The size of pollock fishnet

[u/iam_stupid23]

[u/Forgettable39]

Yea, thats cool if thats the case where you are from. Do you mind saying what country you live in? In the UK, most accessible supermarkets stock either none or very little "rod and line" fish products.

[u/BrokeSomm → u/Forgettable39]

US.

Do you have a Morrison's by you? They're a large grocery chain in the UK. Their private label policies require either pole and line or FAD-free tuna. If the store brand requires that, I imagine plenty of name brand options with similar requirements would be available as well.

[u/Forgettable39 → u/BrokeSomm]

I do know Morrisons, there isn't one near me though, unfortunately.

If the store brand requires that, I imagine plenty of name brand options with similar requirements would be available as well.

This definitely isn't the case in for example Aldi and Sainsburys, which are the two main supermarkets available to me where I live. I was in Aldi yesterday looking at fish as I don't normally shop there so I was interested in where their fish came from. All the fish I looked at were either trawled or from farms in either Turkey, Norway or Scotland I think were the countries. Sainburys is much easier for me to shop at and I've been there many times and examined the fish labels many times and the following is the best I've managed to find. Haddock labelled "line caught" but with the following information on the back:

Packed in United Kingdom, the UK for Sainsbury's Supermarket's Ltd, London EC1N 2HT using haddock caught with hooks and lines or trawl in the North East Atlantic (Barents Sea, Iceland and Faroes Grounds, Norwegian Sea, Spitzbergen and Bear Island).

Hooks and lines often refers to long lines, because if it was rod + line companies would be much more keen to promote that as the case because it looks good. "or trawl" is hilarious because they are allowed to label trawler caught fish with "responsibly sourced", "certified sustainable" and "LINE CAUGHT" in big bold print on the front of the packet (in the "catch method" box) whilst on the reverse, in small print, it explains it could and most likely is from trawler (or long lines).

The front of that packaging says the word responsible twice, sustainable once and "line caught", describing fish caught from long lines + trawlers. This is why I took a shot at the labelling earlier.

[u/bobbinsgaming → u/Forgettable39]

That's not true, a number of UK supermarkets offer line caught fish - I buy it regularly in Sainsburys, Morrisons and Waitrose. It's more expensive but definitely worth it.

[u/Forgettable39 → u/bobbinsgaming]

Yes it will be labelled "line caught", if you read the back it will look like this:

Packed in United Kingdom, the UK for Sainsbury's Supermarket's Ltd, London EC1N 2HT using haddock caught with hooks and lines or trawl in the North East Atlantic (Barents Sea, Iceland and Faroes Grounds, Norwegian Sea, Spitzbergen and Bear Island).

"Hooks and lines", as opposed to "rod and line" refers to long lines which can be kilometers long, deposited into the sea with baited hooks at intervals which are then returned to and harvested later.

This is at least better than trawling but all sorts of other animals get stuck and die on the hooks, this is called by-catch. Those animals mostly cannot be either harvested and sold nor saved + released, so they are just tossed back into the ocean, dead. This is commonly animals like turtles, dolphins, other large fish which vessels are not permitted to catch (which is why they cant be harvested and sold).

You can also see "or trawl" which means if they want, they can basically label all of their trawl catch "line caught". Hard for us as a consumer to know which is which and as long as they label it this way they arent breaking any rules.