What if Cod Was One of Us?

An Introduction to Seafood Sustainability

To call our planet 'Earth' is a little misleading. Water covers 71% of the world's surface, and in that water, millions upon millions of organisms have made a home for themselves over millennia.

The future of these habitats is bleak. Pollution, global warming and overfishing are all playing a part in its destruction. The number of biologically stable fish stocks are decreasing and the demand for seafood is consistently on the rise. These practices are entirely unsustainable and will, if left to continue, deplete a significant amount of the world's natural resources of seafood. Not only does this have a direct effect on global food security, but also grossly imbalances the marine ecosystems. Ecosystems that have developed and existed in balance for millions of years are being changed vastly in a matter of decades due to the global climate crisis and overfishing. The outlook for the world’s oceans is frightening. Primary seafood production of the global ocean is expected to decline by 6 percent by 2100 and by 11 percent in tropical zones. In essence, it means that the fish populations will be less able to replenish their stocks. All the while the voracity in which the oceans are being fished increases.

The question we need to ask ourselves is "How did this happen?" I think the answer is quite simple: we lost touch with our food cultures. Having an emotional attachment to food as a part of your culture means cooking with what is available in the immediate vicinity. As soon as the international demand for food increased and global food chains developed, different foods became increasingly easy to come by. New exotic flavours became available and the local ingredients that used to be relied on fell to the wayside in favour of ingredients, grown, raised and farmed thousands of miles away. Consumers lost the knowledge of where their food originated and therefore, the nature in which it was produced. This loss of knowledge has meant that practices of supplying food have slipped without the consumer knowing until suddenly we are faced with a depleted natural resource and the responsibility to fix it.


The conversation around making the right choices about what you eat is a very complicated, multi-faceted one with a number of stakeholders all conveying their points with biases to support their causes. Taking a look at all the information around us and making a decision is what is absolutely necessary but there is just so much, and a lot of it is conflicting. Here are some of the major discussions that are currently being had around seafood sustainability, starting with wild versus farmed fish.

Wild vs Farmed

Farmed fish, although often classed as a ‘sustainable’ source, is a little misleading in its nature. Fish are often farmed in areas of the ocean or lakes which immediately cause some effects in the local ecosystem. An excess population of any animal in an ecosystem will have an adverse effect on its environment. A higher amount of excretion from the farmed fish means a higher level of nitrogen and nutrients decomposing on the ocean/lake bed. This excess of nutrients can have a negative effect, promoting the growth of aggressive algaes and voracious growth of phytoplanktons which both reduce water transparency, in turn, causing loss of submerged plants. (source). This change disrupts the spawning, maturation and general survival of species that rely on such submerged fauna.

Farmed fish are often carnivorous species (such as salmon, trout and seabass), which means that the farmers must feed them food derived from wild caught fish. The fisheries that catch wild seafood for farmed fish food are called ‘Reduction Fisheries’. It seems counter-intuitive to eat farmed fish fed with wild fish that a) doesn’t taste as good b) has a negative environmental impact. It seems much simpler to eat the wild fish. The conversion ratios of 'fish-in to fish-out" can be staggering. For example, farmed salmon can take 5lb of wild caught fish to produce 1lb salmon. It is even more unbelievable for tuna farming where 34kg of feed derived from wild caught fish is needed to produce 1kg (source). For fish that are of non-carnivorous species, they are often fed corn and soy with supplements to promote growth. These crops have to be grown on land, harvested, processed and transported, all requiring energy and resources. A study by the University of Oxford concerning greenhouse gas emissions across the supply chain of different foods shows wild caught fish at lower emission levels than farmed fish and even rice and eggs (source). This is due to the fact that in order to feed farmed fish, fishing still needs to happen, only before the fish is transported to another facility to be processed into food pellets, with the addition of additives, then transported to the fish farms. The carbon footprint of this exercise seems entirely unnecessary. 

Farming fish in areas that are connected to natural bodies of water can pose other lesser known issues. Escaping fish can cause impact to wild populations by competing for food, spawning partners and habitat. Farmed fish are often genetically different to their wild counterparts, which means that interbreeding could leave the offspring less able to thrive or even survive (source).

Fish farms only exist because the global consumer market demands these fish species in huge volumes; much more than the world’s oceans can provide. Farming has become the Band-Aid on a broken food system of over-demand of a handful of species. To really understand how this demand is being fulfilled, we need to take a look at how wild fish is caught.

Understanding Fishing Methods

The methods used to catch fish differ dramatically in their efficiency and effect on the environment. There are intricacies and methodologies that can be employed in each instance that greatly change how ethical and ocean friendly they are. Each of these warrant their own article, but in the interest of brevity, I’ll give you an overview.

Here’s the list from least to most destructive:

  • Hand Line - A fishing technique where a single fishing line is held in the hands.

  • Baited Traps - Traps are baited and set on the ocean floor - generally used to catch lobsters and other crustaceans.

  • Pole and Line - A pole and line consists of a hooked line attached to a pole. Can be operated by a human or attached to a vessel whilst moving

  • Seining - A method of fishing that employs a fishing net called a seine, that hangs vertically in the water with its bottom edge held down by weights and its top edge buoyed by floats

  • Mid-Water Trawling - trawling, or net fishing, at a depth that is closer to the water’s surface than the water’s bed. 

  • Purse Seining - A net is cast which then encircles a group of fish and is drawn closed at the bottom. Mainly used to catch fish which ‘shoal’ together.

  • Gill Nets - Nets that are cast with the top floating on the top of the water and bottom weighted down. A fish swims into a net and passes only part way through the mesh. When it struggles to free itself, the twine slips behind the gill cover and prevents escape.

  • Long Line - Uses a long line, called the main line, with baited hooks attached at intervals by means of branch lines. Hundreds or even thousands of baited hooks can hang from a single line, sometimes many miles in length.

  • Bottom Trawling - trawling along the seafloor. Global catch from bottom trawling has been estimated at over 30 million tonnes per year, an amount larger than any other fishing method  I wouldn’t advise using a word you are defining it its definition

  • Dredging - a kind of dredge which is dragged along the bottom of the sea by a vessel in order to collect a targeted edible bottom-dwelling species. 

After that brief overview, let’s take a look at how those methods are employed by different fishing vessels.

The fishing industry and its methods can be largely broken down into 3 boat sizes, which determine the fishing method used: day boats, week boats, trawlers. 

      Day Boats: 

  • Less than 50ft long boats

  • Return to dock before dark

  • Are only equipped to fish with ocean friendly methods: hand line, trolling, seining

Week Boats

  • 50-100ft long boats

  • Out at sea for 4-7 days

  • Equipped to use ocean friendly methods but with the power to use bottom trawling and long lines

Factory Freezer Trawlers

  • 100ft+ long boats

  • Out at sea for 4-8 weeks

  • Will only fish using destructive methods such as dredging, bottom trawling, long line and purse seining.

It's clear that the factory freezer trawlers have the ability to be the most destructive, create the most by-catch and cause the most damage to the oceans and their ecosystems through the fishing methods used. Some factory freezer trawlers are able to catch around 1 million pounds of fish every 24 hours with the capacity to hold 15 million pounds of fish. Fishing on this scale is, without a doubt, unsustainable.

All these factors leave us with some choices to make. Let's face it, a whole industry is not going to change overnight but change has begun and the onus is on the consumer to drive the change. There are many ways in which we can invoke change and demand better fishing practices through our purchases.

So what can we do?

1. Buy and eat fish caught in your country

If you live in a country that doesn't have fish, eat proteins and produce that have originated from your country. Buying fish caught using ocean-friendly methods that have travelled 10,000 kilometers to get to you is also causing harm to the environment through greenhouse gases emitted during transport, especially by air.

2. Eat wild fish from ‘day-boats’ caught using sustainable catch methods.

Day-boats will only be out fishing for a few hours before bringing their catch back into dock. This means that the fish is ultra fresh upon being processed. Day-boats are also restricted to predominantly ocean-friendly fishing methods such as hook and line, trolling and baited pots. All low to no-impact fishing methods.

3. Don’t eat fish that are bigger than you

Marlin, swordfish, bluefin tuna, shark. All of these apex predators have been fished almost to extinction. Their long lifespans mean that they reproduce at a slower rate than other species and cannot replenish their populations as quickly as other species. 

If that isn't enough, these fish are high on the food chain and, due to biomagnification, contain high levels of mercury which is toxic to us. What’s worse, is that once we eat it, we cannot get rid of it. It only accumulates.

4. Hold restaurants to high standards

When dining out there are many choices with which we are faced. “Dining Sustainably” is most likely way down on the list... past aesthetics, food presentation, cocktails and the hot bartender that only works Saturday nights. But if confronted with the knowledge that the shrimp on your plate were farmed in Thailand with no health and safety restrictions on their practices you may be a little less eager to eat the ceviche. Be vocal. Ask where ingredients are sourced. You'll either be told where ingredients are from or that they don’t know. You will probably want to avoid eating the latter, but at least it lays the foundation to becoming an informed consumer.

At Marben and The Cloak we only use sustainably sourced seafood. Fogo Island Fish is one in particular who we champion frequently for the quality of their fish, but also for paying fishers double the average rate, having zero bycatch and only fishing cod after they have spawned.

5. Be responsible in your eating choices

It is very easy to put things in your mouth that taste good. That's what we are all programmed to do as humans. What sets us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom is that we have the ability to make some decisions about what exactly it is that we eat. We can look at the provenance of the ingredient and ascertain how satiating our hunger is impacting our environment.

6. Steer Clear of Farmed Fish

You may have caught the jist of this in other parts of the blog… Mother nature has provided us with an enormous fish farm that can replenish itself, requires no feeding and is carbon negative. All we need to do is treat it with a little respect.


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The Pursuit of Inconsistency