Is Eating Seafood More Eco-friendly Than Eating Meat?

We’ve talked about the eco-benefits of eating a vegetarian diet here at THF before, but we haven’t looked into fish that much.

Fish on your plate is not always very eco-friendly.

The negatives of fish:

Trawling caught seafood: Trawling, in short, is basically when folks who catch seafood use big ol’ nets that not only catch the product the net is meant to catch (say shrimp) but also catches lots of other sea creatures. These sea creatures, called bycatches are not used or tossed back to sea either, they’re simply killed for no reason other than they happen to live in the sea near the creature the net is meant to catch. Trawling is doubly bad because it can quickly ruin large areas of sea ecosystems.

Overfishing: Humans are very good at taking way more than they need. In the case of fishing, this happens a lot. We’ve seen a huge shrinking of various fish populations over the years due to overfishing. If folks fish and fish, without allowing fish populations to re-breed, grow, and thrive, we’re looking at extinct fish and other sea life populations.

Human toxins: Because we, as humans, release oodles of chemicals and toxins into our ecosystems, our waters are far more contaminated than they should be. Do you want to eat fish that have been swimming around in polluted waters? Mercury, DDT, dioxins, and more icky junk are commonly found in seafood.

Fish farms: Fish farms are breeding grounds for all sorts of diseases. Fish farming is an in depth topic, but this New York Times article is a good scary starter read.

So, the basic answer to the question, is no, eating seafood IS NOT necessarily better for you or the environment than eating meat. Next up, we’ll look at how you can make sure that the fish on your plate is a good eco choice.