Wise cracks
Suppliers, supermarkets and restaurants can become partners in Vancouver Aquarium’s program for carrying simply one certified-sustainable seafood species, writes LARRY PYNN
Critics say Vancouver Aquarium’s Ocean Wise program doesn’t go far enough to protect vulnerable seafood species
The Vancouver Aquarium boasts Ocean Wise as a program to help businesses and consumers make environmentally friendly, sustainable seafood choices — from barnacles to barramundi — harvested locally or around the world.
What’s less evident is that restaurants, supermarkets and seafood suppliers can become official partners — paying up to $5,000 annually to display the Ocean Wise logo — for carrying as little as one certified-sustainable seafood, even if they sell far more species on the program’s list of seafoods to avoid.
“They don’t have to be 100 per cent,” confirmed Ann-Marie Copping, the Ocean Wise program manager. The program works with partners to increase their offerings of sustainable products in hopes of reaching full compliance.
Ocean Wise — which is a growing operation — also offers no ongoing enforcement and monitoring of its partners. “In terms of auditing their operations on a regular basis, we don’t,” Copping said. “Our program is about education, training and doing proper (species-at-risk) assessments.”
Where a restaurant is found to be misusing the Ocean Wise logo, the program investigates. “The majority of the time it’s a misunderstanding or they didn’t see the updated assessment,” Copping said.
Teddie Geach, a seafood specialist with Ocean Wise, said the program launched in 2005 alongside Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch to highlight the best seafood menu choices, leaving the final decision to the consumer.
Seafood Watch and Ocean Wise use a traffic-light system — green for best choices, yellow for good alternatives, and red for seafood to avoid.
Ocean Wise also lists seafood as recommended, not recommended (including Atlantic farmed salmon in seapens), and under review. “Our recommendations are probably the most stringent out there, the highest bar there is,” Geach said. Others disagree. Alexandra Morton, an independent researcher and crusader against salmon farming on the B.C. coast, said she is “very disappointed” that Ocean Wise has not imposed tougher standards on partners who sell seafood deemed unsustainable.
“Farming Atlantic salmon in seapens is having a cataclysmic impact on wild salmon and herring and everyone is afraid to speak up,” she said. “How can a retail outlet be Ocean Wise if they are profiting from selling farm salmon, a red-listed fish?”
Sarah King, senior oceans strategist with Greenpeace Canada, said the Ocean Wise program “is useful for consumer education, it definitely helps customers recognize there are more and less sustainable options out there.”
She said lack of compliance is a problem, though. “There should be auditing and traceability checks to make sure that both the restaurants and customers are getting what they think they’re getting. There definitely needs to be more oversight to achieve the spirit behind it.”
King would also like to see all Ocean Wise restaurants serve only recommended species.
In October 2015, King used Twitter to out Tatsu Japanese Bistro, an Ocean Wise member on Commercial Drive, for selling blue-fin tuna, a red-listed species. “It’s not the case anymore,” she said. “They appear to be fairly committed to the program, with more than one Ocean Wise label on their menu.”
Ocean Wise boasts about 650 partner businesses — mostly restaurants and retail outlets, although more recently seafood suppliers and SaveOn-Foods — representing thousands of locations across Canada.
Once a company proves to the aquarium it is selling a sustainable seafood product, the company remains on Ocean Wise’s partner list.
The aquarium issues bulletins to partners if the conservation status of a particular fish species changes — one way or the other — and is reflected on the menu.
“We don’t want our partners to have red-listed species,” Copping said. “Our goal is to move them into Ocean Wise recommended species. It’s part of the journey of sustainability.”
Partners pay the aquarium annual dues ranging from $55 for food trucks to $5,000 for larger suppliers to be an Ocean Wise partner, the funds going toward operating costs of the program, including satellite offices in Toronto and Halifax.
The program also gets cash from an annual Toast of the Coast gala featuring sustainable seafood offerings from local restaurants at $150 per ticket.
The aquarium and Save-OnFoods last month held a news conference to announce that the western food giant had signed on with Ocean Wise.
Its list of products deemed sustainable includes: farmed mussels; B.C. wild salmon, cod, ling cod, and pink shrimp; closed-containment Arctic char; and pole-caught Ahi tuna from the Philippines.
What the news release did not state is that Save-On-Foods continues to sell several seafood types not condoned by the aquarium, including Atlantic farmed salmon, dredged wild scallops and some shrimp from outside B.C.
Only 27 per cent of the program’s estimated 180 partner businesses — including very small operators — sell only Ocean Wise seafood. Sushi bars that are 100 per cent compliant in Vancouver include Urban Fare, RawBar at Fairmont Pacific Rim, and Peko Peko.
Darrell Jones, president of Jim Pattison’s Save-On-Foods and the umbrella Overwaitea Food Group, did not respond to Postmedia’s requests for an interview.
“Farming Atlantic salmon in seapens is having a cataclysmic impact on wild salmon and herring and everyone is afraid to speak up.”
From the seafood-supply sector, Phil Young, senior director of sales with Pattison’s Canadian Fishing Co., said his firm joined the program only a few months ago.
“We had salmon customers (distributors) who wanted to show a chain of custody going out. We could put the Ocean Wise label on in our plants and run it right through the system,” he said.
Ocean Wise certifies some mid-water trawl fisheries for rockfish, but not bottom-trawl fisheries due to ecological impacts. Canfisco is talking with the aquarium regarding its scoring system, since some of the company’s products would score yellow under the criteria of other programs.
“We think we have a sustainable groundfish fishery out here,” Young said. “They’ve acknowledged it’s good, but not meeting their criteria. Either it’s Ocean Wise or it’s not. Ours are in that borderline, not quite there. We’re at a slight disagreement ... but it’s better to work with them.”
Blundell Seafoods — another Ocean Wise partner — sells several products not recommended by the aquarium, including mako shark — a species listed as vulnerable on the International Union for Conservation of Nature red list. Blundell did not respond to interview requests.
More recently, Ocean Wise has started to focus on rating smaller fisheries, including giving the thumbs-up to the gooseneck barnacle, giant Pacific octopus, and Chedabucto Bay trap-caught shrimp from Nova Scotia. “Chefs want different local seafood items,” Copping said. “They’re asking and there’s no assessment.”
Ocean Wise peer-reviewed assessments look at the status and abundance of a species, the amount and type of bycatch associated with a fishery, the management of the fishery, and damage to surrounding habitat.
“We’re trying to take all this information, distil it down, and make easy choices for consumers,” Copping explained. “When they (consumers) see the symbol next to a menu item, they know someone from Ocean Wise has worked with that business, done an assessment of their seafood, and you can order it.”
As far as the Chinese market, Ocean Wise has produced Chinese language brochures and for the past year has had one staffer, Tania Leon, dedicated to Chinese restaurants throughout the region. Only about five per cent of partners are from the Chinese sector, suggesting the program has a long way to go.
“It’s really just starting from scratch,” said Leon, who has a bachelor of science degree from the University of B.C. “A lot of people in the (Chinese) community are not familiar with Ocean Wise sustainable seafoods. It’s often the first time they’ve really thought about it.”
One of her successes has been linking up local restaurants with S & Bee Fish Co. of Richmond, a distributor of sustainable tilapia from Sumas Lake Aquafarm in Abbotsford.
For now, Ocean Wise does not get involved in food-health issues.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency on June 12, 2015, recalled a product (“Fresh Pacific Oyster Miyagi, Farm Raised”) from Ocean Wise partner Pacific Northwest Shellfish of Richmond due to Vibrio parahaemolyticus — just as B.C.’s biggest outbreak of illness associated with the bacterium was taking off. Vibrio parahaemolyticus is naturally occurring and proliferates in warm water and can cause diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, fever and headache.
Two months later, on Aug. 18, Ottawa announced an expanded industry recall involving 11 more companies linked to B.C. raw oysters — most of them Ocean Wise partners, including Albion Fisheries, Centennial Foodservice, Fanny Bay Oysters, Mac’s Oysters, Salish Sea Foods, Sawmill Bay Shellfish, and Stellar Bay Shellfish.
The next day, CFIA singled out Pacific Northwest Shellfish for suspension because “adequate controls for food safety are not being reliably implemented in the facility on a consistent basis” and the company “has failed to correct deficiencies previously identified through CFIA inspections.” The suspension lasted for almost a month.
Another sustainable Canadian seafood program is SeaChoice — a coalition of the David Suzuki Foundation, Living Oceans Society, and Ecology Action Centre. The program encourages companies to adopt sustainable seafood as a part of their corporate policy and urges the federal government to adopt better labelling laws and to better identify seafood imported to Canada, including by species and where it was caught.
SeaChoice currently works closely with major companies — Federated Co-operatives Ltd., Buy-Low Foods, and Safeway — issuing annual reports on their seafood choices, but does not charge for its efforts.
“We’re moving more into an audit function and oversight role,” said Bill Wareham, David Suzuki Foundation’s manager of science projects. SeaChoice severed ties with SaveOn-Foods last year due to lack of disclosure of information on the company’s sourcing of fish. “We need seafood policies in these big companies that have some teeth and are transparent,” Wareham said. “That’s where we’re trying to push.”
SeaChoice issued a report, Taking Stock, last June that found 16 per cent of all seafood by volume produced in Canada is ranked green, 61 per cent yellow, 14 per cent red, and nine per cent is unranked.
The last ranking of Canadian supermarket chains occurred in 2014, when Safeway and Loblaw topped the list, while Sobeys and Costco ranked lowest.