Making sure your New Jersey seafood is sustainable
There was an article last week on NJ.com about how the oil spill in the Gulf is going to affect seafood availability and general and how it will affect the New Jersey seafood industry. Specifically, it mentions that with the possibility of seafood being scarce from the gulf region, there is an “opportunity to spotlight seafood harvested here [in NJ].”
So I thought I’d take a moment and talk about our local seafood. The fact is that while seafood is a very healthy choice (provided it hasn’t been tainted with pollution) for humans, the way some of it is harvested can be damaging to the environment and wreak havoc on the seafood population. So while I’m all for supporting our local producers of food, I’m also for making sure the food produced is sustainable.
The other day, I mentioned that Wegmans is carrying local scallops. Before I purchased them, I was able to quickly determine if they were a good choice sustainability-wise by using the Seafood Watch app on my iPhone. The app is created by Monterey Bay Aquarium and rates seafood and sushi in an easy to understand manner – Best Choice, Good Alternative, and Avoid. You don’t have to an iPhone, however, to get guidance from Seafood Watch. You can download a printable pdf version of their recommendations that you can carry around your wallet. It’s not as detailed as the app, but it’s very helpful. You can also use their website to research different seafood choices.
As Dan Cohen, a Cape May oyster fisherman said in the NJ.com piece, there’s no pleasure in another person’s calamity. If the oil spill disrupts the sea life in the gulf as many believe it will, it will be an environmental and human tragedy. If it does happen, however, there will be more opportunities for local seafood. If that happens, choose your seafood wisely, even if does come from right off our NJ coast.
I searched for some specific information on sustainable New Jersey seafood, and I didn’t come across any websites that were dedicated specifically to our state’s seafood. If you know of any other resources that will help us all decide which New Jersey seafoods are our best choices, please leave them in the comments.
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Image: French Duck
