Greenpeace Oceans Campaigner, Casson Trenor has a monthly column on Alternet.com about protecting our fisheries and ocean health through sustainable seafood. Here’s a great selection from his first installment:
In 2009, Americans spent over $75 billion on seafood. That’s more than a big pile of cash — it’s a tremendous communication tool. Truly, when that kind of money is talking, the whole world listens.
As such, it’s important to be very careful about what message we transmit through this massive microphone. When we spend our dollars at seafood merchants that are pursuing business models which take environmental issues into account, we offer these purveyors financial incentive to continue along this path.
On the other hand, if we buy pirate-caught Chilean sea bass from a seafood merchant that has no compunction about selling it, we reward this type of nefarious behavior and communicate to the marketplace at large that we, the consumers, don’t particularly care about the ramifications of our seafood choices.
Here is a quick-and-dirty list of four seafood retailers that have adopted particularly reprehensible practices in their quest for fish-driven profit. If we shift our purchasing dollars away from companies like this and toward competitors that operate under a more eco-sensitive paradigm, perhaps we can encourage these operators to change their ways.
