Tag Archives: red list
In class action lawsuit, Massachusetts lobstermen fight efforts to ‘red list’ their catch
Four Massachusetts lobstermen have filed a class action suit against the Monterey Bay Aquarium and Marine Stewardship Council, groups that urged distributors and grocery stores to avoid purchasing lobster because of the fishery’s impact on North Atlantic right whales. “We’ve always been like the punching bag for, like, the whale people. So I’m glad we’re finally striking back,” said plaintiff Jarrett Drake, a lobsterman who fishes out of New Bedford, “because it gives us a chance to try to at least defend ourselves.” “When [Montery Bay Aquarium] chooses to tag a product as one to be avoided (“red-list”) on Seafood Watch, it acts with near certainty that the companies it collaborates with will immediately discontinue that product,” the plaintiffs say in their complaint. >click to read< 08:35
How Did Gulf of Maine Lobster Get Canceled?
No one confessed to knowing that, just a few weeks before, the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch, an agenda setting program for sustainability-minded seafood buyers and chefs, had shocked the industry by placing Gulf of Maine lobster on its “red list” of species to avoid. Not Dodie Neo, an Ohioan retiree who’d been in line for 45 minutes when I approached her. Knowing about the red listing, however, wouldn’t have stopped her from ordering. “The aquarium has a right to put lobster on whatever list it wants,” she told me. “And I have a right to eat it.” Way down the road, at Highroller Lobster Co., in Portland’s Old Port, the crowd skewed younger and hipper, but wait times were just as long and customers just as surprised to hear about lobster getting canceled. After some discussion, most in line seemed to agree with Rick Conlin, visiting from western Massachusetts, that it didn’t much matter. “I vote for the lobstermen,” he said. >click to read< 10:23
New England and Canada: Seafood watch list weighs ‘red-listing’ lobster. Lobstermen push back
An influential arbiter of the sustainability of seafood is considering whether to drop lobster caught off Maine and Canada from its roster of approved products. The Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch announced this week that it is reviewing whether to add eastern Atlantic lobster harvests and other trap-pot and gillnet fisheries to its Red List,” due to the risk they pose for the survival of the endangered North Atlantic right whale. Last year another seafood rating program, the Marine Stewardship Council, suspended and later reinstated its certification of part of Maine’s lobster fishery. Massachusetts lobstermen are pushing back on the description of their industry as unsustainable. >click to read< 10:39
Four B.C. chinook and coho fisheries on “avoid” red list with ten others having “some concerns,”
In the latest update to the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch program, four B.C. chinook and coho fisheries were listed as “avoid.” Ten others were identified as having “some concerns,” but remain listed as “good alternatives.” The four fisheries newly labelled as “avoid” are all in southern B.C. — chinook caught off the south coast using purse seine (a net that is drawn into the shape of a purse to catch large schools of fish) or drift gillnets (vertical sheets of net with certain sizes of netting to capture specific types of fish), and coho salmon in the same region using the same two methods. According to Jeffery Young, a science and policy adviser with the David Suzuki Foundation, the rating is not necessarily a criticism of a fisheries’ practices, but reflects that the salmon targeted by these fisheries are in serious decline. Read the story here 10:15
