If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.
-J.R.R Tolkien

09 March 2010

Fish, my favourite dish - should I eat or should I not?

While I have been well aware about overfishing and problems related, I was still shocked when I watched The End of The Line - Imagine a World Without Fish documentary on tv tonight. In a nutshell, if we keep fishing and consuming fish in the present way, the seas will run out of wild fish by 2050. Now, that's soon to me.

As a foodie, fish has been my favourite food for the past five years. I love seafood of all kinds, tuna, salmon, swordfish, fish and chips, mussels and prawns. I choose not to eat meat because I don't approve of the mass producing industry. How have I been able to close my eyes from the fishing industry? It was a selfish deed to start eating fish again - it is healthy for me.

The film really stopped me, and made me rethink what I buy. I've known to avoid cod, since it's nearly disappeared from the seas already. But I didn't know about bluefin tuna being overfished so badly. What is in those tins of tuna I buy? I avoid the cheapest stuff - they taste bad, and it's pretty obvious they can't be sustainable.

Also what is happening is that the big food producers are fishing in the seas of the developing countries - hence taking away the resources from the local fishermen and endagering their livelihood. Just so we westerners can get our food cheap as hell.

You'd think it's safe to eat farmed fish. Whaa whaa, incorrect! What do farmed fish eat? Wild fish, small white fish. A staggering amount of the caught wild fish is actually eaten by fish, not people. Problem is, we will fish away all the wild fish so it will be impossible to farm more fish. One solution given in the film was to eat small fish - anchovies, mackerel and herring. Lucky for us in Finland, herring comes in various forms, and Andy is definately doing his bit with the anchovies - he loves that stuff.

I am determined to change my ways and really pay attention to what I buy. I hope more people will do as well, since according to the program, there is still hope and we can affect the future of the seas. I am feeling quite emotional at the moment about this but I am happy that I have opened my eyes. How much attention do you pay to the fish that you buy?

Visit the website here , watch the movie. Think about it, and do what you can. Discussion please!

1 comment:

  1. I'm so sad ((( I love fish, I eat fish, I enjoy fish! How can I give it up? What can I do to stop it? Start buying more expensive stuff? But who guarantees that those money goes on purpose of sustainability? Nowadays we don't eat so much fish in Russia than it was in Soviet Union era, some people are disturbed about it, because fish is better than meat. You can't find good fresh fish easily in Moscow, for example. Your post made me think about - what is going on? It made me sad. We - people - are not hunters we are killers, each of us, we kill a lot not for eating, or survival, but just because of the lack of the mind. That's what we should think about. I'm now deeply in need to watch Avatar movie again.

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