Sightings | Alumni News
Tuna is (mostly) Out; Tilapia is In
Jesse Marsh MEM’02 Helps Consumers Make Responsible Seafood Choices
By Lisa M. Dellwo
Jesse Marsh MEM’02 loves sushi, especially unagi—freshwater eel—and tekka makki, the classic preparation of raw tuna wrapped in sushi rice and nori. But these days, she orders California rolls and vegetarian rolls, especially the ones with tempura yam and avocado.
That’s because her favorite seafood generally comes from unsustainable fisheries.
Shrimp is pretty much out of the question, too, unless it is U.S. farmed or trawl-caught rather than the imported shrimp that prevails on restaurant menus and in supermarkets.
As the senior fisheries research analyst at the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch program in California, Marsh not only makes informed choices about the seafood she consumes, but she helps concerned citizens throughout the country make similar choices.
The Seafood Watch program produces colorful wallet-sized seafood guides that tell consumers which fish to avoid, which are the best choices, and which are good alternatives. Behind these compact guides is a mountain of research analysis.
For each species, the Seafood Watch staff gathers information from academic papers, conference proceedings and government reports, and consults with experts on fisheries and aquaculture. This research is synthesized in a lengthy report that is reviewed by at least two external experts before being published online. The species is then classified as “Best Choice,” “Good Alternative” or “Avoid,” based on findings regarding the abundance of the species, its vulnerability to overfishing, the effects of fishing practices on the ecosystem, and other factors.
Marsh conducts a good deal of this research, along with two other staff members, and she also supervises some outside contractors employed by Seafood Watch.
She has spent the better part of a year revisiting the Aquarium’s recommendations about tuna. She checked the status of the world’s tuna fisheries by researching scientific and governmental reports and consulting fisheries experts. The results of her research will be reflected in the Seafood Guides published in 2007.
“The biggest change will be that many longline-caught tuna will go from ‘good alternative’ to ‘avoid,’” says Marsh. “That reflects our closer focus on the problem of bycatch—of sea turtles, seabirds and sharks—in longline fisheries."
Some fisheries, notably U.S. ones, have implemented measures to reduce bycatch, and “we acknowledge those efforts in our recommendations,” she says. But most international fisheries cannot demonstrate that they have solved the bycatch problem. That and the stock status of many tuna fisheries is why Marsh avoids sushi with tuna now—and urges us to do the same.