Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch

Around the world, many traditional fisheries are threatened with collapse due to unsustainable fishing practices and habitat destruction. Some fisheries, however, remain healthy and productive due to successful management, responsible harvesting and advances in contained fish farming.

Parkhurst uses Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch “Guidelines for Sustainable Seafood” to continually increase the amount of sustainable fish we purchase annually. Seafood Watch is one of the best-known sustainable seafood advisory lists and has influenced similar programs around the world. Seafood Watch helps consumers and businesses make support healthy oceans by encouraging them to purchase seafood that is fished or farmed in ways that don’t harm the environment.

Aquaculture – We partner with seafood companies that raise fish inland, far from coastal waters, where wild fish feed and breed. Even shrimp and salmon farming can be moved inland, where wastes are easier to handle. U.S. shrimp farmers are experimenting with enclosed, recirculating systems that filter wastewater and can be located far from the coast.

Overfishing – We continue to reduce the use of seafood that is listed as “avoid” on the Seafood Watch Guide, published by the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

Bycatch – We partner with seafood companies that are working on limiting bycatch (unwanted fish and animals caught accidentally in fishing gear and discarded overboard, dead or dying). This is accomplished through the use of:

Pingers – The pingers make a sound under water, which helps sea mammals avoid the net.

Trap doors – U.S. fishermen invented the Turtle Excluder Device, or TED – a trap door in the net that lets turtles swim free.

Nordmore grate – Catching shrimp in trawl nets can kill up to 10 pounds of other animals for each pound of shrimp. New devices, like the Nordmore grate, are helping to reduce bycatch in some shrimp trawl fisheries.

By purchasing sustainable seafood, Parkhurst is able to help sustain wild, diverse and healthy ocean ecosystems that will exist long into the future.