Scup Is a Healthy Fish. So Why Does Seafood Watch Rate It Yellow?
By Paul Taylor, Editor, ScupFish.com · Published September 25, 2026
Scup presents an apparent contradiction for seafood consumers.
The fish itself is doing remarkably well. The stock is healthy, it is not overfished, and overfishing is not occurring. In Seafood Watch's current assessment of the U.S. Atlantic scup bottom-trawl fisheries, scup actually receives the maximum score of 5 out of 5 for the criterion that evaluates the species being targeted.
Yet Seafood Watch does not give the fishery its green “Best Choice” rating.
Instead, scup caught by the New England and Mid-Atlantic bottom-trawl fisheries covered by the assessment is rated yellow, or “Good Alternative.”
Why?
According to Seafood Watch Fisheries Program Manager Sam Wilding, the answer has much less to do with scup than with some of the other animals that can end up in the net.
ScupFish asked Wilding to explain how Seafood Watch evaluates the fishery, why a healthy scup population can still receive a yellow recommendation, and what would have to change for the bottom-trawl fisheries to potentially earn a green rating.
His answers reveal an important distinction that can easily get lost when we talk about whether a fish is “sustainable.”
The health of the fish you're eating is only part of the story.
A Healthy Scup Stock Gets a Perfect Score
Seafood Watch evaluates fisheries using four broad criteria:
- Impacts on the species being assessed
- Impacts on other species caught by the fishery
- Management effectiveness
- Impacts on habitat and the ecosystem
For the first of those, scup does extremely well.
Wilding told ScupFish that the healthy stock earns 5 out of 5 for Criterion 1.
That makes sense given the condition of the population. NOAA Fisheries reports that the Atlantic coast scup stock is not overfished and is not subject to overfishing. As we've reported separately at ScupFish, spawning stock biomass has recovered dramatically from the severely depleted population of the 1990s.
But Seafood Watch isn't simply asking whether there are enough scup.
To receive a green rating, Wilding explained, a fishery must average more than 3.2 out of 5 across the four criteria and cannot receive a red score of 2.2 or below in any single criterion.
That's where the scup trawl fisheries run into trouble.
The Problem Is What Else Gets Caught
The limiting factor is Criterion 2: impacts on other captured species.
According to Wilding, a number of species of concern are caught in the New England and Mid-Atlantic bottom-trawl fisheries assessed by Seafood Watch.
One of the most important examples is Atlantic sturgeon, which can be caught in both fisheries and includes U.S. populations protected as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act.
Seafood Watch's current assessment also considers interactions with horseshoe crabs, ocean sunfish, rays and sharks that have vulnerable or endangered conservation classifications.
The problem isn't simply that these animals occasionally show up in fishing gear.
In some cases, scientists don't have enough information to determine precisely how much impact the scup trawl fishery is having on their populations.
Wilding offered sharks as an example.
It is possible, he explained, that scup bottom trawling represents a relatively minor threat to sharks compared with other types of fishing gear. But there currently isn't sufficient information or analysis for Seafood Watch to reach that conclusion.
That combination — interactions with species already considered vulnerable, threatened or endangered, coupled with uncertainty about the fishery's specific effect on them — contributes to the red Criterion 2 score.
And a red score in any criterion prevents the fishery from receiving an overall green rating.
Bycatch Doesn't Automatically Make a Fishery Unsustainable
Virtually any fishing method can catch something other than its intended target, so the existence of bycatch alone doesn't explain the rating.
Seafood Watch looks at two major questions.
First, what species are being caught and what effect is the fishery having on them?
Second, how much of the total catch is discarded rather than landed?
Wilding explained that a fishery can still receive an acceptable Criterion 2 score while catching other species.
For example, another species caught in the fishery could itself be in reasonably good condition. A fishery also benefits from landing more of its catch rather than discarding a large proportion of it dead.
More selective fishing gear generally helps because fewer non-target species are encountered.
But selectivity alone doesn't guarantee a favorable score.
A fishery that catches relatively little bycatch can still present a concern if the animals it does catch include particularly vulnerable species.
That distinction is important.
A pound of bycatch isn't necessarily equivalent to every other pound of bycatch from a sustainability perspective. What is being caught matters.
Atlantic Sturgeon Illustrates the Problem
Atlantic sturgeon is perhaps the clearest example of why looking only at scup abundance gives an incomplete picture.
Scup can be abundant while a fishing method used to catch them interacts with a completely different animal that has a much more precarious conservation status.
For Seafood Watch, that interaction becomes part of the sustainability assessment of the fishery.
And there is another complication: uncertainty.
Wilding said more scientific resources are needed to fully understand the effect that the scup trawl fisheries — and fisheries more generally — have on several endangered and threatened species.
That means one route to improving the rating isn't necessarily discovering that the fishery has no impact.
It could simply be getting better information about the impact it actually has.
That becomes important when considering what would have to happen for scup to move from yellow to green.
What Would It Take for Scup to Become a “Best Choice”?
The biggest obstacle is clear.
“Bycatch of endangered and threatened species is of greatest concern to us.”
Because Seafood Watch lacks detailed information about the fishery's effect on some of those species, Criterion 2 remains red.
Wilding described two broad ways that could change.
The first would be modifications to the fishery that prevent those species from being caught.
The second would be better data and analysis demonstrating that the fishery's impacts on those species are within sustainable limits.
That second possibility is particularly interesting.
It means a future improvement in the Seafood Watch rating would not necessarily require evidence that every interaction has disappeared. Better science showing that existing interactions occur at sustainable levels could also affect the assessment.
Until Criterion 2 rises above red, however, improvements elsewhere would not be enough to produce an overall green rating.
What About Bottom Trawling and the Seafloor?
Bottom trawling raises another obvious sustainability question because the fishing gear interacts with the seabed.
Wilding said bottom trawling can disturb sediments and animals living on or within the bottom, but the severity varies substantially depending on the habitat.
Dragging gear across coral, reef, boulder or other sensitive habitat is different from trawling across sand.
That distinction matters for scup.
According to Wilding, the scup trawl fisheries typically operate over sandy habitat, where the effects are less severe than they would be over boulder, reef or living habitats such as coral and seagrass.
Gear modifications can also reduce habitat effects.
U.S. fisheries management provides another layer of protection. The Magnuson-Stevens Act requires protections for Essential Fish Habitat and incorporates an ecosystem approach to fisheries management.
As a result, Seafood Watch gives the scup fishery a moderate score for its habitat and ecosystem criterion rather than treating habitat effects as the primary obstacle to a green rating.
Again, the biggest problem is bycatch.
“Scup” Doesn't Have One Universal Seafood Watch Rating
There is another distinction consumers should understand.
Seafood Watch isn't necessarily rating a species everywhere, regardless of how it was caught.
The current scup ratings apply specifically to the New England and Mid-Atlantic trawl fisheries included in the assessment.
Wilding cautioned that those ratings should not automatically be applied to scup caught using other fishing methods.
Different gear can produce different effects on bycatch and habitat.
So saying simply that “scup is yellow” loses an important piece of information.
A more accurate statement is that the specific scup bottom-trawl fisheries assessed by Seafood Watch currently receive the yellow recommendation.
That also means consumers interested in sustainability should pay attention not only to the species on a seafood label or menu, but, when that information is available, to how and where it was caught.
And the Scup Rating Is About to Be Revisited
There is one more reason not to treat the current assessment as permanent.
Seafood Watch generally aims to review and update assessments every three to four years, depending on available resources.
The scup assessment is scheduled for review in 2026.
Wilding told ScupFish that work on the update is underway, although publication may not occur until early 2027.
There is already at least one area where Seafood Watch expects the analysis to change.
Wilding said newer stock assessments will require updates to the treatment of yellowtail flounder. Because that work is underway, he deliberately avoided drawing detailed conclusions about yellowtail flounder based on the existing scup assessment.
That's an important caveat for anyone reading the current rating.
The yellow recommendation is the current published Seafood Watch assessment. It isn't a prediction of what the next assessment will conclude.
“Sustainable” Is a Bigger Question Than “Are There Plenty of Fish?”
Perhaps the most useful thing about the scup rating is what it teaches us about the word sustainable.
For an angler who regularly encounters large numbers of scup, a yellow sustainability rating can initially seem strange.
There certainly aren't too few scup.
In fact, that's the part of the assessment where the fishery performs best.
But Seafood Watch is asking additional questions.
What happens to other animals when we catch scup?
How much of the catch is discarded?
What happens to the habitat?
How effectively is the fishery managed?
And how confident are scientists that impacts on vulnerable species are sustainable?
Wilding said Seafood Watch hasn't received much feedback specifically about its scup ratings, but that the questions ScupFish raised reflect a common misunderstanding: people often don't realize how many issues go into a seafood sustainability recommendation beyond the stock status of the target species.
Scup is a particularly good example.
The scup population can be healthy while legitimate sustainability questions remain about one method used to catch it.
Those aren't contradictory conclusions.
They're answers to two different questions.
And with Seafood Watch now reviewing its scup assessment, we'll soon have a better idea of whether newer science changes the answer to the second one.
Source note: This article is based on written responses provided to ScupFish by Sam Wilding, Fisheries Program Manager at Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch, regarding Seafood Watch's currently published assessment of the New England and Mid-Atlantic scup bottom-trawl fisheries. Wilding noted that the assessment is scheduled for an update in 2026, which may not be published until early 2027, and that newer stock information is expected to change portions of the analysis. The descriptions above therefore refer to the current published assessment and should not be interpreted as the outcome of the forthcoming update.