Johannesburg - Do you agonize over whether your choice of fish for dinner is environmentally sound? You know that cod stocks have been badly depleted by overfishing but what about, for example, kingklip?Fish lovers in South Africa are hooked on a new text message service that tells them whether their prospective fish choice is in plentiful supply, best avoided or illegal.
FishMS was launched by the Southern African Sustainable Seafood Initiative (SASSI) in December 2006. Since then, more than 3,000 people have used the service over 11,000 times, SAPA news agency reported in July.
You simply SMS the name of the fish you want to eat to a local South African mobile phone number (079-499-8795) and seconds later receive a colour-coded reply.
The response for kingklip, a tasty member of the eel family caught in parts of the Southern hemisphere, reads: "Kingklip. Status: ORANGE. High value bycatch of hake bottom trawl and longline fisheries. Over-exploited. Max catch/year 3,500 tonnes."
A question on tuna elicits answers on Yellowfin tuna (Green), Bigeye tuna (ORANGE), Longfin tuna (Green), Skipjack tuna (Green), Bluefin tuna (ORANGE) and Atlantic bonito (Green).
Green means the species is plentiful, orange that is it legal to sell it but that stocks are threatened, and red that the fish is a protected species and off-limits to commercial fishing.
Species on the red list include kingfish, zebra and striped catshark.
SASSI, part of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), was founded in 2004 to educate the seafood industry and consumers about marine conservation issues.
For the full fish classification table, go to www.wwf.org.za/sassi
