The Fish Fight, Sustainable Fishing and us

If you think that the media is just for entertainment, think again. Britain’s welll known TV chef Hugh Fernly-Whittingstall started a campaign against discarding fish on a Channel 4 programme “Fish Fight” on 11th-13th January. Since then, over 600,000 people signed up to support the campaign (http://www.fishfight.net/), sales on alternative fish has soared (http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jan/17/sustainable-seafood-supermarkets-fish-fight?CMP=twt_fd), and in my household, we are all converted to mackerel for our Friday fish dinner.

In the first episode, Hugh showed that, “Half of all fish caught in the North Sea are thrown back overboard DEAD.” The most significant footage that ended up played in the European Parliament, online and everywhere showed how tonnes of already dead fish are thrown back into the sea. This is because all fishermen in EU countries have to oblige by the quota system.

In my limited knowledge of the EU common fishery law, I am sure that this law was (once) well-intended to preserve a few too popular species that were overfished. British people love Cod and Haddock, and the popularity of Tuna is worldwide. Still, the impact of this quota – that fishermen can only land a certain amount of certain species – is that many fish that were caught had to be thrown back. Once caught by the net and pulled up to the boat, they are already dead.

The discard, in my humble opinion, is disgustingly reflecting the greed of modern human civilisation – the greed that has been part of our everyday lives. The discarded dead fish reminds me of the amount of good food that we throw into our bins everyday. The “buy-one-get-one-free” loaf of breads that could not be eaten by the expiry date and ended up in the bin. The amount of cheap clothes that we bought – on expense of some cheap child labour in sweat shops somewhere thousands of miles away – wore once, then throw to the bin.

In the same week of Hugh’s Fish Fight programmes, BBC’s Human Planet showed some jaw-dropping images of how indigenous people hunt for shark and whales in the open sea. Then in the weekend, Bruce Parry’s Arctic adventure opened our eyes about whaling within the Inupiat community in Alaska. Whaling sounds evil. We all cringed just saying the word “whaling” – killing an endangered sea mammal. Our modern (western) world condemned this action.

But who are we to judge the indigenous people who hunt for not more than three whales a year in order to feed the whole village? The whaler of Lembata (Flores, Indonesia) and Inupiat (Alaska) do not waste anything from their catch. The Inupiat people even feed and conserve the polar bears by doing so. Can we say that they are wrong whaling while we discard tons of dead fish (and food and clothes and mobile phones and our modern electronic “toys” and so on)?

As part of this anti discard campaign, other TV chefs are presenting cookery programmes on alternative fish like Dab (no, I never heard that before), Coley, Sardines and Mackerel. There is also a map of chip shops across the UK who sell mackerel. We went to our local chippy but saw that mackerel is not on the menu. What a shame. So last Friday, we decided to make our own fish and chip. Of course, we use frozen oven baked chips and tinned mushy peas, but we fried fresh mackerel in a batter. The result? Wow…! My husband Andy, my son Jacques and I are now mackerel converts. I am not good at describing taste, but it was so delicious, scrumptious, lovely!

There is more to this: the price for one kilo of mackerel was about £2.50 while the price of one portion of cod/haddock is over £3. If we go to the chippy and bought three fish, we would have to pay about £10 – not included the chips and mushy peas.

We are very pleased for our mackerel converts. I don’t think we’ll ever buy cod from the chippy again.

For this Mackerel & Chips, we used Hugh’s beer batter recipe to dip the fish into: http://www.channel4.com/food/recipes/chefs/hugh-fearnley-whittingstall/beer_battered_fish_p_1.html

Other fish dish that we have done in the past is the classic Kedgeree (http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/feb/11/allegra-mcevedy-kipper-kedgeree). Instead of Kipper or Haddock, we used mackerel – either fresh or smoked. They are delicious!

Next entry, I will be sharing some spicy Indonesian-style fish dishes that can use any kind of fish. In Indonesia we are not too fussy about the type of fish and about bones. There is even a special “fish head curry” that people from Sumatra are crazy about. To cure everyone’s phobia of fish bones, here is a picture of my dad enjoying his fish until the last bit on the bones.