When you visit Fins Seafood in Bicton in southwest Perth, you’ll notice two things. One, there’s a pretty radical takeaway and eat-in menu up on the board, featuring several options that push past the usual fish and chips such as “crayssants” (crayfish croissants), tuna cheeseburgers and octopus hot dogs.
The other is the fresh fish counter, which has much more available than just the predictable snapper and cod. On the right day you might find glossy red fillets of mangrove jack from the Pilbara. The next, you could take home an unfortunately named – but delicious – grunter fish from the state’s estuaries.
Fins co-owner Phil Clark loves it when his customers pay attention to these seemingly weirder species. “Everyone knows pink snapper but for me, pink snapper is far too expensive for what it is,” he says.
“Whereas mangrove jack is a beautiful fish, with a bit of a higher fat content, bit of a better texture. [Buying that] is a great way to take pressure off some of the [better known] species.”
Luckily for Clark and other professionals who care deeply about fish sustainability, many diners and consumers are beginning to care just as much. According to the Marine Stewardship Council, nine in 10 Australians are worried about ocean health, with more than half of those citing fish stock protection as their biggest concern. But our actions aren’t quite keeping up with our beliefs, with barely a quarter of us making an effort to shop for sustainable seafood – such as buying lesser-known fish species, or only buying fish with the blue MSC tick – in the past year. But what is sustainable seafood? And better yet, how do we know the fish we’re buying is actually sustainable?
If you’re one of the 90 per cent who says they care about where their seafood comes from, and want to know how to best make use of it so our oceans and other waterways thrive, there are a bunch of changes you can make when shopping for fish to cook at home, or choosing fish in restaurants.
“Basically, all fish is yummy,” says Clark. “It’s about getting out of your comfort zone and trying something different.”
Our sustainable seafood guide to buying fish
Look for the stranger fish species and cuts
Not only should you be shopping – where possible – for lesser-known species but it’s also worth looking at using bits of the fish that would usually end up in the bin. If you’re fortunate enough to dine at Josh Niland’s Saint Peter in Sydney, the work’s done for you, with Niland and his team presenting noodles made from melted fish bones and fish eyeball macarons. But it’s something you can do at home as well. “Fish wings!” says Phil Clark. “They’re one of my favourite pieces of fish and are a really cost-effective way to have seafood every week.”
Choose the MSC blue tick — but with caution
Looking for fish marked with the blue tick from the international not-for-profit Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) is a fairly easy way to be sure you’re buying wild fish that’s been caught from a healthy population, in ways that minimise impact on both the stock levels and the environment. But sometimes their ticks come with controversy, as outside groups challenge their methodology, or dispute whether a fishery is flouting the rules. One way to cross-check is by consulting the Good Fish Bad Fish website, which provides an extra layer of insight into the sustainability of different species of fish.
Avoid Tasmanian salmon
There’s plenty of information about the potential harm that breeding Atlantic salmon – which is not native to Australian waters – has on the seas around Tasmania where they’re farmed, although the big salmon companies dispute a lot of it (and one, Tassal, has even earned the Aquaculture Stewardship Council’s coveted green tick).
But putting that aside, there are always going to be better options available than eating introduced, farmed fish. “We don’t see it as a product that has any place on our menu,” says Lachlan Colwill from elegant Hobart kaiseki restaurant Omotenashi. “It would be the equivalent of us using battery chicken.” Instead, Colwill and his partner Sophie Pope challenge their guests to get excited about more interesting and less controversial species such as native Australian salmon and goatfish.
Make friends with your fishmonger
A fishmonger who cares as much about what you’re eating as you do, should be your best buddy. A good one will help you work out how to prepare and cook those daunting species or cuts, and probably save you a few dollars at the same time (because the less “desirable” a species or fish part is, the cheaper it’s likely to be). They should also be able to reassure you about provenance.
“Pester fishmongers and fish butchers with questions: when it arrived, where it’s from, who caught it,” says Colwill. “If they can’t answer or seem like they’re bluffing, you should probably just walk away.”
Buy whole fish
Buying a whole fish is the only way to guarantee that no one has washed it with water which, as fish fanatic Josh Niland never tires of explaining, is the fastest way to ruin a fish’s flavour. It also means that you can try your hand at working with the less-utilised parts of the fish when you get it home. “Get it with scales on and guts in, and learn how to [clean it] yourself.
That’s the only way to guarantee that someone’s not going to wash it under a tap and ruin that beautiful thing,” insists Colwill, though Josh Niland is a little more forgiving.
“If you would like a fish to be filleted, deboned, butterflied or have its skin removed, then ask for it!” Niland wrote in 2021’s Take One Fish. “There’s nothing wrong with getting a professional to do this for you, especially if it will improve your experience with the fish once you get home.” Just tell them to stay away from the tap as they do it.
Don’t buy fish from overseas
Like any food product, local is best. Australian fisheries are generally managed much better than many of their international counterparts, and a fresh-caught local fish is always going to taste better than something packed in ice and shipped in from another country. Ideally, fish shouldn’t fly. The exception to this is New Zealand, which is globally recognised for its sustainable fisheries management – including its farmed King salmon, which is a more sustainable alternative to Australian farmed salmon.
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