Red Fish List - Te Aratohu Ika Whero

Use the Greenpeace NZ Red Fish List to inform your fish purchasing decisions.

This is not a good fish guide, nor is it the best fish guide. This is the Greenpeace Red Fish List.

Red List

Greenpeace is asking for urgent action on these species. We’re not asking New Zealanders to stop fishing or eating fish that are sustainably caught, but we are asking you not to buy the seafood listed in our Red Fish Guide unless you can be certain it’s truly sustainable.

The fish species are on this list for one or more of the following reasons:

  • They have a life history that makes them very vulnerable to fishing
  • They are commonly sourced from overfished and depleted stocks, or are being fished at such a high rate that stocks are being depleted rapidly
  • The fishing methods used to catch the fish are often highly destructive to other oceans creatures and/or habitats.

The Greenpeace 'Red-Grade' Criteria for Unsustainable Fisheries provides more detail and background information for the assessment criteria used by Greenpeace scientists, and can be downloaded by clicking on the links on the bottom of this page.

Does this mean that everything not on this red list is sustainable?

No. There are many other types of fish and seafood that are from unsustainable fisheries.  The ones on the Greenpeace New Zealand seafood red list represent those that most require urgent action to ensure the future of these species and the fisheries.

A thorough guide to the sustainability of New Zealand's main commercial fish species is available from the Forest and Bird website.

It's every New Zealander's birthright to catch and eat fish. Let's preserve this right.

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