see.food.not.for.long

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water...

Rarely do I ever try and push my views on other people, but this is something that is so widely unknown and hardly ever taken into consideration when grocery shopping or ordering from a menu!

Most of you know that I am a bit crazy when it comes to animal issues.. I've since broadened my scopes to other areas, including environmental issues and conservation and preservation of everything on our planet. I am an active member in many groups and spend LOADS of my free time reading and researching these issues exhaustively! Wow, I'm a nerd.

Anyway, I would never tell people not to eat meat or seafood (as much as I would like to), but that would be oh-so hypocritical of me, since I do eat these things myself! In a way to probably get over my own hang-ups with this issue and ease my sense of guilt, I've begun to try and educate myself on meats that are "OK" to eat - meaning that the animals are killed in a humane way and that the meat itself is not totally jacked-up with steroids, growth hormones, etc..

This eventually led me to read up about seafood. I was never a big seafood eater, but have grown to like it quite a bit in recent days. I imagined that it would not be quite the crisis that the meat industry is with regard to the extreme levels of inhumane treatment that is involved. Well, I was half right. The fishing industry may not be teeming with inhumane treatment, but it is suffering great loss of sea-life, seabeds and endangering dozens of species of fish, along with a litany of other terrible issues.

Many of the fish we love to eat are vanishing because of the intense pressure we're putting on our ocean resources.

According to the NRDC, the main issues with MOST seafood today is:

1. Bottom-trawling boats are sailing farther and fishing deeper than ever before, hauling hordes of fish with heavy, weighted nets that tear up the ocean floor.
2. Fish are being caught too young - not giving them enough time to reproduce!
3. Tons of unwanted fish are scooped up and tossed out in the search for more desirable catch.
4. Pollution in coastal waters is DESTROYING important fish habitat and imperiling the health of our oceans.
5. Toxic mercury contamination!! It runs rampant in our fishies!! If you're eating fish with mercury, YOU'RE EATING MERCURY!! Oh no!!!!!


So where does that leave us?? No one has to give up seafood, but we CAN make smarter choices!! By choosing to buy fish that are in healthy supply, we can give dwindling fish populations a chance to recover!! By avoiding fish caught using destructive methods such as bottom trawling, we give an incentive to suppliers to switch to less harmful techniques that will cut down on waste and preserve the health of ocean ecosystems. BONUS!!

I'm attaching a super informative link that allows you to look up each of your favorite fishy treats and read about what METHOD of catching/farming they are under, and whether or not it is a SAFE fish to eat. Thanks to a friend, here is an awesome WALLET-SIZED guide!

Just remember, without our precious sea life, our oceans and natural water supplies will die out and we cannot afford to lose them!