WWW.WAS.ORG • WORLD AQUACULTURE • DECEMBER 2016 23 preparing fresh and especially whole fish. Here, the retail chains are playing a key role by actively marketing and expanding their range of fresh, quality seafood (where previously they mainly stocked tinned and frozen industrial fishery products), both encouraging and responding to growing consumer awareness and receptiveness to eating fish. In-store promotion and stocking of new products is complemented by ownbranded, food-related magazines, consumer engagement on social media platforms, customer educational events, and presence at consumer-focused lifestyle and food expos, all serving to educate consumers on new food trends, including fish. Aside from trout, which is a well-established locally farmed fish with products packaged and sold in a wide range of formats, South Africans have not traditionally consumed much freshwater fish. The seafood chain restaurants have changed this, with farmed, freshwater fish such as Vietnamese pangasius (or basa) catfish and Nile perch readily accepted on menus. Retailers have followed suit, presenting farmed tilapia, for example, in filleted, seasoned, ready-to-cook packaging, offering consumers an easy way to try a new product. The big opportunity for South African aquaculture is to replace imported with locally produced fish. The growth in eating-out fish consumption has largely been fed by imports, most of which are aquaculture products. Thus, the potential for South African aquaculture is to replace prawns from Vietnam and India, salmon from Scotland, Chile, and Norway, pangasius from Vietnam, and greenlip mussels from New Zealand on local shelves. Producers are already making inroads in this regard. For example, locally farmed mussels from Saldanha Bay are increasingly preferred by restaurants and consumers over the New Zealand greenlip mussels that previously dominated the market due to their large size and lower price. The local product has the advantage of better quality and flavor, freshness, authenticity, locally sourced, and not being frozen and transported over thousands of kilometers. Trout from South Africa and Lesotho is an outstanding product and preferred by many over imported fresh salmon. As a result, the market is undersupplied with local trout and production is expanding into new waters, including sea trout in Saldanha Bay and the Lesotho Highlands dams. Sustainability Holds the Key The South African market is increasingly demanding environmentally sustainable seafood, which has created a competitive advantage for aquaculture products that are sustainably produced. The World Wildlife Fund’s South African Sustainable Seafood Initiative (SASSI) has been highly successful in changing consumer behavior and seafood supply chain procurement through awareness campaigns and easily accessible information for consumers on the sustainability status of fish species. Launched in 2004, SASSI has significantly changed the way that South African suppliers, restaurants and consumers view fish, generating widespread buy-in and shifting demand from overexploited fisheries to more sustainable species. SASSI works across the entire supply chain: with producers to improve harvesting and production methods and with retailers on setting and measuring sustainability goals. Its most significant success, however, has been in raising public awareness, stimulating consumer demand for sustainable fish and creating a ripple effect back down the supply chain. SASSI’s easy-to-understand ‘traffic light’ system which categorizes fish as green (best choice), orange (think twice) or red (don’t buy) has been widely accepted and is the main driver of the trend to sustainable seafood procurement and consumption. These categories are widely used on seafood labelling by retailers, by some restaurants on menus, and are easily accessed by consumers online, through SMS and a smartphone app, as well as posters and pocketcards. Although SASSI encourages producers to achieve certification by the Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC) or other certification schemes, the SASSI green-orange-red listing system is currently the main driver of the trend to sustainable fish procurement in South Africa. SASSI ‘green-listing’ is sought-after by fish producers and regarded as a major boost for sales in the local market. Recently, abalone farms have begun applying for certification through the ASC abalone standard and Friends of the Sea, with the trout and shellfish sectors set to follow. The advantage for aquaculture as a relatively new industry is that sustainability can be built in from the start and a premium attached to the price. For example, while dusky kob is ‘red-listed’ for line (CONTINUED ON PAGE 24) Newly seeded abalone on a reef at Port Elizabeth. Experimental abalone ranching rights have been issued to commercial companies. Hatchery reared perlemoen abalone (Haliotis midae) being seeded into depleted reefs, Port Elizabeth.
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