Something fishy? Eco-guide lists seafood to avoid

Reuters 25 Feb 10;

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Love your seafood as much as the environment? A new guide to sustainable fish stocks in the Asia Pacific aims to help diners in Singapore enjoy their meals without harming one of the world's major marine ecosystems.

Singapore is one of the biggest seafood consumers in the Asia Pacific region, with an average 100,000 tonnes consumed each year, according to environmental group WWF, which launched the Singapore Seafood Guide on Thursday.

The guide is the WWF's second in the region -- a guide for Hong Kong seafood lovers was launched a few years ago.

"By using this guide consumers and corporations can make a difference through informed seafood choices," said Amy Ho, managing director of WWF Singapore.

"When buying seafood or dining out, we can use the Singapore seafood guide to choose species that are fished and farmed responsibly," she added in a statement.

The guide uses a simple traffic light system: green means recommended eating choice; yellow stands for only eat occasionally and red means avoid eating.

Singapore is a hub for seafood and almost all of it is imported, the WWF said, much of it from the unique, and fragile, marine ecosystem next door known as The Coral Triangle.

"The Coral Triangle is under increasing threat because fish are being taken out faster than they can be replenished," said Geoffrey Muldoon of the WWF's Coral Triangle Programme.

"In the past most people have been unaware of where the fish on their plates comes from or whether the species they are eating are heavily overfished or caught in ways that are damaging to marine environment. Much of the seafood you see in Singapore may be from areas that have been overfished for years."

The Singapore Seafood Guide is available as a free download from the WWF Singapore website (www.wwf.sg) and will also be distributed free of charge throughout the country.

The Coral Triangle, dubbed the nursery of the seas, is the most diverse marine region on the planet, and home to more than 3,000 species of reef fish and commercially valuable species such as tuna, in addition to 500 species of reef-building coral.

It covers around 6 million sq km (2.3 million sq mile) of ocean across six countries -- Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Solomon Islands, and East Timor -- and directly sustains the lives of more than 120 million people, the WWF said.

(Writing by Miral Fahmy; Editing by Alex Richardson)

WWF launches guide on sustainable fish stocks
Mustafa Shafawi, Channel NewsAsia 25 Feb 10;

SINGAPORE : A new guide on sustainable fish stocks in the Asia Pacific by environmental group WWF aims to help diners in Singapore enjoy their meals without harming one of the world's major marine ecosystems.

The guide uses a simple traffic light system - green means 'recommended eating choice', yellow stands for 'only eat occasionally' and red means 'avoid eating'.

It lists black pomfret, tiger prawn and flower crab among the seafood to avoid eating.

The Singapore Seafood Guide is the WWF's second in the region. A guide for Hong Kong seafood lovers was launched a few years ago.

The Singapore guide is available as a free download from the WWF Singapore website.

It will also be distributed free of charge throughout Singapore.

WWF said Singapore is one of the biggest seafood consumers in the Asia Pacific region, with an average 100,000 tonnes consumed each year. - CNA/ms



Pomfret and seabass red-flagged
WWF guide sorts seafood into three categories based on sustainability
Grace Chua, Straits Times 26 Feb 10;

GO EASY on the seabass and pomfret.

This is the message for seafood-loving Singaporeans from the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), which is concerned that some of the seafood popular here comes from over-fished sources.

It has produced a made-for-Singapore guide to sustainable seafood, the first one tailored to the local market.

The guide puts seafood commonly available here on three lists - the 'recommended' or green list, the 'think twice' or yellow list and the 'avoid' or red list.

What's a seafood lover to do, then?

Choose seafood on the recommended list over those on the other two, and seafood on the 'think twice' list over those on the 'avoid' list, said Ms Amy Ho, managing director of WWF Singapore.

'The aim is to raise awareness and encourage customers to ask where the fish is from.'

She should know that the task of changing consumer attitudes and behaviour is not easy. When the WWF launched a similar guide three years ago in Hong Kong, it found that getting groups or communities to buy into the idea was the toughest part, although a 'ripple effect' followed later.

Changing consumer preferences for seafood is difficult because the demand for it cannot be met if it is continually sourced from where it is not reproducing fast enough, she added.

Most of the 105,163 tonnes of live, chilled or frozen seafood imported into Singapore last year - excluding prawns, cockles and crabs - came from the ecologically fragile Coral Triangle.

This zone covers the waters off Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines, but it is not the only over-fished area; more than a quarter of the world's fish stocks are under threat, said the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation. Cod stocks which collapsed in the north-west Atlantic in the 1980s have still not recovered.

Eating seafood farmed sustainably is the way to go, but the farms here produce only about 4 per cent of the fish consumed; the aim is to get it up to 15 per cent in five years.

Ms Ho explained that some fish grow too slowly to replace those caught; fish farms add to the problem by catching fingerlings or young fish from the wild.

On the green list are the species for which harvest quotas have been set for commercial and recreational fishing, for example, abalone from Australia.

Not all farmed seafood is in the clear. Tiger prawns farmed in the region are on the red list because of what it takes to farm them. Many South-east Asian mangrove forests, which support entire networks of plants and animals, have been destroyed to make way for prawn farms; when mangrove forests go, the coastlines lose their natural buffer against floods and hurricanes.

It is noticeable that most of the seafood on the guide's recommended list is from far-off places - and more expensive. Examples are Australian abalone, oysters from Canada and China, and green-lipped mussels from New Zealand.

Several red-listed species like the black pomfret, tiger prawns and yellowtail scad or selar are what consumers would go for because they are cheaper and more familiar.

But Singapore Environment Council executive director Howard Shaw said this may be an issue only in the short term: 'As the aquaculture industry develops and grows, it's possible to produce seafood that's affordable for low-income earners.'

Singapore's markets have some way to go in labelling seafood. Checks on fresh seafood sold at Cold Storage, Giant, FairPrice and Sheng Siong supermarkets showed that only Cold Storage labels it by country of origin; but packaged fish balls and salmon are labelled by country of origin in all four supermarket chains.

The WWF plans to update the guide every two to three years, and is shooting for all seafood to make it to the green list, Ms Ho said.


Go for green list

TO PRODUCE its guide on sustainable seafood, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) assessed wild-caught seafood on criteria such as:

# How long it takes to grow to maturity, since a shorter growth period means it reaches table size earlier.

# How well-regulated the fishing activity is.

# Whether the population in the wild is healthy.

How fish are caught, too, makes a difference to the effects of the fishing activity on the environment. For example, long drift nets which float with the current often also trap unwanted species, or bycatch.

Farmed fish were rated based on whether the young fish were harvested from the wild, which depletes wild stocks, and by the amount of pollution their farms added to the environment.

'AVOID' RED LIST: Bluefin tuna from around the world, crimson snapper and grey prawns from Indonesia, flower crab and unicorn leather jackets from the South China Sea.

'THINK TWICE' YELLOW LIST: Four finger threadfin, milkfish and seabass from Singapore farms, narrow-barred Spanish mackerel or batang from Indonesia and silver pomfret from the South China Sea.

'RECOMMENDED' GREEN LIST: Abalone and coral trout from Australia, geoduck from North America, green-lipped mussels from New Zealand, mud crab from India and Sri Lanka and narrow-barred Spanish mackerel or batang from Malaysia.

Go for green list
Straits Times 26 Feb 10;

TO PRODUCE its guide on sustainable seafood, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) assessed wild-caught seafood on criteria such as:

# How long it takes to grow to maturity, since a shorter growth period means it reaches table size earlier.

# How well-regulated the fishing activity is.

# Whether the population in the wild is healthy.

How fish are caught, too, makes a difference to the effects of the fishing activity on the environment. For example, long drift nets which float with the current often also trap unwanted species, or bycatch.

Farmed fish were rated based on whether the young fish were harvested from the wild, which depletes wild stocks, and by the amount of pollution their farms added to the environment.

'AVOID' RED LIST: Bluefin tuna from around the world, crimson snapper and grey prawns from Indonesia, flower crab and unicorn leather jackets from the South China Sea.

'THINK TWICE' YELLOW LIST: Four finger threadfin, milkfish and seabass from Singapore farms, narrow-barred Spanish mackerel or batang from Indonesia and silver pomfret from the South China Sea.

'RECOMMENDED' GREEN LIST: Abalone and coral trout from Australia, geoduck from North America, green-lipped mussels from New Zealand, mud crab from India and Sri Lanka and narrow-barred Spanish mackerel or batang from Malaysia.

New guide offers food for thought
Conservation group's seafood guide aims to make consumers more aware of endangered animal species
Neo Chai Chin Today Online 26 Feb 10;

SINGAPORE - The next time you go to a restaurant or supermarket for seafood, opt for mud crab instead of flower crab. And if you like Chilean seabass, make sure it comes from South Georgia in the South Atlantic Ocean instead of those caught elsewhere.

Consumers in Singapore should think twice, or avoid altogether, 32 of 46 commonly-eaten seafood species, according to the World Wide Fund for Nature (Singapore).

Species like tiger prawn from Indonesia and Thailand, and bluefin tuna are considered over-fished and to be avoided. Even milkfish and seabass farmed locally have been accorded "think twice" status, due to the risk of becoming unsustainable.

And in case you think this is all too much to remember on your next dine-out, a new pocket-sized seafood guide is now available - with species split into green (recommended), yellow (think twice), and red (avoid) categories.

Launched by conservation group WWF Singapore, the guide aims to get more consumers here asking questions about their food. "With this guide, you know what's on the Green list. So we encourage you to ask - what is this fish or seafood type you're being served at the restaurant, where this seafood comes from," said WWF Singapore managing director Amy Ho.

The guide took a year to produce, and included field visits to markets and fishery ports to suss out frequently-consumed species, as well as a rigorous process to determine how sustainable each was.

But are consumers willing to raise questions?

"To be quite honest, if (a dish) were served in front of me, I wouldn't ask, especially if I am at a business lunch. I think it's a bit rude to ask and reject if the fish is endangered," said food enthusiast and business development executive Wong Peishan, 24.

Sales administrator Jean Lum, 55, who usually buys red grouper, snapper and silver pomfret at the wet market, was willing to buy species that are not endangered as "there are so many types of fish".

Still, she felt it was "frightening" that many popular catches - like Indonesia-fished orange-spotted grouper and crimson and Malabar snapper - were on the "Red" list.

"It would be a big problem if we can't eat so many types of fish," she said.

As for asking fishmongers where their stock is from, Ms Lum said: "We have been buying the fish for so long, they will wonder why we are suddenly asking questions."

Restaurants could be more pro-active and introduce "eco-friendly set menus" at reasonable prices, Ms Wong suggested.

Dining establishments that have made the first move are few. Fairmont Singapore, for one, has gradually removed Chilean seabass, bluefin tuna and shark's fin from the menus of its restaurants like Szechuan Court and Inagiku since 2008.

It plans to use more "green" seafood items, and get its chefs to be "more dynamic" in sharing information with guests, said Ms Belladonnah Lim, Fairmont Singapore and Swissotel The Stamford's marketing communications director.

Restaurant Association of Singapore president Ang Kiam Meng said he was unaware of details in the guide, but suggested that WWF Singapore reach out to fishermen as well.

WWF Singapore plans to engage traders, distributors and retailers including supermarkets in the coming months.

All stakeholders can play a role, Ms Ho said. Companies can adopt the guide as part of their corporate dining policy, dining outlets can remove "red" species and replace them with "green" ones, and traders can obtain their stocks from sustainable suppliers.

Singaporeans consume 100,000 tonnes of seafood a year, ranking among the top in the Asia-Pacific. Not surprisingly, much of the waters near our island - including the bio-diverse Coral Triangle framed by the Philippines, East Java and the Solomon Islands - are being overfished.

More about the fish guide and download a copy on the WWF website.

Get a copy of the guide at WWF's screening of "The End of the Line" on 27 Feb (Sat).

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