Sustainable Seafood

Originally posted on July 9, 2013.

An important characteristic of a responsible chef is the understanding of the food industry’s impact on the environment, and best practices to avoid permanent damage to our planet.  One big piece of this hot-button issue is sensible fishing practices. We here at Madison Beach Hotel and the Wharf Restaurant believe that the best practice for delicious, guilt-free seafood is that of sustainable fishing.

But what is sustainable fishing? Sustainable fishing is a series of practices designed to reduce the over-fishing of seafood by placing harvest restrictions by weight and volume on certain species of fish. Otter trawling, also known as drag netting, and the size of the netting plays a particularly important role in fish harvesting. Certified sustainable fishermen today use nets with size-specified netting so that fish only bigger than a set size are caught, and by-catch is kept to an absolute minimum.  All of our cod that we use at the Madison Beach Hotel is certified sustainable by Marine Stewardship Council which has a great website with plenty of information at www.msc.org. I encourage you to check it out!

The goal of sustainable fishing is to insure our oceans are not over fished beyond the point of no return, and to insure our oceans are stocked for generations to come.