Why I Love Fresh Air

As a NPR-junkie, one of the shows I usually catch on my way home from work is Fresh Air with Terry Gross. I don't know what it is, but every story is interesting. What I really enjoyed hearing yesterday and today was a two-part series called "The Perils of Overfishing." I like to consider myself fairly educated on our meat and dairy production in the US, but I'll admit I've never been as compelled to learn about fish.

What I discovered over the past couple of days, however, was that there was a lot I was missing out on. The interviewee, Daniel Pauly (a professor at the Fisheries Centre of the University of British Columbia), quotes that in the past 50 years "we have reduced the populations of large commercial fish, such as bluefin tuna, cod, and other favorites, by a staggering 90 percent." This figure shocked me.

In the interest of thinking about fish consumption, I was equally as excited to learn that instead of consuming larger fish, like farmed Salmon, which takes 3 pounds of fish that the Salmon eat as food to create 1 pound of salmon, we should be eating the smaller fish, like sardines, anchovies, and herring. This creates, in turn, a more sustainable ocean ecosystem. Here's a great resource on sustainable fish that I will certainly be using from now on, Seafood Watch, which has a free downloadable pocket guide and an iPhone application.