United Kingdom foodservice supplier Direct Seafoods is calling on chefs to take wild-caught North Atlantic halibut off their menus, and will only provide its customers with the "much more sustainable" alternative of farmed halibut from Scotland and Norway, it said.
Laky Zervudachi, director of sustainability at Direct Seafoods, told SeafoodSource that the company decided to make a stand in response to growing worries about the sustainability of halibut caught in the North Atlantic.
“We are trying to raise that awareness, and to also help people see that there is lots of good farmed halibut out there and provide access to it,” he said.
Wild Atlantic halibut is considered an endangered species and there are mounting concerns about the lack of coordinated and consistent management to rebuild stocks across the region. The fish has been on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s list of threatened species since 1996.
Zervudachi highlighted that the true status of the stock is unknown, which means that fishing is continuing to reduce potentially unsustainable stocks. He also dismissed the sometimes-used excuse that Norwegian halibut is a bycatch species, and said that most halibut landed in Norway is in fact from longlines that are specifically targeting the fish.
No matter if this fishing activity is better-managed than in certain other areas, it’s still targeting a species that’s regarded as endangered, he said.
“Chefs are being told by some other suppliers that wild Atlantic halibut is fine; that it’s a bycatch and they should use it, but they are actually being hoodwinked," Zervudachi said. “We want them to know the real story – that it’s still an endangered species.”
Direct Seafoods will not sell wild halibut until a truly demonstrable well-managed fishery is in place, said Zervudachi, highlighting that the United States and Canada have proved that such controls are possible, as evidenced by the Pacific halibut fishery, which has been Marine Stewardship Council-certified for several years.
In the meantime, Direct Seafoods wants chefs to only put farmed Atlantic halibut on their menus. Its own sources include the Gigha Halibut Farm in Scotland and Glitne in Norway. Both of these farms produce the species in tanks using recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS).
