\u00a0<\/p>\n
This week heralds the opening of the prawn season and fishers will be at sea for the next three weeks before bringing back the first bounty of prawns of the season.\u00a0 These fabulous morsels are the culinary icons of our region and to consume or serve an imported alternative should be deemed as sacrilege.<\/p>\n
Strangely enough there is a assumption that our fishing industry does not care about over fishing and the extinction of a seafood, but that if far from the truth.\u00a0 With the exception of a minute number of rogue fishers, the Queensland seafood industry as a whole care very much for the \u2018hand that feeds them\u2019 and have self monitored and governed their fishing areas for many years and in 2001 a local group formed Eco-fish to formalise their activities.\u00a0 The Australian fishing industry is possibly the most regulated of its kind in the world and thus we have seasons, quotas and environmental regulations for each fishing sector.\u00a0 Hence the prawn season!<\/p>\n
A publication of the Australian Marine Conservation Society\u2019s (AMCS) Sustainable Seafood Guide recently caught my attention with over 100 species relegated to the categories of Better Choice, Think Twice, or Say No.\u00a0 I was surprised to see such a large number of seafood condemned to the Think Twice, or Say No category, so my scepticism led me to investigate.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Fortunately I didn\u2019t have to look very far to find Nick Ruello who lives in Cairns and is a former fisheries scientist, Sydney fish merchant and consultant.\u00a0 For the past 45 years he has worked with many Australian businesses and national and international R & D projects on fisheries management and seafood processing, marketing, and quality assurance. He is a Slow Food member and acts as a seafood advisor on the Ark of Taste program. He is a founding member of the Australian Society for Fish Biology and a board member on two seafood industry organizations. He has an MSc degree from Sydney University and lesser qualifications in various fields.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mentioning this publication touched a raw nerve with Nick.\u00a0\u00a0 As he explains \u201cQuite a few of their assessments are poorly founded and many of the Think Twice recommendations are so vague and general they are of little use\u201d\u00a0 Nick gives the example \u201cAll trawl caught prawns are relegated to the Think Twice category although Australian trawlers are world leaders in sustainable harvesting, by-catch reduction and minimising environmental impacts and the major fisheries pass the Commonwealth\u2019s Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act assessment\u201d.<\/p>\n
Nick contrasts the AMCS approach with the considered, constructive efforts being made by the Australian Conservation Foundation in collaboration with government fisheries managers, the University of Technology Sydney and the seafood industry to guide consumers to more sustainable seafood choices It is concerning when a \u2018guide\u2019 can be published with misleading information that can impact on an industry and on what we feel comfortable with at our dinner table.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Here is the\u00a0full report of Nick\u2019s findings\u00a0\u00a0 amcs-observns-26feb<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n So in three week, grab a kilo of fresh prawns and \u2018enjoy\u2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0 This week heralds the opening of the prawn season and fishers will be at sea for the next three weeks before bringing back the first bounty of prawns of the season.\u00a0 These fabulous morsels are the culinary icons of our region and to consume or serve an imported alternative should be deemed as sacrilege. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-atf-hot-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/australiantropicalfoods.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/australiantropicalfoods.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/australiantropicalfoods.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/australiantropicalfoods.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/australiantropicalfoods.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4741"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/australiantropicalfoods.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4741\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4796,"href":"https:\/\/australiantropicalfoods.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4741\/revisions\/4796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/australiantropicalfoods.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/australiantropicalfoods.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/australiantropicalfoods.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n(www.acfonline.org.au\/seafood<\/a>).\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n