Sustainable seafood

Sustainable seafood is seafood produced or harvested in ways intended to maintain populations and limit environmental harm. Its sustainability depends on fishing or farming methods, ecosystem effects, and management over time.

Maximum sustainable yield: The largest long-term average catch that can be taken from a population under specified conditions. Catch limits often draw on this model, though uncertainty and ecosystem effects complicate its use.
Marine Stewardship Council: An international nonprofit that operates a certification and ecolabel program for wild-capture fisheries. Its standard is one prominent route for identifying certified wild-capture seafood.
Overfishing: Fishing at a rate that reduces a population below a sustainable level or impairs its recovery. It is the clearest population-level outcome sustainable fisheries seek to prevent.
Wild fisheries: Fisheries that capture aquatic organisms from natural populations rather than raising them in farms. Wild capture and aquaculture create different sustainability trade-offs rather than a simple better-worse ranking.
Ecosystem-based fisheries management: A fisheries approach that considers ecological interactions and human pressures alongside target-stock management. It addresses the limits of evaluating sustainability one harvested species at a time.
Bycatch: The unintended capture of organisms during fishing for target species. Reducing unwanted capture is a central way fishing methods limit ecological harm.
Aquaculture Stewardship Council: An organization that certifies aquaculture farms against environmental and social standards. Its certification addresses farmed seafood, complementing wild-fishery programs.
Marine protected area: A geographically defined marine space managed to conserve nature and associated cultural or economic values. Protected areas can safeguard habitats and breeding populations, though effects depend on design and enforcement.
Fish farming: The raising of fish in controlled or managed aquatic environments for food or other uses. Farmed fish may rely on wild-caught feed or create pollution, disease, and escape risks.
Precautionary principle: A decision-making principle that supports protective action when potential harm is serious and evidence is uncertain. Fishery managers must decide how conservative limits should be when stock data are incomplete.

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