Research: ‘Hugh’s Fish Fight’

I have been looking into issues that are connected with fish & chips. The next few blog posts will be about some of the research I have been doing into these areas to see how they might affect my project, design and give me inspiration.

It was suggested that I watch ‘Hugh’s Fish Fight’ to give me some inspiration for my project. I hadn’t watched this series before but I had heard about it. Before watching I didn’t realise how crazy the discarding problem that fisherman face is.

In the U.K. haddock and cod is rare due to overfishing, we eat more than our stocks are able to produce therefore it now needs to be safeguarded. Fishing quotas have been given to fishermen so they are not allowed to land over a certain amount of fish. If they catch more than their quota while at sea they have to throw it back dead! It seems strange to me as this isn’t helping sustainability because if the fish are already dead it’s just getting wasted, as Hugh would say it’s “madness!”

Hugh mentioned that the “Chippy is a real problem at the heart of British fish culture.” Basically the fish & chip shop is the main reason people only eat these two types of fish, haddock and cod. The chip shop made it available, appealing and easily accessible to the customer so it became something they were used to and comfortable with. Maybe if they offered other types of fish people would get used to it too and not be scared of trying something new, but is it too late? Well we need to create this market for under utilised species to save haddock and cod. Since the chip shop seems to be at the heart of the problem maybe this is where we should start. Surely if it was made available to them we could make the public love another type of fish as much as they love cod and haddock. I think people are just scared of the unknown.

In Hugh’s programme he got the chippys selling mackerel baps in an attempt to make it the new cod and chips. I think if we keep trying it could happen!