The World Food and Agriculture Organization has estimated that fifty-two percent of the world’s fisheries have been overexploited and twenty-eight percent depleted. The forecast is that if we keep continuing our current fishing and fish consumption practices, commercial fish will disappear from the oceans as early as 2048. If we want to preserve what we still can, the fishing and consumption of some fish has to be reduced or even temporarily stopped so that fish stocks could recover.

Below we are presenting a list of ten kinds of fish and seafood that we would recommend to abstain from eating because their stocks are being depleted speedily or their consumption is extremely harmful to the environment. For more information on this subject, please see the Lithuanian Fund for Nature’s guidebook on a conscious consumer of fish and fish products, “Do You Know What Fish You Will Eat Today?”

DO NOT BUY THIS FISH! LET NATURE RECOVER!

Golden Redfish (Sebastes marinus)
Golden redfish resemble freshwater redfish but belong to a different fish group. The golden redfish live in deep waters and are found in the depth range of 50 to 1,000 meters. You will recognize them by their red color, large eyes, and the protruding lower part of their mouths. The golden redfish can grow up to a meter long and weigh up to 15 kilograms. This fish matures only in its 10th to 12th year of life when it grows 30 - 40 centimeters long. They are found mostly in the north of the Atlantic Ocean, from the Spitsbergen Island to the North American coastline.
The golden redfish are caught using bottom-trawling nets or are caught in trawls as bycatch.

SOLUTION. Avoid buying this deepwater fish because their stocks are overexploited. Due to their slow growth and maturation, they are especially endangered by overfishing.

Hake (Merluccius genus)
Hake are related to cod. They are bottom fish, living in the depth range of 50 to 1,000 meters. They grow a little longer than a meter and can weigh about 15 kilograms. The hake are found in the northern and southern parts of the Atlantic. They are caught by bottom-trawling nets and long-lines.

There is more than one species of fish that is hiding behind the name of the hake in grocery stores and marketplaces. You have to be careful when choosing a hake. Their population is growing ever smaller, and only the European hake (Merluccius merluccius) and the North Pacific hake (Merluccius productus) appear in larger numbers. This fish is very often used in the production of fish fingers and crab sticks; unfortunately, the packages often do not provide accurate information about the fish used in their production.

SOLUTION. The hake stocks are speedily disappearing. You should avoid buying hake, except for its two species, the European hake and the North Pacific hake.

Atlantic Halibut and Greenland Halibut (Hippoglossus hippoglossus and Reinhardtius hippoglossoides)

Halibut is an extremely predatory fish, feeding on cod and other fish. In its size, the halibut differs from all flatfish. Some halibut giants can grow as long as 3 to4 meters and weigh 300 kilograms.

The halibut are caught in the waters near Greenland, Newfoundland, Ireland, and Scotland, the Barents Sea, and along the Norwegian coastline. Also, they are raised in Norway and Spain.

The halibut is immensely overfished, and due to their slow growth and maturation they are especially endangered by overfishing. Nearly everywhere in the world catches of this fish have dwindled markedly. The EU law stipulates that product labels indicate if fish was raised or caught in the wild. You should also read the fish product labels because the wild halibut population is facing extinction.

SOLUTION. Do not buy this fish because their stocks are on the brink of extinction.

Sea devil (Lophius piscatorius)
Sea devil is a slow and sluggishly moving bottom fish, swimming in the depth of 20 to 1,000 meters. A fully grown sea devil can grow 2 meters long. The first three dorsal spine rays and a flesh crest on top have become a certain “fishing filament” that the sea devil vibrates over its cavernous mouth to attract its prey: fish, crustaceans, and other, larger sea animals. Because of this fishing method, this fish is also called “anglerfish” in many languages.

The sea devil is found on all the coasts of the Atlantic Ocean, in the Mediterranean and the Black Seas, the southwestern part of the Baltic Sea, and the straits of Skagerrak, Kattegat, and Oresund. The sea devils are usually caught as bycatch with other fish in trawls for various fish or shrimp, yet lately fishermen are trying to catch sea devils only.

SOLUTION. Because sea devils grow slowly and reach sexual maturity fairly late, their population is threatened by modern fishing practices. You should avoid buying these fish because we have only very limited information about the size of their stocks and yearly catches. Instead, you should buy fish that you know well and fish the stocks of which are used economically.


   

European Eel (Anguilla anguilla)
The life cycle of the European eel is prety unusual, and we still know very little about it. The eels can live for very long; there is data that some of them live to be 100 years old. They are found in the North Atlantic, the Baltic, and the Mediterranean Seas, from where they migrate to rivers and streams to grow and mature.

All eels spawn in the Sargasso Sea that washes against the Caribbean isles and the eastern coast of the North Atlantic, but their larvae return to Europe through the Gulf Stream. They reach Europe only after a three-year journey, during which they turn into glass eels because their bodies are absolutely translucent then. The female eels migrate to inland waters while the male eels remain along seashores or river estuaries.

The eel stocks are facing extinction because the number of glass eels that reach Europe’s shores is growing smaller every year. One of the reasons is illegal fishing of eels. Glass eels are caught for eel-raising fish farms, because eels do not spawn in captivity. In many Baltic countries, the fishing of eels is prohibited, and the European eel has been included, as a protected fish species, into the Red Book of Threatened Species.

SOLUTION. Do not buy either wild or farm-raised eels because they all belong to the same disappearing species of eels.

Tilapia (Oreochromis genus)
Not one but about a hundred species of tilapia fish are collectively known as tilapia. Most often, in food stores and marketplaces one can purchase the Nile tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus), the blue tilapia (Oreochromis aureus), and the Mozambique tilapia (Oreochromis mossambicus).

Tilapia originates in Africa, but the fish have been farm-raised for over 3,000 years. They live in fresh and semi-brackish waters and are omnivorous. Mostly, they are raised in Africa and the far east of Asia to meet the needs of local and quickly growing foreign markets. In tropical environments, this species can be raised in a fairly simple way, while in harsher climates the water has to be warmed up and thus various power plants and factories are often used to generate heat. The fishing of wild tilapia is not profitable anymore these days, so they are raised commercially in an ever rising number of small fish farms which, in order to make more profit, supplement their fish’s diet with growth hormones and antibiotics. For the cost of raising tilapia to remain small, tilapia fish farms do not breed tilapia; most often they catch reproducers in wild waters.

SOLUTION. You should avoid buying tilapia because their farms in Asia are poorly managed and face nearly no surveillance; the use of hormones and antibiotics and their control are not regulated by law.

Tuna (Thunnus genus)
Tuna is one of the most popular types of fish in food markets. This species live in large groups, from 50 to 1,000 fish in one group. The tunas are fast and persevering swimmers that spend a lot of time searching for smaller fish and squids. The largest tunas are the Atlantic bluefin tunas (Thunnus thynnus). The largest Atlantic bluefin tuna ever caught weighed 900 kilograms and was 5 meters long. Unfortunately, today such giants are a rarity.

Various species of tuna are found in the Atlantic Ocean, the Mediterranean Sea, and the Indian and the Pacific Oceans. The Atlantic bluefin tunas are still fished massively, although its stocks have been overfished a long time ago. Other popular tuna species, such as the yellowfin tunas (Thunnus albacares), have also been overfished.

SOLUTION. When buying tunas, find out to what species it belongs. Do not buy the Atlantic bluefin tunas or the yellowfin tunas, because their stocks have been exploited to the maximum and in some case they have even been overexploited. Depending on what fishing equipment is used, tuna is caught as bycatch with such other fish species as dolphins and turtles. If, however, you decide on buying tuna, please choose the skipjack tuna (Katsuwonus pelamis), the stocks of which are somewhat more abundant.

Escolar (Lepidocybium flavobrunneum)
The escolar is called “oilfish” for a reason. It is incapable of metabolizing wax esters (gempylotoxins) naturally found in its diet. They accumulate in the escolar’s body and make up 14 25 percent of its weight. Very often, people around the world confuse it with its relative, the oilfish (Ruvettus pretiosus), the meat of which is obviously as good as that of the escolar. People who have digestion problems are advised against eating escolar. Due to the digestive problems this fish might cause, the sale of escolar is prohibited in Italy and Japan.

SOLUTION. The escolar is related to the tuna. Its stocks, like those of tunas, are overfished, so we would advise against buying this fish.

Tropical Shrimp
In food stores and restaurants, the large tropical shrimp are often called tiger, whiteleg, or giant shrimp.
The fishing of wild shrimp and the farm-raising of shrimp both have negative consequences for nature. Wild shrimp are caught using trawls that harm bottom cultures, corals, and other bottom animals. As bycatch, turtles and many other organisms belonging to other species get incidentally caught in the trawls. Even specialized shrimp farms are one of the major threats to the already dwindling mangrove forests. The mangrove forests are being cut down so that shrimp would have enough room for expansion.

SOLUTION. Do not buy this shrimp because every purchased shrimp only increases the harm done to wildlife in southeastern Asia

Northern or Maine Shrimp (Pandalus borealis)
The Northern shrimp live on the soft bottom of the Northern Atlantic in the depth of 50 500 meters. Shrimp mate in the autumn, after which the female shrimp carry the fertilized eggs in between their hind legs throughout the whole winter. The mature shrimp can grow as long as 16 17 centimeters. It is interesting that shrimp are hermaphroditic: they are female and male at the same time. When juvenile, they start out as male but later their sexual system changes and males end up their lives as females.

Shrimp are caught using bottom-trawling nets that are especially detrimental fishing tools. When such a trawl is pulled along the sea bottom, it scrapes it clean, destroys, and catches many animals that are later thrown dead overboard back into the sea.

SOLUTION. The Northern shrimp are harvested very intensively; therefore their stocks face difficulty recovering. Moreover, trawling greatly harms sea-bottom cultures and leads to large bycatches. Do not buy this shrimp.