In Shetland’s Lerwick Harbor, the grey stone buildings stand close together.  Rows of houses line streets that march downhill in curving lines to meet the sea. They buttress against the cold winds that race across the northernmost fetch of the North Sea.

On the first Sunday of October, Saint Columba’s Church of Scotland fills with people bringing food items, canned goods, and large boxes of cereal. A fishing net holding paper cutouts of mackerel is spread before the pulpit. Plastic fish trays, like shallow milk crates, are filled with food items and brought forward and placed to the left and right of the net.

It was Harvest Sunday.  A woman leading the morning service spoke of mouse and man, of a field mouse surprised to find people with children assembled in the barn praising God for the harvest, and of Joseph farming in the desert.  They sang: “Touch the earth lightly, use the earth gently, nourish the life of the world in our care: gift of great wonder, ours to surrender, trust for the children tomorrow will bear.”

We also must touch the earth more lightly to quell the ravages of climate change and to cool the planet.  The foods we choose to eat vary widely in the overall carbon emissions burdening the atmosphere.  Beef cattle in feedlots are the worst.  Thirty pounds of carbon dioxide are emitted to produce one pound of beef.

Pork is better at four to 12 pounds of carbon dioxide to produce one pound of protein. Value is added when pigs consume our food scraps that otherwise would rot and release methane.  Chickens require three to six pounds, ten times less carbon dioxide than by feedlot beef for a pound of protein.

A large portion of the world’s protein diet is fish. Shetland happens to be located at the gateway to the finest Atlantic fishing grounds, which include Faroe Bank and the Home Ground and is second only to the Grand Banks off Newfoundland. Shetlanders were renowned not only for their skills at boat handling far out at sea, also for salting and curing fish.  They spared no expense for the finest salt. As a result, the Basque fishermen paid a premium to bring Shetland cod to their markets. When steam trawlers and drift nets were developed, Shetlanders pivoted to lead the herring fisheries, selling products to Eastern Europe.

The North Sea herring and the Grand Banks cod fisheries collapsed in the 1970’s. Today, the Shetland fishing fleet is much smaller. Crabs are plentiful. Lobsters are trapped, placed in boxes slightly larger than a lobster trap and set again.  Every other day, half on one day and half on the other, the lobster boxes are pulled on deck and a couple of mackerel or saith are placed inside to feed the lobsters. These large lobsters are harvested for the Christmas market in December. In February, welks are trapped in special five-gallon pots. The lobsters are given a respite during the winter months.

Two distant-water cod-fishing smacks, the Silver Lining and the Thomas Henry, were renowned for the size of their catches. They were owned by the fishery company A. Sandison and Sons. Today, among other things, they make boxes in Lerwick for the salmon farming industry.

Life Cycle Analyst at the James Hutton Institute in Aberdeen Dr. Frances Sandison completed a Ph.D. assessing what role Shetland seafood consumption can play in delivering smaller carbon footprints. Farmed salmon were found to be the worst, at four pounds of carbon dioxide per pound of protein, because most salmon are fed.  Modern pelagic mid-water trawl fleets catching mackerel and herring were assessed at 0.3 to 0.7 pounds with an average of 0.5 pounds per one pound of protein.

The most efficient seafood with the smallest carbon footprint was rope-grown farmed mussels, with an astounding 0.2 pounds of carbon dioxide used to produce one pound of protein. A delicious way to eat mussels is found in Bermuda. Mussel pie has a golden-brown flakey pie crust filled with mussels, diced potatoes, finely chopped onion, fresh thyme, minced parsley, curry powder, and a dash of Worcestershire sauce. A dollop of mayonnaise inserted under the hot pie’s crust is optional.

Like the Shetland Islanders, we can develop ways to use more of the fish, resulting in more protein products and more value with less catch.

A climate-smart future features more seafood in our diet and moderation of high-carbon-dioxide-emitting, less sustainable foods, such as less soybeans and only pasture-rotated beef, more crab cakes, fish pies, and “chowdah.”

Together, let’s eat well to reduce our carbon footprints and “nourish the life of the world in our care.”