This one-hour lesson plan teaches students about evaluating the sustainability of seafood. Students will learn about problems with commercial fishing like overfishing. They will then use seafood menus and a sustainability guide to evaluate different seafood options and their effects on oceans. The lesson discusses commercial fishing methods, bycatch, and technologies to reduce bycatch. Students will understand key vocabulary and be able to critically analyze menus to determine sustainable seafood choices.

1. Lesson Plan: Evaluating the Sustainability of Seafood
Written by: Alex Evans, BS, PharmD
Relevant classes: Environmental science, biology, ecology, marine science.
Duration: About one hour
Description: In this lab, students will learn about commercial fishing, including the problems associated
with overfishing and learn to evaluate seafood menus for sustainability. This is a good lab exercise after
a discussion on sustainability or commercial fishing.
Topics to discuss beforehand could include commercial fishing methods (long-lining, trawling,
seine nets, etc), the concept of by-catch and its effects on the oceans, technologies aimed at reducing
by-catch (i.e. TEDs), and aquaculture.
Materials:
 One lesson plan worksheet for each student or group
 2-3 seafood menus for each student or group. I have found from experience that the
best place to get a lot of these quickly are 1) the internet and 2) phone books with
menus. They can even be Chinese restaurants or others if they have significant amounts
of seafood on the menu.
 Seafood sustainability guide. I like the one published by The Blue Ocean Institute
because it gives reasons why a certain seafood selection was categorized the way it was,
rather than just being a list. It is freely available to the public at:
http://blueocean.org/seafoods/
 I personally like to show videos of commercial fishing. Examples include the following
links:
o “The Truth About FADs”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVbp7PijR6Y&list=PLC62F764D6BFE5AB9
o “Turtle Excluder Device (TED) fitted to a trawl net to stop turtles drowning”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y71cgxmyMO4
o “Catching Tuna Maldivian Style (example of sustainable commercial fishing)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HP6rYThJWUg&list=ECC62F764D6BFE5AB9

2. Key Vocabulary:
 Sustainability
 Commercial fishing
 By-catch
 Fish Aggregating Device (FAD)
 Turtle Excluder Device (TED)
 Aquaculture
Objectives:
 Understand the key vocabulary listed above
 Learn to critically evaluate seafood menus to determine the menu choices’ effects on the oceans
 Understand some underlying reasons behind why fish stocks decline over time
 Gain insight into the ways in which consumers can drive social change

3. Page 1
Group members:_______________________________________________________________
Evaluating the
Sustainability of Seafood
Today we are going to evaluate the sustainability of the seafood that is served in local
restaurants. To do that, we are going to use the Blue Ocean Institute’s Guide to sustainable
seafood, which provides not only a rating of best and worst choices but also an explanation of
why it was put in that category. Each group will be given several menus to answer these
questions.
Name three different items on the menus that are the best or good choices and why:
1-
2-
3-
Name three different items on the menus that are either bad or the worst choices and why:
1-
2-
3-

4. Page 2
Name an item that was on the menu but was not descriptive enough to be able to determine whether or not it
was a good choice.
 What additional information was needed?
 Why does that information matter in terms of sustainability?
Pick one of the restaurants and evaluate the seafood on their menu. Assign them a grade of A through F and
give an explanation of your grade.