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Don't Eat Endangered Fish

Don't eat endangered fish Avoid eating overfished and threatened fish species.

By becoming aware of which wild fish are being harvested to the brink of extinction, we can start to alter our fish eating and buying habits and cease plundering an invisible ecosystem that is in a state of serious decline and stress. Also, by becoming aware of the impact of caged fisheries on our estuaries, bays, oceans, pond systems and wetlands will help us make informed choices next time we are at the fish mongers.

Do it now!

Contact & join the Australian Marine Conservation Society and get a copy of Australia's Sustainable Seafood Guide (with a foreword by Tim Winton).

In the meanwhile...

Fish to avoid

  • Blue Warehou (Trevally, Sea Bream, Snotty Trevalla)
  • Broadbill Swordfish (Swordfish)
  • Commercial Scallop (Tasmanian Scallop, Southern Scallop)
  • Eastern Gemfish (Hake, King Couta, Silver Kingfish)
  • Orange Roughy (Deep Sea Perch, Sea Perch)
  • Oreas (Deep Sea Dory, Spotted Dory, Dory)
  • Redfish (Nannygai, Red Snapper)
  • School Shark (Flake, Snapper Shark, Tope)
  • Silver Trevally (Silver Bream, White Trevally)
  • Southern Bluefin Tuna (Tuna)
  • Sharks & Rays (Flake, Boneless Fillet, Stingray Flaps)

Why this action

is

important

Establishing a sustainable balance in our harvesting of wild fisheries in the near future is essential to ward off the possibility of species collapse, and the ramifications this may have on our ocean, estuary and river ecosystems. To treat the ocean as a "magic pudding" while defiling the rivers and estuaries where fish breed and spawn is to live in a fool's paradise.

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Associated actions

Environmental benefit

By this action, we choose not to contribute to the decline of those fish species we know to be in trouble. Whereas 50 years ago only coastal seas to a depth of 50 metres were fished, today's fishing covers the entire ocean with gillnet, deep-sea longline fishing to depths over 200 metres. Put simply, we are sucking the ocean dry, with little or no understanding of the dangers of ecosystem collapse nor what sustainable fishing means in practice.

Wellbeing benefits

Reducing the amount of fish we consume may be a prudent way to avoid some of the man-made toxins that are increasingly entering the coastal ocean areas and contaminating seafood. Mercury turns into its organic form, methylmercury, and accumulates in the tissue of tuna, swordfish and shark (large, old fish at the top of the food chain). Chemicals such as DDT and PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyl), dioxin, toxaphene, and dieldrin can accumulate in fish (especially farm-fed fish) and are all suspected to cause cancer in people.

 

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