Recognizing just how tough it is for consumers to hook their minds around what to eat from the sea, conservation groups and advocates in Canada have launched two programs - SeaChoice and Ocean Wise - that offer guidance, as well as trying to increase the awareness of threats to our oceans. Even then, sustainability can be a slippery issue. In Canada, where less than one per cent of the nation's oceans are protected by marine reserves, there are very few requirements for seafood labelling.
"All that a supplier needs to provide is what type of seafood it is," says Shauna MacKinnon, market campaign co-ordinator of the Living Oceans Society, Canada's largest organization focused on marine conservation issues and one of the five groups behind SeaChoice (along with Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, the David Suzuki Foundation, Ecology Action Centre and Sierra Club British Columbia). "There is no simple, cookie-cutter method to knowing what's guilt-free, and what is guilt-ridden."
Only four Edmonton restaurants are members of Ocean Wise so far, the free-to-join conservation program created by the Vancouver Aquarium to recognize distributors, restaurants and grocery stores promoting sustainable seafood. (Participants put the Ocean Wise logo by the sustainable choices on the menu or signage.) Of the four, just two are authentically local - Chop and the Fairmont Hotel Macdonald's Harvest Room. The other two are the Cactus Club Cafe and Panago Pizza. Across Canada, more than 300 businesses have joined Ocean Wise, which went national in the spring of 2009.
Chris Watson, head chef of Chop, acknowledges that Edmonton is slow on the uptake but remains optimistic: "I think it will eventually trickle its way through the Prairies, and one day become a standard here."
The lack of interest from non-coastal cities like Edmonton hasn't dampened Mike McDermid's optimism, either. The program manager of Ocean Wise says it takes time to educate consumers and businesses about making sustainable choices. "We realized that they needed someone to help them make those choices. You can't expect a business owner to be a marine biologist as well."
McDermid believes Canada's top chefs will help drive the initiative forward. "As more and more chefs realize there is a program available to them in Canada, I think it will grow very quickly."
Andrew Ihasz, executive chef of the Hotel Macdonald, introduced Ocean Wise's labelling to The Harvest Room's menu in February. Ihasz noticed many of his customers requesting more eco-friendly options, and since spring of last year, all Fairmont hotels have begun adopting a seafood watch program. Now, he says, about four out of five Harvest Room patrons are choosing to eat sustainable seafood.
MacKinnon predicts sustainability will be the next "thing" for celebrity chefs, because there's already a stigma building against TV chefs using red-listed products (seafood facing population or ecological troubles) in their cooking shows. She thinks sardines, anchovies, mackerel and herring will become much more popular soon, overcoming their reputations as "cheap" fish. "They are oily, super healthy, low in contaminants, short-living, fast-growing, inexpensive and there is an abundant supply of them."
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