I have a desire to tell you all about my search for the perfect fish (to eat for dinner). I (like many other Australian’s) used to eat salmon once a week. Salmon is full of Omega 3’s so very healthy for us. Most dieticians recommend 1-2 serves of fish per week. I am drooling thinking of that crispy skinned, oven-baked salmon right now! As most of you know, I am an avid reader and documentary watcher. Guilt has started to plague my every purchase, including fish. Is farmed fish as healthy for me as wild-caught? And if wild-caught fish is better for me, is it environmentally sustainable? I will summarise what I have found in my search thus far. Feel free to chime in with any further information for I am sure that I have not yet got to the bottom of this. Let’s start with farmed salmon. Farmed salmon obviously do not feed themselves from the ocean as they are kept in huge enclosed ‘sea circles’. Their natural choice of food is not available to them in these enclosures. Therefore, they are fed by humans. Now I think initially, fish farmers were trying to nourish their salmon with fish meal and fish oils (made from smaller forage fish) as this is closest to their diet in nature. The problem with this is that for every 1kg of salmon eventually farmed, it took 2kg of forage fish to feed the salmon during life. Hardly a sustainable practice. Forage fish were being severely overfished for the benefit of salmon farming. So the fish farmers decided to supplement the forage fish derived meals with land animal ingredients (chicken meal, blood meal), grains and seed oils. **Let's face it. This decision was more likely to be because grains and seed oils are cheaper and easier to source, rather than the farmers' deep concern for the welfare of forage fish.** Unfortunately, the vegetable derived land-based grains and seed oils are high in Omega 6. It is my understanding that when you feed a salmon grains and seed oil, it also drives up the Omega 6 content of the salmon. High intake of Omega 6 in humans has been linked to a rise in cancer rates as well as many other chronic diseases. Therefore, as a human eating this salmon, you are indeed getting the beneficial Omega 3’s however you are also getting a fair whack of the deathly Omega 6’s. From what I have read, this high level of Omega 6 from the farmed fish pretty much negates the Omega 3 benefits. So why bother eating fish at all? Let’s call the whole thing off. I started looking further afield to try to find wild-caught salmon in Australia. HA! This is a task that is virtually impossible. I have not been able to find wild Atlantic Salmon in Australia at all. I have been able to find Pacific Sockeye Salmon in Australia. It is VERY red compared to Atlantic salmon and the taste is a bit……..fishier. Trying to source wild-caught salmon in Australia, I learnt two things. It is VERY expensive and always frozen (most wild caught salmon comes from Alaska and Canada so getting it here fresh is impossible). So what the hell do I do? I have a choice between high Omega 6 farmed salmon or very expensive, wild-caught Sockeye salmon. I tell you what I did. I ate sardines. No joke. I gave the middle finger to the salmon industry and ate cute little sustainable sardines. Sardines reproduce like rabbits so overfishing them is virtually impossible. If you want to eat a sustainable fish, buy some fresh sardines from a supermarket and oven-bake their crispy delicious little heads. I digress. I have come back to eating salmon. You know where from?? The bloody tin! Winner winner. This tin ain’t pretty (Coles you really need to hire a better graphic designer) but: It is wild-caught It cost me $6 per can AND It is Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) approved - meaning that the fishing practices have been independently assessed and certified as sustainable THIS is the only salmon I now eat. My biggest pieces of advice when looking for the perfect fish:
If in doubt, go to http://www.sustainableseafood.org.au and search for your favourite fish to find out more about the fishing practices of certain species and whether they are sustainable. If you are too lazy for that, just look for the MSC tick of approval. Or eat chicken.
Does sustainability and where the fish came from influence your seafood purchases?
2 Comments
lydia archer
5/11/2017 02:16:26 am
i feed my kids canned tuna and feel a fair bit of guilt over it (due to overfishing of tuna and the collateral damage from the nets). i hate cooking fish and feel like it is the most convenient way of giving it to them...not sure if they will eat sardines. i only buy safcol which claims to be responsibly fished. i think farmed fish is fine if its done ethically and uses scientific methods to feed etc to minimise waste and disease and overuse of antibiotics. we live down the road from a barra farm...the industry's biggest barrier in australia is competing with the imported fish....australians need to be willing to pay more for sustainably and quality.
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I've been looking into the salmon industry for a while now and haven't liked what I've found. Like you, I've found it near impossible to find wild caught salmon in Australia, and when I have found it, it has been incredibly expensive. I'm not a fan of sardines but am now going to give them another try. Oven baked sardines, here we come! Thanks for your post.
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