Seafood buying guides

Did you know that 80% of the seafood we eat in the UK is made up of just five species? These are cod, haddock, salmon, tuna and prawns. This puts a lot of pressure on a handful of species, leading in turn to unsustainable fishing and aquaculture practices.

Eating the same five species is also really boring. There are dozens of different species caught and farmed in and around the UK, as well as many sustainable options imported from overseas. Why not mix it up and try something new?

Farmed shellfish is a great option. Unlike farmed fish, shellfish such as clams, mussels and oysters don’t need any feed and actively clean the water they’re grown in. This makes them a great choice in terms of environmental sustainability and they are a low carbon option to boot.

Red-rated seafood gets the lowest score on our Good Fish Guide. We take lots of different factors into account when we analyse the sustainability of seafood.

Seafood can be red-rated because it’s endangered, overfished or depleted, its capture does unnecessary damage to the marine environment or it’s caught illegally.

Sharks are normally red-rated on the Good Fish Guide. Instead, you should consider choosing options which are green rated on the Good Fish Guide when eating seafood.

We understand that choosing sustainable seafood can be confusing. The Good Fish Guide is our way of doing the hard work for you. It’s free for people and businesses to use. It rates most seafood sources available in the UK on a sliding scale- Green is Good, Red is Bad.

Simply check what you’re buying on the Good Fish Guide to make sure you’re making a good choice. It’s available online, as well as an app you can use anywhere and any time.

The three key things you will need to know to learn how to use the Good Fish Guide are what species you're buying, where it was caught or farmed, and how.

All fishing and farming methods have an impact on the marine environment. Some more so than others. A beam trawler scours the seabed to scoop fish into its nets, whereas a fish caught with a rod and line doesn’t do any damage to the seabed. The same goes for aquaculture, or fish farming. Shellfish don’t require any feed inputs to grow and clean the water they’re grown in, whereas some farmed fish need to eat five kilos of feed to put on one kilo of weight and can pollute water sources.

We factor this all into our Good Fish Guide ratings, but it’s good to think about the impact your seafood choices might have on our ocean.

An easy way to check the sustainability of your seafood is to look for ecolabels. The Marine Stewardship Council ‘blue tick’ is probably the most well-known and covers the sustainability of wild seafood.

Equally, The Marine Stewardship Council's sister organisation, the Aquaculture Stewardship Council, is also worth checking for as they certify the sustainability of farmed seafood.

Other eco-labels to look out for are:

• Organic
• Global Aquaculture Alliance, Best Aquaculture Practices (GAA BAP)
• BAP