The dilemma of the concerned fish consumer grows more acute each day, it seems. Should you put your own health, enhanced by the goodness of oily fish rich in omega-3, before the wellbeing of the world's dwindling fish stocks?
Sales of fish oil supplements have soared, propelled by reports suggesting it can increase longevity and even improve children's behavior. Yet, environmentalists warn that stocks of many fish are over-exploited, and we should stop eating them. They say toxins such as cancer-causing dioxins and PCBs have built up in the fatty tissue of fish thanks to decades of industrial pollution of the seas.
So which way to turn?
At last the conflicting advice has been pulled together. In a report published this week, the UK food and farming organization Sustain has analysed information from seven authoritative sources -- the UK Food Standards Agency, marine conservation societies in the UK and Australia, the Royal Society of Chemistry and specialist organizations monitoring the oceans around the world -- to draw up a list of fish that are both sustainable and healthy. Top for health are oily fish high in omega-3s but generally free of contaminants.
The 10 fish that fall into this category and are sustainably caught and available in the UK are herring, kippers, pilchards, sardines, sprats, trout (not farmed), whitebait, anchovies, carp (farmed) and mussels.
Of these, sardines, pilchards and sprats have the highest concentration of omega-3 fatty acids. Tinned tuna contains very little because the fat has been squeezed out to be sold as animal feed. Fresh tuna is a good source of omega-3s, but is generally contaminated with mercury. Only pole-caught skipjack, yellowfin, albacore and bigeye tuna is sustainably fished.
Other fish that are safe and sustainably caught include striped farmed bass, white bass, pacific cod, dover sole, alaskan and pacific halibut, red mullet, cold-water (but not warm-water) prawns, tilapia and turbot. These are not, however, oily fish and while they have many beneficial nutrients and are recommended, they are not high in the omega-3 fatty acids that research suggests many of us need more of.
The list of fish that qualify on all counts is not long, but the report's editor, Jeanette Longfield, says "unless people change what they eat, and governments stop running scared of vested interests, we're simply going to run out of fish."
Since 1950, technological advances in fishing have resulted in annual catches increasing from 18m tons in that year to 95m tons in 2000. During the 1990s, this rapid growth tapered off as fish populations declined dramatically. The latest figures from the UN food and agriculture organization say 52 percent of commercial fish species are fully exploited, 17 percent overexploited and 8 percent depleted.
Intense industrial fishing such as trawling is highly destructive to the seabed. As nets are pulled across the sea floor, they can flatten reefs and aquatic plants, which are the basis for entire local ecosystems. It is not known whether trawled areas can ever recover. Despite this, the trend has been towards building ever bigger trawlers. The Atlantic Dawn, for example, is a "super-trawler" built for Ireland by Norway. It is the largest fishing vessel ever made and accounts for 15 percent of Ireland's fishing capacity. It can drag behind it a net twice the volume of London's Millennium Dome.
High-tech fishing has also led to a rapid increase in the size of by-catches. Up to 80 percent of fish caught is discarded because it is commercially useless and was not the intended target of the fishing nets.
While fish farming has been heralded by some as a way of saving wild fish stocks, Sustain recommends only organic farmed fish. In addition to problems with pollution and disease, for every kilogram of fishmeal fed to farmed fish, only half a kilogram of fish is produced.
The report also points out the inconsistencies in UK government policy. As well as offering conflicting advice on health, economic policies at EU level are contradictory. The common fisheries policy is supposed to conserve endangered fish stocks, yet it also subsidizes the super-trawlers that are wreaking havoc to oceanic ecosystems.
"Government policy is all at sea," said Ben Wielgosz, the author of the report. "One government agency is telling people to eat more fish because it's good for their health. The same agency is issuing health warnings because some fish are too contaminated for pregnant women to eat. The EU knows that the North Sea fisheries and others are on the brink of collapse but doesn't have the will to put the public interest first. We are looking to British Prime Minister Tony Blair's EU presidency to tackle the common fisheries policy."
Omega-3 oils:
A group of highly unsaturated fatty acids vital to cell structure and functioning, particularly in the brain, and to vascular health. They cannot be made in the body but must be eaten. Fish are the best source.
Dioxins:
A large family of toxic chlorinated organic compounds found in cigarette smoke and pesticides that, like PCBs, are bioaccumulative.
PCBs:
Polychlorinated biphenyls are a class of chemicals used in everything from pesticides to flame retardants. They are bioaccumulative, which means they dissolve in the body fat of animals and can pass in ever-greater concentrations up the food chain. Some of them disrupt the function of hormones in animals.
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