Fish stocks around the globe are dwindling. Friend of the Sea (www.friendofthesea.org), a project for the certification and promotion of sustainable seafood, now allows mobile phone users world-wide to obtain real-time seafood environmental status information, via SMS, before buying fish to eat.
More than 1,000 fish species are included in the IUCN Redlist of endangered species. Among these are North Atlantic cod and salmon, swordfish, most species of sharks and rays, sturgeon and Bluefin tuna. At present, 30% of the stocks are either depleted or overexploited and at least 20% are data deficient.
Thanks to Friend of the Sea, mobile phone users can now make more environmentally friendly purchase choices and help protect the marine environment.
Whether a person is at a restaurant reading the menu, or in a supermarket or local fish market, they can receive detailed information about seafood species environmental status in a matter of seconds by SMS. The user simply enters the species’ common name (e.g. cod) or scientific name (e.g. Gadus Morhua) and then sends it to 07781489880 by SMS (in the US, they write FISH before the species and send to 90430). The registered service applies standard mobile phone SMS charges only.
Friend of the Sea immediately returns an SMS, at no extra cost, with a comprehensive recent stock assessment and description of fishing method impact and selectivity. If the fishery is sustainable, the system will say it’s a ‘Good Choice’. If the fishery is unsustainable, the stock is depleted or on the IUCN Redlist of endangered species, Friend of the Sea notifies the user about the conservation concerns regarding the fishery.
“At the current rate of expansion, we expect in 2008 to become the main international certification scheme for sustainable seafood,†affirms Dr Paolo Bray, director of Friend of the Sea. “Key success factors are the simple and clearer message, the strictest approval criteria, the lower cost, and the non profit, industry independent soul of our mission.”
