Chef Barton Seaver has recently partnered with Rouxbe, a leading online culinary school, to offer a course on seafood literacy. Seafood Literacy is meant to help bolster a student's understanding on how to source, prepare, cook and serve seafood in all of its forms. The goal of the course is to help increase confidence and competence when working with seafood to take advantage of all the culinary opportunities seafood has to offer.  Seafood Literacy is split into 6 different units:

• Introduction, Getting Set Up
• Why Sustainable Seafood Matters
• Seafood Basics | Understanding Seafood Categories
• Seafood Handling & Fabrication Skills
• Seafood Cooking Techniques
• Course Assessment & Resource Library

The syllabus for the course can be viewed here. Those interested can enroll in the Seafood Literacy course, can do so here. 

Albacore is available canned and fresh and frozen whole fish, loins and steaks. Depending on where it’s caught, albacore is light brown or pinkish red, and it’s the only canned tuna allowed to be marketed as “white” instead of “light." Imported canned albacore is usually cooked twice, while small canneries on the U.S. West Coast put raw pieces of the fish in cans and cook them once in their own juices. Off the West Coast, albacore boats either brine freeze or blast freeze their catch. Brine-frozen fish gets canned, while most blast-and-bled albacore goes to the sashimi market. Pole and troll-caught albacore is usually bled on landing, leaving flesh lighter in color; bloody flecks mean that the fish wasn’t bled. Albacore tuna has low sodium and is known to be a good source of vitamins A and B12, as well as selenium and niacin.

Key sustainability sourcing notes based on average landings of albacore tuna from 2016-2017 and using the most recent Seafood Watch assessments and MSC certifications as of June, 2019:

• ~25% of global albacore tuna landings and ~95% of U.S. landings meet a Seafood Watch "Best Choice (green)" rating globally (For U.S. landings pole and troll-caught is ~60% from Washington and ~30% from Oregon)
• ~15% of albacore tuna landings globally are MSC-certified 
• ~5% of  U.S. landings (longline-caught: Hawaii and U.S. Atlantic) meet a Seafood Watch "Good Alternative (yellow)" rating
• ~70% of albacore tuna landings globally (longline-caught: ~50% from the South Pacific, ~25% from the Indian Ocean, ~20% from the North Pacific) meet a Seafood Watch "Avoid (red)" rating
• Global landings in 2017 increased ~10% compared to 2016 but decreased ~5% compared to 2014 
• Refer to FisheryProgress for current fishery improvement projects (FIPs) for albacore tuna