As doctors and health specialists urge us to eat more fish, environmentalists are warning that we may end up harvesting our favorite sea life to the brink and beyond. Some of the most popular varieties have already begun to decline precipitously, experts say. And that’s with Americans eating less than half of what the U.S. government’s dietary guidelines suggest.
So the question is, can we have our fish and eat them too?
The answer is a rather unsatisfying maybe.
Some of the most discouraging news on the fish front is the possibility that, if we don’t change our ways, we may harvest fish into extinction. According to one frightening estimate, the oceans could be virtually emptied of fish by 2050, says Jillian Fry, project director of the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future.
The push to eat more fish is based on research showing that the omega-3 fatty acids found in fish oil can help prevent heart disease, improve cognition in adults and aid in the brain development of babies.
Still, says Fry, “I’m not sure we should be even advising people to eat 8 oz. of fish per week. But we should at least include advice that people eat lower on the food chain: sardines, anchovies, herring. Those fish reproduce much faster and are a very healthy choice.”
Not everyone is signing on to the 2050 date of doom. But experts do agree that many species are at risk. A recent study published in the journal Science warned that massive marine extinctions could be in our future if we don’t clean up the environment and get smarter about how we harvest sea life. In the past four decades, ocean-going fish have declined overall by nearly 40 percent, researchers reported.
Dangers to the fish population notwithstanding, one thing that’s unlikely to change is the advice that we should eat more fish. Along with being one of the few sources of omega-3 fatty acids, “fish is a healthy source of protein, minerals and vitamins,” says Dr. Walter Willitt, a professor and chair of epidemiology at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. But even health experts like Willitt realize that sustainability is a paramount concern. “We can’t recommend that people in general increase fish consumption without paying attention to sustainability,” Willitt says.
Fry’s group has filed a comment with the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee suggesting that sustainability issues should be considered in the creation of any future dietary guidelines.
While fish farming might seem to offer the perfect solution to the overharvesting problem, in its current state, it’s deeply flawed from a sustainability standpoint, says Theresa Sinicrope Talley, a coastal specialist with the California Sea Grant Extension Program at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego. That’s due to the food most fish farmers are feeding their stock: other fish.
“It doesn’t have to be done that way,” Willitt says. “We don’t need to be feeding small fish to create big fish.”
Until fish farmers start feeding fish plant-based foods, aquiculture won’t be a real solution to the sustainability problem.
2015 NBCNews.com