According to the UN FAO report entitled State of the World’s Fisheries and Aquaculture, in 2013, fish provided 3.1 billion people with 20% of their intake of animal protein.
Wild catch commercial fisheries represent humanities last commercially significant natural food source, and one whose nutritional value has contributed to human development and wellbeing for millennia. SCM believes that these unique and valuable resources are worth protecting and managing responsibly, and we are committed to doing our part and more. Private investors can and we believe should play a critical role in achieving the best prospects for sustainability in fisheries by supporting the adoption of technologies and science based principles in fisheries, and the implementation of better systems for transparency and accountability.
Implementing such measures is costly, and the costs cannot be justified without premium pricing under an integrated business model yielding margins high enough to re-invest significantly in continuous fisheries and supply chain improvements.
Wild seafood offers a multitude of unique health benefits, many of which modern science is only now coming to understand fulsomely, which is itself a very good reason to ensure fish stocks and marine ecosystems are managed and utilized responsibly for present and future generations.
SCM continually consults with nutritional and dietary experts and monitors research findings pertaining to wild seafood, including those regarding its impacts on human health. Following are ten research based, data analytics driven and/or clinically proven facts about wild seafood.
- Eating fish reduces the chances of dying of a heart attack, improves children’s brain development, slows brain aging, lowers the risk of depression, and can help with weight management.
- Fish consumption while pregnant, can contribute to optimal neurodevelopment in the child.
- Eating fish, baked or broiled, never fried, is associated with larger gray matter volumes in brain areas responsible for memory and cognition in healthy elderly people.
- Eating fish once a week is associated with a 14% larger hippocampus, which is responsible for big memory and learning.
- The American Journal of Preventive Medicine found that people who regularly eat fish have more voluminous brains than those who do not—in such a way that stands to protect them from Alzheimer’s disease.
- The claim that mercury ends up on our plates from seafood isn’t true – the truth is that there are trace amounts of organic mercury (methylmercury) in fish. However, no published study can locate a single case of mercury toxicity from normal consumption of commercial seafood in the U.S. or Japan.
- The neurodevelopment risks of not eating fish exceed the risks of eating fish associated with mercury levels, which are concentrated in large predator fish such as marlin, shark, tuna, and swordfish.
- The benefits of fish consumption – including reduction of coronary heart disease mortality – exceed the hypothetical but unproven cancer risk.
- 10% of the world can face micronutrient deficiencies caused by fish declines over the coming years, especially in developing countries.
- Without micronutrients commonly contained in wild seafood, such as iron, zinc, omega-3 fatty acids, and vitamins, deficiencies can increase the risks of prenatal and maternal mortality, growth retardation, child mortality, cognitive deficits, and reduced immune systems increase significantly.
To learn more about the sources of the above information, please Contact Us.
Responsibly managed commercial fisheries play an important role in marine ecosystem management – they support scientific knowledge development and help to achieve a measure of balance that enables greater biodiversity, in turn leading to more resilient ecosystems.
If left to their naturally evolving states, marine ecosystems are unlikely to foster biodiversity. They are wild environments where carnivores compete with each other for food, and kill and eat each other. Their natural state is one where stronger predators tend to annihilate weaker prey, and humans are the only ecosystem participants who practice intelligent and science based conservation. Humans, including commercial fisheries participants, do so through actions such as habitat protection and restoration, and the harvesting of fish in a manner that promotes a balance of species (biodiversity) and healthy and productive marine ecosystems.
The commercial fishing industry is only one of many human activities bearing strong and lasting impacts on marine ecosystems. Some others include fertilizer runoff from agriculture, effluent discharge from the mining industry, oil discharge from offshore oil drilling, bilge water discharge from the shipping industry, fish mortality from tidal energy projects (which are only now beginning), industrial pollution for various manufacturing and processing industries, the dumping of trash in the ocean by people and sometimes businesses, and the flow of micro-plastics and other contaminants into rivers and oceans via municipal waste water systems. Many organizations claiming to represent public interests make a common practice of baselessly maligning the commercial fishing industry simply because it’s an easier and safer target for them and a useful way to stir emotions among their existing and potential new financial donors. SCM and our partners will continue to do our part to foster a better public understanding of the complexity of marine ecosystems and the positive impact that well managed commercial fisheries bring to bear on them, while a host of other factors work in opposition to this.
It’s important to understand that fishing communities and fishing families established over generations represent the front line in ecosystems management, that they have done so for centuries in North America, and that no party has more to lose from mismanagement of marine ecosystems than they do. We at SCM are proud to be associated with and supportive of such communities and families, and we will continue to ensure that the public gains a better understanding and appreciation of their role as stewards of our valuable marine ecosystems.
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