Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
of seafood each year. Not only did our live-exhibit animals eat restaurant-quality
seafood, but our on-site cafe and event-catering department also served a wide va-
riety of seafood favourites ranging from imported swordfish to Atlantic cod. The
obvious question was raised: shouldn't we be 'walking our talk'?
Therefore, the aquarium researched the species we served and, based on a rudi-
mentary set of criteria, we developed an internal seafood buying policy. Both the
animal husbandry and food service departments of the aquarium adopted a policy
vowing to avoid selling species such as shark and bluefin tuna and to help build
a marketplace demand for species from environmentally responsible sources. This
created momentum and as aquarium staff and volunteers learned of the internal
buying policy, many suggested that they too would be willing to change their pur-
chasing habits while dining out and shopping. Intrigued by the interest, the aquarium
publicly announced the buying policy and released a short list of seafood to buy or
avoid in the form of cards that were placed on the cafe tables. The cards rapidly
disappeared into the pockets of visitors.
It became evident that seafood consumers were not only interested in the is-
sues, but were also willing to become more engaged by shifting their own buying
habits to purchase seafood from identified sustainable sources. Therefore, the cafe-
table cards evolved into pocket-sized cards so that consumers could conveniently
carry a quick reference guide with them while shopping or dining out. In 2000, Julie
Packard, Executive Director of Monterey Bay Aquarium, took the newly developed
'Seafood Watch Pocket Guides' on a media tour. These guides classified popular
seafood into three categories: best choices , proceed with caution (which was later
changed to 'good alternatives') and avoid . The concept received impressive media
coverage, and there was a flurry of requests for the pocket guides from across the
United States. At the same time, the aquarium's colleagues in the marine conser-
vation community were developing seafood initiatives of their own. The aquarium
recognised it had access to a valuable niche in the budding sustainable seafood
movement - to help reach a critical mass of conservation-minded consumers by
educating and activating our visitors and to encourage zoos and aquariums across
the US to do the same.
So, in 2001 Monterey Bay Aquarium officially launched the Seafood Watch
programme designed to raise consumer awareness about the importance of sus-
tainable seafood production from both fisheries and fish-farming operations. The
programme was developed to make specific recommendations about which seafood
to buy or avoid, both online and in the form of regionally appropriate pocket guides
that would be distributed via partner zoos and aquariums to help consumers become
active proponents of sustainable seafood practices. These recommendations were,
to the greatest extent possible, to be based on the most current available information.
With funding from philanthropic foundations, the programme hired dedicated
outreach and research staff who immediately recognised that the process of eval-
uating seafood in a global marketplace would take substantial time and resources.
The simultaneous emergence of similar and complementary initiatives which later
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