Being a Floridian who married a Midwesterner that attended university in Canada has provided many opportunities over the years for Andrew and I confuse each other about what we’re really talking about. The first time I referred to swim trunks as “baggies” had him wondering why he needed to wear plastic sandwich bags and the first time he referred to a beanie as a “toque” I was a bit surprised he wanted us to take a puff of an illicit drug. So the first time I took him home to FL with me and said I wanted a dolphin sandwich, he imagined me taking a chunk out of poor, sweet Flipper when in fact, I was referring to Mahi mahi.

One of the great natural resources that living on the coast offers is fresh caught fish throughout the year. Living in the Midwest now, I miss it. When I started down the rabbit hole of buying meat that is ethical and sustainably caught, I ran into all sorts of confusion when it came to fish so I did what I always do when confronted with confusing information, I just avoided it all together. I stopped buying fish. Now while this was good for our wallet, it was sad for my soul. With the change in our diet, my wallet and I were ready to start including a fish meal every other week or so but I was still caught up in the fish confusion. I started researching again and came to this conclusion, there will never be a perfect answer. Be that as it may, there are “best practices” and the single resource I am choosing to use for that is the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch consumer guides. It’s not perfect but it’s the best I can do and that is what this whole page is about. Doing what we can, to the best of our ability. There is an app as well but I prefer to just use the page I can look at in whatever location I am. The guide pictured here is best for those of us living in MO but they have guides for any state you are living in. The rating guides take a lot of info into account; sustainable wild caught, farming practices, fishing slavery, etc. If you want to read more about their criteria, you can read about them here.

All of this to say, I’m looking forward to eating fish again and raising my girls to appreciate the briny taste and scent that made up my childhood.