After the Netflix documentary Seaspiracy, will people still want to eat fish?
No sooner has one threat to my comeback started to recede, with the so-far successful reopening of outdoor dining at pubs and restaurants, than another potentially dark cloud looms on the horizon.
As the name suggests, my Oyster & Fish House in Lyme Regis serves lots of fish (as does The Fox, my pub back from the coast in the Dorset lanes at Corscombe). But if the makers of Netflix’s much-talked-about documentary Seaspiracy have their way, both will be out of business.
The film’s powerful attack on the fishing industry is persuading a lot of viewers to stop eating fish, particularly the younger generation.
Now, don’t get me wrong. There is much in the documentary that I agree with and have been saying for years. It questions, for example, the claims regularly made by producers to be sustainable. And it highlights the exploitation of labour in the shellfish industry in certain parts of the world.
The logical conclusion of such arguments, though, isn’t to stop eating fish. For a start, there is a world of difference between the floating-factory fishing fleets of the big players, whose impact on our oceans is every bit as bad as the film suggests, and the local fishermen who go out into Lyme Bay and supply me with their catch.
They don’t indiscriminately drag nets over the bottom of the sea in catch-all exercises that mean vast wastage of most of what is caught. Nor are they equipped with powerful electronics that enable them to spot and chase whole shoals that are many miles away.
Some of the local Lyme boats still use rod-and-line methods, or nets suspended off the bottom of the sea. Many fishermen from Devon who I work closely with have square-mesh nets that allow many of the fish to swim through. And all while removing sea plastics by participating in the Fishing for Litter scheme.
If you know how and where the fish you eat have been caught, or better still if you know who has caught them, then there is no reason to cut them out of your diet. One of the things I love about my new life down here is that the fishermen who are my suppliers are also my mates.
I drink with them in the harbour pubs and they come and sit outside my fish truck and share tables and conversations with my customers. There are no middlemen or distribution chains between those doing the catching and those who eat the produce. I can be straightforward about provenance: I tell diners the fish I serve is all local.
Stopping eating fish is not the answer to concerns about the marine environment. We have to be smarter than that. So here are four simple ways to make better choices.
First, eat local, which also means eating whatever fish is in season locally. I only sell prawns from Lyme Bay on the fish truck and they are available for just four months a year.
Since I have no plans for the foreseeable future to set up a chain of fish trucks across the country, your conscience will be better served by buying direct from local fishermen, and local independent fishmongers. Alternatively look for regionally sourced British wild fish, available from selected retailers.
Second, change your expectations. Lyme Bay prawns are small, and customers often say to me, ‘Haven’t you got any bigger ones?’ I explain that many of the bigger prawns come from intensive freshwater farms in India, where they are bred in holes, then frozen and flown here, clocking up endless air miles.
Third, don’t be wasteful. If you only cook with the prime cuts, then the head and the bones and the belly get thrown away. Instead, buy the whole fish and use what is left over to make a fish soup or stew.
Fourth, don’t be so narrow-minded about which fish you will and won’t eat. Give whiting, gurnard and angler a chance.
Too often if they get caught, they are put to one side as unsellable, chopped up and used as bait in lobster pots. But they can taste fantastic. How much better to find a recipe and experiment!
I accept that it is a challenge, but if you set your mind to anything, as I have found these past 12 months of lockdown, there are ways. Don’t give up on fish – or fish restaurants. Give up on the globalised fishing industry.
As told to Peter Stanford
Mark Hix's column is every Thursday at 11am. Read more here:
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