In a Greenpeace guide of eating list fish like snapper, hoki and tuna are forbidden which is aimed at persuading shoppers to avoid the most at-risk seafood species. The guide is called Red Fish guide, which was launched at Kelly Tarlton’s Underwater World in Auckland. According to Greenpeace the guide is a part of an international consumer campaign which has already seen supermarkets throughout Europe and the United States refusing to stock unsustainable species.
Carmen Gravatt, campaign manager, told that all 12 species in the guide were at high risk of having been sourced from overfished stocks and caught using destructive fishing methods. He also informed that New Zealanders have the power to help end the peril of the oceans and fisheries are in. It is to ask people to demand truly sustainable seafood from their retailer and use the guide.
In this campaign shoppers should ask retailers where and how a fish was caught and whether the shop has a policy for sourcing only truly sustainable seafood. The guide says snapper are a slow-growing and late-starting breeder and are under pressure from combined commercial and recreation catches. Trawling for arrow squid kills threatened New Zealand sea lions and during the hoki fishing season hundreds of New Zealand fur seal and seabirds, such as albatross, are killed.
Auckland Fish Market manager Tom Searle said you can confidently walk into any fish shop in New Zealand and know that any fish caught in New Zealand that’s in the shop is absolutely fine to eat, because the fishery is sustainably managed. He added that hoki stocks were closely monitored, arrow squid was one of the most sustainable species because of its short life and high reproductive rate, and orange roughy tuna and shark species were under management under a quota system.
