The Seafood Guide iPhone app based on the Seafood Watch educational service from Monterey Bay Aquarium is a seafood guide designed to help you make sustainable seafood choices quickly and easily. Seafood Guide allows you the convenience of access to an enormous amount of information right from your iPhone.
Many of us, in our efforts to live with as minimal an impact on the environment as possible, have taken measures towards living green by incorporating more choices that increase sustainability. Doing so requires making selections that assure we’re not negatively impacting a species into extinction. Further to live healthier we must feel confident that we are not consuming a product that contains high levels of hazardous chemicals such as mercury.
Seafood Guide provides us with the assurances we need when making a decision on the purchase of seafood at our favorite market, restaurant, or sushi bar. In the past I’ve had cards that I picked up with similar information and carried them with me until they were frayed and unreadable. I’ve had previous success using similar seafood watch services that utilized texting. I’d text a type of the seafood and quickly receive sustainability and health information back via a text message.
I found Seafood Guide to be a superior option. Using Seafood Guide, I simply selected my region and scrolled through a list of seafood. The ability to have so much information was remarkable, but the depth of the information was the single most important factor in finding the Seafood Guide more desirable than the texting option by leaps and bounds. I immediately had hundreds of choices and detailed research right in front of me. With the texting option I would obtain a lot less information and only one text at a time.
When using Seafood Watch you select a seafood and you’ll notice a section along the left column. For instance I’ve selected Arctic Char (Farmed). Along the left is a shaded green area that states Best Choice. After tapping on Arctic Char, I’m taken to an additional page that has a picture of an Arctic Char on the top and below the picture three sections — Rating, Consumer Notes, and Summary.
I learn from the Rating section that farmed-raised Artic Char is rated Best Choice because it’s farmed in an ecological manner. Under Consumer Notes I’m informed that Artic Char is fished both commercially and recreationally but most sold in the U.S. is farmed. I also learn that when sold as sushi it is called Iwana.
Finally, under Summary, I learn what farming procedures are used, and why those methods create only a low risk of pollution. Also explained were the factors taken into account that resulted in the recommendation provided.
Seafood Guide is a wonderful app to incorporate into your lifestyle. It’s handy, easier than carrying a bunch of cards around and far more efficient than the texting option. This is one app that I plan on using a lot. The Monterey Bay Aquarium has done an excellent job of making sure that their Seafood Watch research is accessible and convenient to use.
