Porgy or Scup for Sale
Jul 30th, 2011, by Alex Zorach
This photo shows Porgy for sale at Wan's Seafood in the Reading Terminal Market, for $3.99 a pound. The name porgy or porgies globally is used to refer to any fish in the sparidae family; here on the east coast of the United States, it usually refers to scup, fish of the species Stenotomus chrysops. Some other species, such as red porgy, are endangered.
From a health and sustainability standpoint, scup is an okay choice, but not a best choice. Seafood watch's page on scup considers it a "good alternative" but not a best choice. The reason for this is that scup is primarily wild-caught by trawling, a practice which damages aquatic ecosystems, but the shallow habitat in which scup is harvested tends to be somewhat more resilient than deeper habitats. Scup also has been overfished as recently as 1996, but their population seems to have rebounded somewhat.