Tell Costco to Stop Selling Endangered Fish

This is the first post of "On the Hook," a five-part series focused on how consumers can help further the sustainable seafood movement.

If you want to know who's responsible for decimating the world's oceans, look no farther than your local supermarket. Throughout the world, grocery stores and restaurants continue to sell threatened fish species like Chilean sea bass, shark, bluefin tuna, and orange roughy, just to name a few. The situation's gotten so bad that experts say 75 percent of the world's fisheries have been pushed beyond their sustainable limits, while nine out of ten of the seas' large fish species have disappeared. At the rate we're going, years from now there really won't be other fish in the sea.

U.S. grocery stores are no exception to this fishing disaster. A couple months ago, Greenpeace released its 2010 "Carting Away the Oceans" report. The report ranked 20 national supermarkets' sustainable seafood policies, scoring the stores as "good," "pass," or "fail." Of the 20 grocery stores surveyed, only half earned passing marks.

The real problem here is that stores continue to sell fish listed on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species. These 22 fish—like grouper, bigeye tuna, monkfish, and more—boast some of the lowest population numbers of all marine creatures. But despite their scarcity, in most cases these fish are afforded no legal protections, so fishermen keep on catching and consumers keep on buying. Even when there are catch limits in place, as is the case with bluefin tuna, many fishermen continue to catch the fish illegally because they rake in such huge profits.

And while most U.S. supermarkets could stand to improve their sustainable seafood policies, Costco reigns as the biggest offender. Everything at Costco is huge—the same is true of the store's environmental footprint. Of the 22 IUCN Red List species, Costco sells 15: Alaskan pollock, Atlantic cod, Atlantic salmon, Atlantic sea scallops, Chilean sea bass, grouper, monkfish, ocean quahog, orange roughy, red snapper, redfish, South Atlantic albacore tuna, swordfish, tropical shrimp, and yellowfin tuna. The store's fish coolers really serve as a one-stop shop for oceanic destruction.

Environmental groups have been pushing supermarkets to beef up their sustainable seafood practices, and Greenpeace recently launched a campaign specifically targeting Costco. The non-profit's "Oh-No-Costco" campaign asks the store to put three measures in place: One, implement an effective and publicly available sustainable seafood policy. Two, provide transparent labeling so consumers can know what they're buying and where it came from. And finally, Greenpeace wants the store to stop selling all Red List fish, beginning immediately with Chilean sea bass and orange roughy.

Fish haven't gotten the legal protections they deserve, so it's really up to consumers to help save the world's oceans. Shoppers use fish guides like Monterey Bay Aquarium's to make sure they're selecting only the most sustainable seafood choices. And consumers can take supermarkets like Costco to task for their unsustainable offerings. Sign Greenpeace's petition telling Costco its time to stop filling its coolers with threatened fish.

Photo credit: greenwenvy08 via Flickr