Eat responsibly

Dear MOOCers,

the past six weeks has been a wonderful journey. I learnt so much from your questions and comments and hope that the same holds true for you as well.

Before we finish this module, I would like to give you my own piece of advice on how to help protecting the oceans. As a biologist I am going to focus on the living organisms that inhabit the oceans, and specifically fish.

Most of us eat fish on a regular basis. Fish, apart from being very tasty, are necessary for a balanced diet they are high in omega-3 fatty acids that are good for keeping the heart healthy.

However, we should be aware of which fish to eat, as overfishing of specific species puts great pressure on their populations and eventually they might be faced with extinction. In addition, fishing of some species such as the tuna using fish aggregating devices (FADs) has detrimental effects on other types of fish and marine organisms (e.g. sea turtles), which are being caught as by-catch and then thrown off the ship. Greenpeace is pressuring supermarkets and brands supporting FADs to move to pole and line caught seafood. See this helpful video below which helps visualising the situation:

You can also check #NotJustTuna and #justtuna that have gained considerable attention over the past days on twitter.

Here you can also find some fish guides that list the species you should avoid eating or at least take notice of the method the fish is being caught. The Marine Conservation Society for example, lists 65 fish species that are fished unsustainably and thus should be avoided by consumers.

I am not advocating removing fish completely from your diet. I am just trying to raise awareness as to which fish species are on the verge of extiction and thus, we, the consumers should be more careful the next time we go and buy fresh or canned fish from the supermarket.

As an epilogue, I will attach this superb video that has been created as part of the European’s Union campaign to end overfishing