🐟 Fishing series: A few climate conscious guidelines to buying fish: Difference between revisions

“Artisanal fishing”, also know as “small scale fishing“ is far from being an <i>underground model</i>. Indeed, this fishery employs 12 million people across the planet, as opposed to industrial fishing, employing a little over 500 thousand workers but receiving almost 80% of public subsidies. Indeed, Artisanal fishing is said<ref>Jacquet and Pauly (2008) <i>Funding priorities: big barriers to small-scale fisheries.</i> Conservation Biology 22(4): 832-835.</ref> to use, for the same volume of production as industrial fishing, only 1/8 of the fuel.

Ask your fishmonger, your local fisherman, suscribe to a “local distribution network”<ref>When in France: [https://poiscaille.fr/ Poiscaille]</ref> or read the label. Resellers have the legal obligation to tell you which type of fishery your fish is caught from.  

One marker to keep in mind is: <u><b>the size of the boat</b></u>.<br>If the boat is smaller than 12 meters, you are garanteed that it does not engage in destructive forms of fishing. Indeed, 12m implies that the boat will not be able to go on more than 1 day trips, which rules out the possiblity to fish with a trawl in deep sea, or to fish with drift nets: it simply garantees the use of “soft fishing” methods.

Farmed salmon, shrimp and cod are the three most consumed species of seafoods in the world. And, indeed, if you can always find them on the stalls of your fishmonger and in the fridges of your supermarket, it intails that they are, more than often, overfished and the product of “mono-fisheries”. By substituting your white Cod by Bream, your shrims by Scallops or your Salmon by pink Trout for instance, you can be assured that you are supporting smaller scale fisheries as well as helping to reduce the pressure on over-marketed species and fisheries.