insight into the history of overfishing and how we came to the current state of the oceans. It creates an overview of some of the main problems. It helps retailers and seafood processors to understand what a sustainable seafood purchasing policy is and how to develop one. Last but not least, in the Greenpeace Red Fish Guide, is a list of the 12 fish species at very high risk of being sourced from unsustainable fisheries (‘red-listed’) and explains the rationale for red-listing them. The red list highlights key species that consumers should avoid purchasing.