SeafoodWatch already has a pretty solid iPhone and Android app that does this[1], but I'm all for more options and having raw JSON available.

[1] http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/cr/SeafoodWatch/web/sfw_i...

I usually only eat what I can catch. And if I can catch it, well... that fish just won the Darwin award because I suck at fishing.

A title of "..which are sustainable" would be clearer. The article concerns the sustainability of the fish and not the goodness of them as a food. There is for example no mention of the problems of eating catfish farm raised in China (high levels of toxins).

I eat fish 3 or 4 days a week but I almost never eat any of the fish listed as "not okay". Cod is the only exception. Price seems to regulate this list pretty well.

Why are various farmed fish listed as "not okay to eat"? Certainly farmed fish can't be under pressure like wild fish. Is it because of the environmental practices of the farms? I see us farmed raised catfish is listed ok, but apparently asian farmed catfish isn't?

Farmed salmon as a good choice? Think you better check that one out, unless it is in an inland pond (rare), farmed salmon is a pretty bad choice. Also having only a single listing for "cod" over-simplifies things. Many diverse fish are marketed as cod, and some of them are quite sustainable. Sablefish aka Black Cod from Alaska is a delicious buttery treat and quite sustainable.

This is a silly list. Not because fish aren't important, but because there's no way to take action on this list. Studies have shown that a huge amount of fish is mislabelled. Yes, pick up a piece of xxxx from a seafood market and the odds are that it's not xxxx.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/27/science/earth/27fish.html

Consumers have no effective way to verify what they're eating. This is a situation where there is either government action or no action; no private personal actions can be successful, barring the creation of instant cheap at-the-restaurant-table DNA analysis.

One odd thing about this list:

There are 6 instances where species are listed as okay to eat if they are from the US while not okay to eat if they are from elsewhere. There are 0 instances where the opposite is true.

# yes Barramundi (US/Europe/Australia) # yes Barramundi (Closed Production) # no Barramundi (Other)

# yes Catfish (US Farmed) # no Catfish (Other)

# yes Crayfish (US) # no Crayfish (Other)

# yes Herring (Norway, Iceland, North Sea, US) # no Herring (Other)

# yes King Crab (US) # no King Crab (Other)

# yes Northern Prawn/Pink Shrimp (US and Canadian) # no Northern Prawn/Pink Shrimp (Other)

There seems to be some bias towards US fisheries in this list.

Four Fish by Paul Greenberg - tackles this very subject. I recommend it. http://roundvalleyfishing.com/2011/06/15/book-review-four-fi...

Any list that opens with

no: All Bottom Trawled Fish no: All Fish caught by Longline

loses me right there. I don't know how different types of fish are caught, and I'm not going to reearch it before making each purchase.

Since mercury levels are obviously something people are very concerned about, I will look into adding them to the information. Does anyone have good sources for mercury levels of different kinds of fish?

Blue Ocean Institute makes a similarly up-to-date sustainable and healthy seafood database accessible via text message. Text FISH to 30644 to try it.

I read this as, "with the price of equities in the fish market dropping, which fish are safe to eat, presumably because those companies will be more lax with health codes?"

I was way off.

"Which are okay to eat?" implies how much mercury is present, but it seems this question is from an environmental perspective.

Bzzzzz. Sea bass is often really Antarctic toothfish, a species which, while certified as 'sustainable' is anything but. See http://www.lastocean.co.nz for details on a campaign to protect the Ross Sea, one of the World's last almost untouched wild places.

Sooo, why is this top link on HN? Am I missing some nifty tech embedded in the site, or is everyone here just interested in fish?

How about everyone just leaves the ocean alone for a while?

Eat jellyfish.

This renders very well on my android phone. Thanks.

Can't eat beef because of mad cow and the heavy medication used in breeding; same goes for pigs and chicken and all other mass-produced meat. On top of that you have the question of animal cruelty and the questionable necessity of killing animals to eat them attached to it. Plus it is generally not that healthy to eat it all the time and you shouldn't eat meat more than once or twice a week or so.

Can't eat fish for all the mercury and lots of them being close to extinction and it kills dolphins and damages the oceans.

Can't eat eggs or milk, again for cruelty and various possible diseases or other contamination.

And vegetables and fruits? Well, practically all of the mass produced ones never EVER saw any soil or real sunlight but artificial gel to grow on and were picked by poor and heavily underpaid and downright exploited people from (and typically in) poor countries under inhuman conditions and bought by the rich nations for next to nothing. (here is to you, militant vegetarians!) On top of that they are heavily laden with chemicals of all sorts and chances are when you get to buy them, they are far from being fresh.

Plus for practically all the food mentioned above: production heavily, grossly outranks what actually ends up being bought... so we just dump it, burn it or do FSM-knows what with it. We certainly do NOT give it to the starving people in this world because it would cost too much.

And if you go organic and local farmers only? Apart from few choices, you have even less inspections and regulations to protect your safety because you don't know what they are selling, what it grew on and how clean and safe to eat it is. And some of it just taste absolutely horrible.

This is just pathetic... the whole food industry, front to back, top to bottom. If you go by the warnings on what to avoid, what is dangerous for your health and what is immoral and wrong to eat, we better come up with a way to get by on nothing but sunlight and water quickly.

But then again, fresh water supplies are currently being bought up by Big-Food to make lots and lots of money and water in bottles is very often not as clean as one might hope and certain chemicals from plastic bottles could basically work like estrogen in your body.

Radioactive Japanese Fish are "okay to eat".