End of the line

If you believe the doomsayers, fish stocks face a bleak future. But the seafood industry hasn't given up just yet.

HAGEN STEHR is upbeat. Three months ago, his company Clean Seas Tuna took a crucial step in its long-running, multimillion-dollar trials to breed in captivity southern bluefin tuna, one of the world's most prized eating fish as well as one of the most endangered.

In a world first, Clean Seas transferred fingerlings, each weighing about five grams, bred in its onshore hatchery at South Australia's Arno Bay to grow in its ocean tanks, successfully completing the life cycle. The feat is similar to one the company achieved earlier with its hiramasa kingfish, which is now a viable part of the business.

In April, Clean Seas followed by adding to its brood stock. In a military-style operation, tuna were flown in by helicopter and loaded into its landlocked spawning tanks, designed to mimic the conditions of the magnificent fish's run around the Western Australian coast and north to the Timor Sea.

To Stehr, the successes edge the company closer to finally commercialising its tuna breeding operations, which he figures may still be a year or two off.

"In the future, we don't have to go out into the Great Australian Bight [to fish wild tuna stock]," says Stehr, whose purpose-built hatchery was runner-up in Time magazine's 50 Best Inventions of 2009, pipped only by a NASA rocket.

Clean Seas' aquaculture-bred tuna "will be totally sustainable," he says.

How true this is, or turns out to be, is still a matter of conjecture. It's also likely to cause contention among the numerous parties lined up on each side of the fish sustainability debate, due not only to the already low wild stocks of southern bluefin tuna but environmental concerns about tuna ranching.

Nevertheless, the case of the southern bluefin tuna is only part of a bigger global picture in which some grim scenarios of marine life's future have emerged, with conservationists and scientists warning of fisheries on the brink of collapse, as befell the Atlantic cod in the 1990s.

Some of the more dire predictions talk of oceans exhausted of sea life by 2048 and menus without seafood due to degraded habitat, pollution from land-based development and overfishing.

Only last month, the International Union for Conservation of Nature claimed 43 species of fish native to the Mediterranean Sea, including sharks and rays, faced extinction, citing trawling nets as the worst culprit.

Fortunately, the signs in Australia are more encouraging. According to the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry's latest status report, the number of local species classed as overfished fell from 24 in 2005 to 15 in 2009 (the figure was five in 1992). Australia also ranked second on sustainability, behind Germany, of 53 countries in a 2008 University of British Columbia survey of fisheries management practices.

According to OceanWatch Australia, a not-for-profit environmental company working with industry on sustainability, Australia has some of the best-managed and regulated fisheries in the world.

"A lot of effort has been made to reduce bycatch [marine life unintentionally caught in nets], particularly threatened and endangered species . . . and work out appropriate levels of fishing so fish populations can regenerate and self-propagate," says Brad Warren, OceanWatch's executive chairman.

At Corner Inlet, on Victoria's south-east coast, fishers use a special seine net designed by locals Nick Anedda and Roger Stephens, which lets them handpick their catch, such as rock flathead and whiting, and release small fish.

"We used to throw half of our catch over the side because it was undersized," recalls Anedda. For the past 18 years, they also haven't fished at weekends.

"We have young children who want to be fishermen," says Corner Inlet fisho Bruce Collis, who supplies many Melbourne restaurants with same-day catch, including Rockpool and Flower Drum. "We want fish to last for future generations."

While everyone agrees sustainability is essential for the future well-being of our oceans and fishing industry, reaching consensus on what is meant by sustainability and how it is best achieved is about as easy as holding a live eel. For instance, a species considered at risk in one place might be plentiful in another. The merits of aquaculture, too, are hotly contested - some see it as assisting shortages, others as environmentally harmful.

"It's not exact science," says Roy Palmer, head of Seafood Experience Australia, discussing the differing opinions. Quotas, for instance, are based on a mix of scientific modelling, historical data, anecdotal evidence and first-hand observation. "It's not like counting cows."

All of this comes at a time when we're being encouraged to eat more fish in pursuit of a healthier diet and our appetite for seafood has never been greater. But there's a growing awareness of sustainability, too, spreading among suppliers, retailers, chefs and restaurateurs as well as consumers, largely driven by the wider green movement.

This year's Sustainable Seafood Day on March 18 attracted "thousands of Australian consumers" and more than 150 restaurants, cafes and canteens - up from last year's 29 participants - according to its sponsors, the Marine Stewardship Council.

The council also runs an international logo-based certification system - as does Friends of the Sea - to help consumers buy sustainably.

In April, the Australian Conservation Foundation announced six Victorian seafoods independently assessed as sustainable - including calamari and King George whiting from Corner Inlet and Port Philip Bay, blue mussels from Corio, and Goulburn River rainbow trout - and hopes to build its national list of 11 to 20 by the end of the year.

ACF healthy oceans campaigner Chris Smyth explains the foundation's approach is deliberately specific, concentrating on the smaller community-based, near-shore and estuarine fisheries. So when it recommends the Spencer Gulf Western king prawn, it's not giving the OK to other prawns but lets consumers clearly know a particular product is local, fresh and sustainable.

"We're not going out with a 'don't eat' message," explains Symth. "We're simply telling people what they can safely choose, from where and whom."

The Australian Marine Conservation Society's Aus-tralia's Sus-tainable Seafood Guide, on the other hand, takes a more broad-brush approach, adopting an easy-to-read traffic light system that asks consumers dining out or buying fish to Say No (red), Think Twice (amber) or consider a Better Choice (green).

While its latest edition covering more than 100 species, released in January, classifies 38 as green, 41 amber and 38 red, the guide's assessment criteria have been slammed as "too general, not objective or quantifiable" and lacking scientific rigour by former fisheries scientist Nick Ruello.

Aware of the criticisms, AMCS's marine campaigns officer Tooni Mahto says the guide successfully navigates the complexities of eating sustainable seafood. "When a mother walks into a supermarket, she wants to choose responsibly a fish to eat, not flick through entire (volumes of) assessment criteria," she says.

At the same time, it highlights the difficulties the average shopper and the restaurant trade face in making choices, and prompted Esposito chef Oliver Edwards to set up his GoodFishBadFish website for chefs and consumers.

"When I was trying to source fish for the restaurant and work out personally what I could or couldn't eat, I found there were quite a few discrepancies," Oliver says.

He cites ACMS's red-listing of open-pen sea-cage aquaculture for fish such as salmon, kingfish and barramundi but points to Clean Seas' Friends of the Sea-certified farmed kingfish and ACF's tick for Western Australia's Cone Bay farmed barramundi.

"If I've spent this much time and energy and still can't find the answers, how is someone who's just trying to buy fish for dinner going to find the information they want?" he says. "It's time for information to be clearer and all the hoo-ha to stop."

Edwards has included a seafood converter to help people working from recipes to choose more sustainable alternatives: mackerel or skipjack tuna instead of yellowfin tuna, and mahi mahi or yellowtail kingfish for swordfish and marlin.

For all the uncertainty, the restaurant industry is sitting up and taking notice.

''More and more restaurants will ask for, say, line-caught snapper or line-caught and brain-spiked, Iki Jime-style,'' says fish supplier James Andronis, whose company Clamms Seafood, supplies about 70per cent of restaurants listed in The Age Good Food Guide.

The Atlantic's Donovan Cooke, for one, says he buys only from ''quota areas'', which means his menu changes daily. ''None of the fish is netted, it's all line-caught,'' he says. Cooke also indicates on his menu how fish are caught.''The customer has a right to know where a fish comes from and whether it's a dredged scallop or - what we use - diver-caught.''

Maurice Esposito's latest venture, Saint Peter's Restaurant & Bar, promotes itself as ''sustainable seafood dining'' visibly at the front of the restaurant, as diners enter. He uses only a few trusted suppliers and buys directly from fishers. Hand-harvested, thrown on to an ice slurry, brain-spiked and shipped the same day tick most of Esposito's boxes. ''They're the fundamentals to my philosophy of sustainability,'' he says.

At the same time, he admits not every fish in his restaurant passes everyone's muster - yellowfin tuna and farmed Atlantic salmon are on the menu, but are both red-listed by AMCS. ''It's not always clear-cut,'' he says.

Andronis sees the fix chefs find themselves in by trying to stick to sustainable species. ''Some chefs walk around with [Australia's Sustainable Seafood Guide] only wanting to use what has a green light,'' he says, pointing out fish from the 100 or so species that fill up to 500 orders from restaurants and cafes each day.

''They're worried about raiding the seas, aiding the problem ... Maybe they should say sustainable and profitable, because they're running a business, too.''

He recommends they take small steps - change a dish or two rather than whole menus.

While he sees more restaurants using seasonal local fish as menu specials, Andronis also points out that half the fish he sells is farmed because it ensures consistent supply.

Some conservationists, though, still give aquaculture a bad rap, despite improvements in harvesting, feed ratios, diets higher in plant material and pollution.

Tasmanian Atlantic salmon producer Tassal has seen the sustainability movement gain strength and has taken action.

''We're working with the major retailers, everything from packaging to what standards we might adopt locally to manage our sustainability issues around fishmeal use [and] impact on the marine environment,'' says Tassal's chief sustainability officer, Linda Sams, pointing out the company plans to publish its first sustainability report in September.

It also pays to remember that almost 70 per cent of the fish eaten in Australia is imported - mostly from Asia and mostly farmed - and not subject to our stringent management standards.

''South-east Asia produces 90per cent of the world's aquaculture and 85per cent of the value,'' says Palmer.

''Where is Australia with all this water? A poofteenth of nothing.''

While labelling the AMCS's guide ''a joke'', Palmer asks: ''Do consumers care about sustainability? They want fresh and quality. I ran fish shops for 13 years and never had anyone ask about sustainability. The consumer expects others to work it out.''

Maybe so, but sustainability received a very public boost in March when supermarket giants Coles and Woolworths unveiled, within hours of each other, sustainable fish product initiatives.

Coles signed a three-year partnership with World Wildlife Fund to promote sustainable seafood, building on last year's move to stop selling orange roughy, and launched a Feed Your Family Seafood guide for shoppers.

Woolworths removed yellowfin tuna and orange roughy from sale and enlisted the Sustainable Fisheries Partnership Foundation to advise on sustainable species and help fisheries gain MSC accreditation.

''Essentially, people are settling into their niches in the sustainable seafood movement in Australia,'' says Mahto. ''I think this year is going to be an exceptional year in sustainable seafood.''

OceanWatch's Brad Warren still can't fathom why fish is picked on so much by conservation groups when leading fisheries and conservation scientist Professor Ray Hilborn reported commercial fishing, on average, had less impact on the environment than land-based animal farming.

''From a world food sustainability perspective, our industry leads the world. I can't understand why conservation groups can't get their heads around that and promote what we do rather than try and drag us down,'' he says

KEEPING A CLOSE WATCH

Both federal and state governments oversee strict controls and regulations about how, where and how much fish is caught. State governments are responsible for managing inshore fishing waters up to three nautical miles, while the federal Government looks after the offshore fishing zone extending from three nautical miles to 200.

The offshore fishers tend to be governed by annually set total allowable commercial catch quotas. More recently, the Federal Government has looked at creating more marine parks and no-take, or mixed-use, zones to balance sustainable fisheries management with stock recovery.

However, the vast majority - close to 90 per cent of commercial licences - fish within the three-nautical-mile zone and abide by restrictions such as who and how many can fish, when and where and the type of gear they can use.

BLUEFIN TUNA: A FISH UNDER THREAT

Estimates put spawning stocks of the southern bluefin tuna at about 5 per cent of pre-commercial fishing levels. Although bluefin total allowable commercial catch quotas were slashed in 2009 by almost a quarter, reducing Australia's annual haul to what industry regard as a "sustainable" 4015 tonnes, environmentalists continue to campaign for a moratorium.

"If a zero catch was introduced today, it's estimated by scientists that it would take about 20 years for (southern bluefin tuna stocks) to rebuild to a figure of 20 per cent," says Chris Smyth, healthy oceans campaigner for the Australian Conservation Foundation.

Conservationists also point to the tuna's high feed ratios. Industry estimates suggest it takes 8-10 kilograms of pilchards, on average, to produce one kilogram of tuna.

HOW TO EAT SUSTAINABLY

?Don't stick to one or a few fish species - try many, including less popular, varieties

?Choose fish in abundant supply

?Ask your fishmonger and restaurants where the fish comes from and how it was caught - select local and seasonal

?Familiarise yourself with seafood assessed as sustainable by the Australian Conservation Foundation and products certified by the Marine Stewardship Council and Friends of the Sea

?Refer to sustainable fish guides such as Hilary McNevin's Guide to Fish: Choosing and cooking sustainable species and the Australian Marine Conservation Society's Australia's Sustainable Seafood Guide

?Consider alternatives - check out GoodFishBadFish's seafood converter

GO FOR ?

WILD

Garfish (in WA and Vic)

King George whiting

Calamari

Black trevally

Blue swimmer crab

Mackerel

Sardine

FARMED

Abalone