Environmental groups promote a Taiwan, China seafood guide: think before you eat to save the oceans

June 8 is United Nations World Oceans Day, and groups including Greenpeace, the Biodiversity Research Center of Academia Sinica, and the Ocean Dragon King Earth Lovers Association jointly launched the "Eat Sustainably, Love the Ocean" campaign. At the event, besides releasing the "Taiwan Seafood Selection Guide", consumers were encouraged to choose sustainable seafood and to refuse or reduce their consumption of endangered fish, so as to ensure that Taiwan's marine ecological environment remains vibrant and that there is fish on the table year after year.

Liao Yun-chih, a researcher at the Biodiversity Research Center of Academia Sinica, said that the "Seafood Selection Guide" distributed at the event was compiled using Taiwan's fish database as the statistical source and taking multiple indicators into overall account, dividing common fish in Taiwan into three major categories: "Recommended for consumption," "Think it over before eating," and "Avoid eating."

Liao Yun-chih said that in addition to biological numbers, the assessment criteria for these three categories of seafood also include farming methods, fishing methods, food sources and life cycles, among others, and the sources are very diverse. "Take grouper, for example. Although it is mostly farmed, so there is relatively little problem of overfishing, its feed source is mostly small 'trash fish,' and the process of catching trash fish likewise damages the undersea ecology, so it is also included in our 'Think it over before eating' category."