I grew up in a fishing town between two (of the myriad) fishing boat captains and two blocks from a store that purchased and sold their catch to sell to locals and tourists. I learned about fishing limits, why they existed and that the first of any fish caught on a trip were released.
You could say I learned about sustainable fishing long before I would come to hear and understand that phrase. As I got older, I learned that what the boat captains did was practice sustainable fishing without calling it that. They did this not because it was “green,” en vogue or a chance to mark up prices over 150% - 200%. They were doing it so they and generations after them, would have the ability to survive.
After I moved from the area where I spent my formative years (e.g., moved to land-locked states) I ate less fish. My thought being that it couldn’t be as fresh as I was spoiled on, and therefore not as tasty. I also learned of the Seafood Watch list. I tried to make sure I only ate fish that were marked as a Best Choice on the list when and if I ate seafood. But it wasn’t always easy to find this information; stores didn’t post this information, no one (restaurants, grocery stores) was really talking about it and the Internet was not yet awash in the Seafood Watch List.
Thankfully that has changed and has now culminated in the Seafood Watch List app available for iOS and Android devices. Now it is easy to check the fish on ice in the store against the Seafood Watch List.
When you launch the app, you are presented with the Home screen. Here you can type a term or phrase into the search field. Below the search box are three links: Seafood Guides, Sushi Guides and Project FishMap™. And as many apps now have, there is a nav bar at the bottom, containing five items: Home, Guides, Add, Locate and More.
Seafood Watch List Home Screen.
Naturally, when I first started the app I typed in fish I grew up catching - red snapper, amberjack, triggerfish and cobia.
Search Results for Red Snapper.
Having sufficiently “tested” the search function, I moved on to the Guides section of the home screen. There are three guides here and you can alter them by clicking the region button at the top right. One guide for all seafood for that region, one for sushi and one that is nothing but fish rated as a “Best Choice.”
Seafood Watch List Super Green Guide.
Clicking Project FishMap™ on the Home screen brings up the following screen:
Project FishMap™ gives the app the ability to crowd source creating and sharing a database of locations that sell “Best Choice” and “Good Alternative” seafood. Clicking the Add or Locate buttons on the navbar at the bottom of the app bring up a similar screen. It differs only in that it shows one button and the button is either Add or Locate, depending on which navbar item you selected.
When I first launched the app, I noticed in the More button of the navbar there was a badge with the number 7 in it. I of course ignored this until I had finishing exploring other parts of the app. Hiding under More, among many other things, was the What’s New section. What’s New is like a truncated RSS feed of the most recent posts at the Seafood Watch List’s What’s New website. These posts consist of seafood recipes and Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch List related news. Selecting an item displays what I can only describe as a truncated RSS item with a large Learn More button. Clicking the Learn More button kicks you into the device’s web browser to display the news story at the story’s webpage.
What’s New section of the Seafood Watch List app.
Also under More is a My Account section. If you have (or create) a Monterey Bay Aquarium Account, you will be able to add places that sell Best Choice or Good Alternative seafood, earn badges, view earned badges and see a history of places you have added. Its a feature that everyone from users to venture capitalists love called gamification. And it is buried at the bottom of the more section. This is unfortunate because it could be a real incentive for a certain generation to care about sustainable seafood.
If you or anyone you know eats and/or cooks seafood and owns an Android or iOS device, they need the Seafood Watch List app. There are four areas I see where the app can greatly improve. They break down thusly:
Making these changes over revisions to the app would certainly make it easier for users of the app to achieve what I think are the two goals of this app: Eat seafood more sustainably and help others find & do the same. Showcasing the gaming feature of earning badges right at the app’s start would tremendously increase the number of places that are rated on how sustainable their seafood is.
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Tags » fish • food • seafood • sustainable • growing up •
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