Fish Sustainability Facts at Your Fingertips with a Free Text to FishPhone

Posted by The Editorial Desk / Thursday, April 16th, 2009

Seafood lovers can get the lowdown on the sustainability and mercury content of any seafood they’re about to consume — whether in the supermarket or the restaurant (or in my case, the office cubicle) — with just a simple text to FishPhone. BlueOcean.org, a sustainable seafood nonprofit, offers this texting service to take the effort out of ethically-conscious seafood consumption.

It sounded easy enough to me, so I decided to try it with the elegant seafood luncheon I have planned for noon: a foot-long tuna salad sub from Subway.

I texted 30644 with the message “FISH” followed by my tasty sea creature of choice (in this case “tuna”). The immediate response came as promised in the form of two texts:

(1/2) pole or troll caught (GREEN) very few environmental concerns; purse seine or longline caught (YELLOW) some env concerns, HEALTH ADVIORY: high mercury;

(2/2) bluefin tuna (RED) significant env problems, HEALTH ADVISORY: high mercury

As thorough as this sustainability report was, I had no idea what most of it meant.

“Poll or troll caught”? I envisioned standing on a bridge with a fishing rod I fashioned out of sticks and twine, hoping to out-catch the gnarly troll skulking in the creek underneath. According to FishPhone, the tuna I’d catch in that Grimm’s tale setting would be given the green light.

What about “purse seine”? I was pretty sure it didn’t mean catching fish with a Dior clutch (not that I have one anyway).

All would have been lost had I actually been handed these cryptic terms while standing in line at Subway. Fortunately, I had texted FishPhone from my office computer and was able to ask Google all about trolls and purse seines.

Trolling is just a term to describe hook and line fishing done on a low-impact, slow-moving boat.

Purse seines are large nets that close up around the catch like a drawstring bag.

Longline is a commercial fishing method that involves, unsurprisingly, a really long line onto which hundreds (sometimes thousands) of individual lines are attached, each with its own hook and bait.

Another problem was I didn’t have a clue what kind of tuna Subway uses in its homogenously gray-colored tuna salad, though I had a suspicion it wasn’t the red alert bluefin of the ilk that got recently auctioned off in Tokyo for $100,000.

Subway’s website doesn’t provide any information on where their tuna comes, so I just entered in the fish most commonly found in “chunk light” tuna — little sprightly fellows called skipjacks. Here’s what FishPhone texted me back with:

skipjack tuna; poll and troll caught (GREEN) very few environmental concerns; longline and purse seines caught (YELLOW) some environmental concerns.

That doesn’t sound too bad. It turns out cheap light tuna contains much lower mercury levels than white albacore tuna — which explains the lack of HEALTH ADVISORY warnings in the status update. In that respect, at least, Subway tuna subs are better for me than fancier tuna sandwiches.

Try out FishPhone if you’re getting sushi for lunch today (even if for no other reason than it’s kinda fun), and tell us what you find out.

 

– Christina

Tags: BlueOcean.org, christina lee, fish and chips, FishPhone, Gut Check, mercury, seafood, Subway tuna subs, sushi, sustainability