Image courtesy of WikiMedia Commons.
By Dnyaneshwari Haware ’23
Staff Writer
With seafood consumption rising globally, plant-based alternatives have also arisen to meet the environmental challenges presented by overfishing and overconsumption.
Around the world, communities thrive on local catches, and many sustain their households through catching and selling seafood at local markets. With a rise in health consciousness, many Westerners have switched from red meat to seafood, as it contains more fats and less cholesterol. According to the Food and Agricultural Organization, there has been a 122 percent increase in the amount of fish consumed from 1990 to 2018. This rise in seafood consumption has had detrimental impacts on the aquatic environment and has, in turn, negatively impacted fish populations.
According to the Environmental Defense Fund, overfishing refers to catching too many fish at once, which depletes the breeding population beyond recovery. Along with overfishing, large commercial fishing companies often capture aquatic species other than fish. These species are then separated and discarded. Possible solutions include stricter government regulations, such as regulating the size of fishing nets so smaller fish can escape, prohibiting fishing during breeding seasons and placing higher fines on rule violators. The effectiveness of these measures is questionable, as they have not been highly successful in the past.
The first synthetic lab-grown meat was created in 2012 but used purely for scientific exploration purposes. With the rise of veganism and plant-based diets alongside activism and advocacy for animal rights, there is a greater incentive to invent alternatives to animal products. Plant-based meats are widely available in the Western market. Many major fast-food chains, too, have adapted to this change and offer meatless alternatives.
Seafood has not seen such a development in plant-based alternatives until recently. In the past year, a few businesses have started offering plant-based seafood alternatives that strive to contain close to the same amount of nutritional value as actual seafood. Much more complex to develop than meats, plant-based seafood required heavy investment and research, and they have yet to become widely available. One business that offers this is Good Catch. Stating that the development of plant-based seafood is still a work in progress, Co-Founder and Chief Culinary Officer of Good Catch Chad Sarno said to Forbes magazine, “We are where veggie burgers were ten years ago.”