Fishing Boats at Sunset (photo by Michelle Kwajafa, courtesy of morguefile.com)

It’s become clear to foodies who love wild fish that a lot of wild seafood that was once widely available and affordable, including cod, salmon and striped bass, have become much tougher to find. There’s plenty of farmed seafood, but much of it lacks the rich flavor of the wild versions and industrialized fish farming can pose environmental and health risks, and deplete wild fish stocks used to feed farmed fish.

The good news is that something can be done about it and some action is already taking place. According to a fine article by Mark Bittman in the New York Times:

…with monitoring systems that reduce bycatch by as much as 60 percent and regulations providing fishermen with a stake in protecting the wild resource, it is happening. One regulatory scheme, known as “catch shares,” allows fishermen to own shares in a fishery — that is, the right to catch a certain percentage of a scientifically determined sustainable harvest. Fishermen can buy or sell shares, but the number of fish caught in a given year is fixed.

Mr Bittman explains that not all fish farming is bad, “China alone accounts for an estimated 70 percent of the world’s aquaculture — where it is small in scale, focuses on herbivorous fish and is not only sustainable but environmentally sound.”

The bad news is that if steps are not taken to protect ocean fisheries, which are already being harvested at their maximum levels, wild fish stocks may be depleted entirely by 2048.

If you’d like to read the New York Times article cited above go to: A Seafood Snob Ponders the Future of Fish