What is the Fish Fight?

The Fish Fight is an environmental campaign set up by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and other celebrity chefs who feature regularly on UK TV. Heston Blumethal, Jamie Oliver and Gordon Ramsay all took part in a series of programs broadcast in January 2011 to draw attention to non-sustainable fishing practices going on in the seas around the UK. The chefs all contributed to shows that showed how to use seafood and fish in everyday recipes that could change how fish are currently wasted.

The Fish Fight has received lots of support including from environmental organisations and NGOs and many fishermen have also expressed their agreement with the campaign. The ultimate aim of the set of programs and the website that has been set up to record the campaign highlights is to explain why fishing methods used are not working, and how consumer demand can make a real change.

What is the Problem About Fishing Around the UK?

The shocking fact revealed by the programs is that over 50% of all the fish caught by fishing boats in the North Sea are just discarded back into the water once they are dead. This is a terrible waste of potential food but it happens because all sorts of fish are caught in the nets but only a small proportion of fish species are currently accepted by the buyers of fish in the UK.

These are mainly supermarkets that follow public demand and most people like to eat haddock or cod, maybe with a bit of plaice. These are also the types of fish that you would expect to find in your local fish and chip shop.

Why are Fish Thrown Back into the Sea Dead?

Fisherman do this because they don’t have a viable market for all the fish that they catch. If they take them back to shore and try to sell them, no buyers will accept them. This is partly due to tradition and partly due to the buying power of large distributers such as the major supermarkets. The other problem is that fishermen have no control over the type of fish that end up in their nets. Fishing nets catch fish according to size, and depending on the local species present in the fishing area. There is no way to stop unwanted fish ending up in the nets.

When they do so, which is inevitable, the only choice that the fishermen currently have is to throw the unwanted dead fish, or fish that are then destined to die, back into the sea to rot. This lowers fish stocks generally, it reduces the biodiversity of the North Sea and it prevents potentially good food reaching the consumer. Many people see this as an outrageous waste of marine life.

What is the Scale of the Problem?

It has proved tricky to quantify exactly how many fish of unwanted species are being discarded into the North Sea. Estimated figures show that about 4-6 out of 10 of the fish caught are simply thrown away, which is an enormous number. Some of the types of fish that are considered a very poor catch are actually just fish species that are now considered rather unfashionable. In the past, British people have eaten a much wider range of fish and it may be that we can just go back a little into the past and find that some of the fish species that we are throwing back actually make a good meal.

The Issue of the Fish Quota

The situation with fish being thrown back into the sea becomes even more ridiculous because of the fishing quotas that have been set in the seas around the UK by the European Commission. Many of the preferred species of fish such as plaice, haddock and cod are over fished and are considered to have exceeded their fishing quotas.

What Has the Fish Fight Achieved?

By Spring of 2011, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall had managed to establish the campaign so that it had not only the support of many different celebrities, many ordinary people had signed the petition to stop the practice of throwing fish back. Pressure on retailers, particularly supermarkets is also growing to encourage more different fish to be bought and put on sale. By changing eating and buying habits, more species of British fish could be used rather than wasted in the future.