The Walrus – The Case Against Eating Fish As a biologist, I know what can happen to seafood before it ends up on our plates. That’s why it’s not on mine

“…But eating mislabelled fish can make you ill. Seafood is delicate; each species has a specific temperature range at which it can be stored, and requires particular handling and preparation methods. Certain types of seafood must be tested for allergens and toxins, and a mislabelled item can skip the screening process. Ciguatera toxin, for example, one of the most commonly reported causes of seafood poisoning, is found only in reef fish from the tropics. If a tropical fish is mislabelled as a temperate species, the toxin can easily find its way into an unsuspecting kitchen. You might even be eating fish you didn’t know you had a sensitivity to. For example, escolar, often called “white tuna” on sushi menus, is a snake mackerel that’s routinely substituted for many different fish. While escolar’s oily texture is appealing to some taste buds, it can also be indigestible, causing severe diarrhea and cramping…Let’s say you buy your seafood from a store that correctly labels its fish, or from a fisherman you trust. Maybe you even catch it yourself. But no matter how careful you are, if you eat seafood fairly regularly, chances are you’ve ingested plastic. Much of what we throw away ends up in the world’s water systems: recent studies estimate there are over five trillion pieces of plastic—weighing 244 million kilograms—currently floating in the world’s oceans, and that number is expected to grow…”