To fish or farm?

Instead of another purely scientific shock story about how our fisheries and marine biodiversity are bound to collapse, this NYT week in review article gives a fresh fishery argument from a food critique's taste buds. In Discussion, we've debated this a bit. In short, author Mark Bittman proposes we pescavores eat cod only occasionally and sardines more frequently instead of encouraging the campaign for 'tasteless' farm-raised salmon.

The article weighs the ecological harm from farming fish (inefficient fishmeal, excessive waste (aka poo), genetic pollution, and long term unsustainability) against the convenience of year round salmon (probably not as tasty as the 85 pd Chinook photoed below). For specific fishery trends, note the NYT side graphs and how the Northwestern Atlantic Coast Herring looks like it's doing ok, after catch restrictions were imposed. Unfortunately, the Western Atlantic bluefin tuna trend looks more dismal.