The mission of Seafood Watch is to empower seafood consumers and businesses to make choices for healthy oceans. Using your purchasing power to drive the market toward environmentally responsible fishing and fish farming practices, you ultimately help assure abundant supplies of seafood for the future.

Seafood Watch makes seafood recommendations based on the environmental impact of fishing or fish farming operations. Our Seafood Watch pocket guides categorize these seafood recommendations to help you determine which seafood is from an eco-friendly source:

Best Choices: These fish are abundant, well managed and caught or farmed in environmentally friendly ways.

Good Alternatives: These are good alternatives, but there are some concerns with the way they are caught or farmed. They are, however, better choices than items in the Avoid column.

Avoid: Avoid these products, at least for now. These fish come from sources that are overfished, depleted or are caught or farmed in ways that harm the environment.

We encourage seafood consumers and purveyors to purchase seafood from the Best Choices and Good Alternatives categories. The recommendations are updated at least once a year and more information supporting each recommendation is available on our web site. Seafood Watch also creates tailored seafood recommendations for specific regions of the U.S., providing sustainable and accessible seafood alternatives.