4 Surprising Places You Should Never Buy Seafood From

This is the first installment in Casson Trenor's monthly column, 4 Oceans, about protecting our fisheries and ocean health through sustainable seafood.

In 2009, Americans spent over $75 billion on seafood. That's more than a big pile of cash -- it's a tremendous communication tool. Truly, when that kind of money is talking, the whole world listens.

As such, it's important to be very careful about what message we transmit through this massive microphone. When we spend our dollars at seafood merchants that are pursuing business models which take environmental issues into account, we offer these purveyors financial incentive to continue along this path. On the other hand, if we buy pirate-caught Chilean sea bass from a seafood merchant that has no compunction about selling it, we reward this type of nefarious behavior and communicate to the marketplace at large that we, the consumers, don't particularly care about the ramifications of our seafood choices.

Here is a quick-and-dirty list of four seafood retailers that have adopted particularly reprehensible practices in their quest for fish-driven profit. If we shift our purchasing dollars away from companies like this and toward competitors that operate under a more eco-sensitive paradigm, perhaps we can encourage these operators to change their ways.

1. Costco

Costco is the largest retail-sector purchaser of seafood in North America. The discount giant turns a tremendous amount of profit on the bounty of oceans by compromising on prices in the name of gargantuan volume. Unfortunately, this market strategy can lead to massive environmental fallout.

Numerous environmental groups, such as the Mangrove Action Project and a number of Canadian anti-salmon farming organizations, have spoken out against Costco's seafood operation in recent years. Greenpeace, too, has been campaigning on this issue since June 2010, highlighting the company's lack of a comprehensive sustainable seafood policy and willingness to sell unsustainable products as long as they are certified by a "reputable" body (Costco has conveniently left this adjective undefined).

Costco has recently removed a number of key unsustainable species from its shelves, but the company refuses to elaborate on its policy or adopt any strict scientific benchmarks in its sourcing practices, and thus these dubious seafood items may yet reappear in Costco's freezers.

2. Legal Seafood

This venerable New England seafood market and restaurant chain recently announced that it will host a $115-a-plate dinner designed specifically to serve "blacklisted" fish -- that is, seafood items that are commonly considered to be unsustainable -- in an effort to educate the public. The press release for the event states that, "The [seafood sustainability] discussion is flawed by outdated scientific findings that unfairly turn the public against certain species of fish. In a direct effort to counter existing misinformation about sustainability, the menu for this event is deliberately designed to serve what is commonly believed to be outlawed or blacklisted fish."

Diners will be served Atlantic cod, haddock and tiger shrimp -- three items that are consistently frowned upon within the sustainable seafood community.

This tactic baffles me. It seems like Legal Seafood is encouraging consumers to mistrust the work and guidance of any number of scientists, environmental organizations, and progressive fishermen and aquaculturists around the globe. Why would scientists be trying to steer people away from safe, responsibly caught fish?

It is true that outdated data is a concern -- the dynamic nature of the ocean means we're always playing catch-up -- but who is more likely to offer a precautionary and wise course of action: a scientist who remains financially unaffected by the vicissitudes of the seafood market, or a fishmonger who is quite clearly benefiting (in the short run) from the sale of as much fish as he can get his hands on?