Some of the new sustainably rated or certified products posted on FishChoice.com recently include:   

     

• Softshell clams from Rhode Island 
• Blue marlin from Hawaii 
• Giant freshwater prawns from Ohio 
• Oysters from Mexico 

 

Please support FishChoice and mention us to the suppliers when you contact them regarding their product listings on the website.

Seafood Watch Updates: 

• Coho salmon from Canada, North Coast 
• Atlantic cod, multiple stocks in Europe
• Common dab from Iceland
• Atlantic sardines from the Mediterranean

 

For the full details on these new ratings and other recent rating additions and updates please go to FishChoice's sustainable seafood updates page.      

Mahi Mahi   

What's the matter with mahi? That's what seafood buyers were asking this spring after a poor winter fishery off the West Coast of Central and South America, the largest single source of mahi for the U.S. market.  Mahi landings typically peak from December to February, when the fish migrate close enough to shore where they can be caught in large quantities by small boat fleets.  This winter, though, mahi were hard to find, probably because of the colder than normal water temperatures associated with La Niña. (Continued... )  

• Conservation Notes 
• Buying Tips  

 

Brown Shrimp    

The brown shrimp fishery in the Gulf of Mexico is off to a good start this year, as some inshore fisheries opened in late May, a few weeks earlier than normal. In spite of lingering concerns over the impact of last spring's BP oil spill (59% of respondents in a recent USA Today poll said they would not eat Gulf seafood) shrimpers were optimistic they would have a good year due to strong shrimp prices. (Continued...)

• Conservation Notes 
• Buying Tips 

 

Rodney Thompson developed the rock shrimp fishery off Florida's east coast. Then he saw it almost destroyed before he helped save it. A boat builder from Titusville, Thompson was convinced shrimpers would switch from their wood or steel boats and buy a big fiberglass shrimper if he would build one, which he did in 1968. The problem was no one wanted to buy his boat, so Thompson decided he would go shrimping himself. But he couldn't catch enough brown or white shrimp to make shrimping pay after years of trying.

Fortunately, though, the skipper of a NOAA boat conducting fisheries research off of Port Canaveral told Thompson about piles of shrimp in deep canyons about 20 miles off the coast. "We were hesitant, but we were starving," Thompson recalls, so he followed the NOAA boat out and soon thousands of pounds of shrimp were jumping around on his deck. While that was fine, the fact that the little shrimp had rock hard shells that made them an ordeal to peel wasn't. He tried sending samples to fish markets around the country, "but no one would bite," he says.

At the suggestion of his daughter, Laurilee, who skippered one of Thompson's fiberglass longliners, they tried splitting the shells, brushing them with a bit of butter and grilling them. They tasted just like little lobsters. Thompson was so enthused he designed a high-speed tail splitter, and started Cape Canaveral Shrimp to process shrimp from a growing fleet of boats based in Port Canaveral that suddenly had a new species of shrimp to catch. (Continued...)