Wet market guide
to choosing sustainable seafood
There are so many different kinds of fish species available on the wet markets, do you know them all? Without a structured study, it’s difficult to say exactly what we can find in our wet markets. Particularly for fishes, where different species can look very similar but labelling is often absent or inaccurate, knowing exactly what fish you are buying can be a real challenge!
To help consumers make informed choices when buying fish, we carried out a survey in 2017 to find out what live reef fishes can be commonly found in wet markets. The survey counted a total of more than 110,000 fish individuals in a survey period of only 6 months, including many belonging to species recognized as threatened with extinction under the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.
After consolidating all the survey’s findings, the 42 most commonly found live reef fish species were selected and compiled into The Identification Guide to Live Reef Fish in Hong Kong’s Wet Markets.
Using this guide, consumers can understand more about the live reef fishes found in local fish markets and are most likely to purchase. For each fish species, the following information are included:
We have consulted multiple seafood guides (including the WWF-HK Seafood Guide, Seafood Watch, the Good Fish Guide and Seafood Risk Assessment) to come up with the following tips. Follow them to choose seafood sustainably in the wet market!
You can determine if a fish is juvenile by its size.
WHY?
Sexually immature fishes have not had a chance to reproduce. For every sexually immature fish eaten, there is one less reproducing fish in the ocean.
See here: The Identification Guide to Live Reef Fish in Hong Kong’s Wet Markets
If you have this information, you can then use seafood guides to verify if the species is recommended or avoided.
See here: WWF-HK Seafood Guide
We have consulted several ones and combined their recommendations below.
Learn more about the ratings
Learn more about the IUCN red list of threatened species
