May 31st, 2006, 10:57 am

Safe Seafoods - or, fish that won’t give you lead posioning

Chilean sea bass- a fish you should never eat because it is ridiculously close to extinction, Flickr’d by ata08.

Finally - a list of seafood that one can consume ethically and responsibly. If you’ve spent any time at all learning about food production, you’ll know that eating fish is a dicey proposition.

Is it better to eat wild fish - polluted with industrial contaminants, and overfished to the point of extinction? Or safer to dine on domestic denizens of inland farms, where monospecies pollute the surrounding areas with their concentrated feces? According to Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma, fish farmers are even experimenting with ways to feed salmon corn - which, in case you’re fuzzy on the whole nature thing, does not grow in the ocean.

I’ve half-heartedly done research on this, but it’s been hard to figure out what’s really good to eat, and what isn’t.

Fortunately, the folks over at NYTimes.com have time to kill. They’ve compiled this list of fish that are relatively free of mercury, PCBs and other pollutants. Mmmm. Pollutants.

Dig in!

NyTimes.com Fish Guide

as published May 31, 2006 [source]

These fish can be eaten once a week by adults, according to an assessment of contaminant levels by Environmental Defense. Those marked with an asterisk can be eaten more than once a week.

WILD

*ANCHOVIES
ARCTIC CHAR, color added
*ATLANTIC BUTTERFISH
*BLACK COD (Sable, Butterfish on West Coast)
*BLACK SEA BASS Younger children no more than four times a month
*HADDOCK
*HAKE (white, silver and red)
HAKE (Chilean, Cape and Argentine)
*HALIBUT (Pacific only) Older children 3 times a month, younger children twice
*HERRING
*MACKEREL (Atlantic or Boston only)
MAHI-MAHI Younger children 3 times a month
*PACIFIC COD
*PACIFIC SAND DAB (yellowtail flounder)
*PACIFIC WHITING
*PLAICE
PORGIES
*SALMON (Pacific)
*SARDINES
*SHAD
SMELT
*SOLE (gray, petrale, rex, yellowfin)
SOLE (Dover; English or lemon, older children 3 times a month, younger children twice)
WHITEFISH

FARMED

CARP
CATFISH (domestic)
STRIPED BASS (rockfish)
*TILAPIA
*TROUT (rainbow); TROUT (steelhead)

SHELLFISH

*CLAMS (northern quahogs)
CLAMS (Atlantic surf, butter, Manila, ocean quahog, Pacific geoduck, Pacific littleneck and soft-shell)
*CRAB (Dungeness, snow) Dungeness: younger children once a week
CRAB (Florida stone, Jonah, king)
*CRAYFISH (United States)
*LOBSTER (American) Children 2 to 4 times a month
*MUSSELS (farmed blue; wild blue, children 2 to 3 times a month)
MUSSELS (New Zealand green, Mediterranean)
OYSTERS (farmed Eastern and Pacific)
*SCALLOPS (bay; Northeast, Canadian sea)
*SHRIMP (wild American pink, white, brown)
SHRIMP (spot prawns and northern shrimp)
*SQUID
*SPINY LOBSTER (Caribbean, United States, and Australia)

p.s. Ordinarily, I’d just link to this article instead of reprinting it. But the NYTimes.com’s site has been really funky with its password protection, archiving and what not recently. So a re-print it is.