Green and healthy: how Britain learned to love sustainable fish

Green and healthy: how Britain learned to love sustainable fish

It was once a fish deemed fit only for the cat. Now, though, it is a favourite of celebrity chefs, who trill the value of fresh specimens caught by handline off south-west England. The big food processors are getting in on the act too, importing Alaskan fish from stocks with reassuringly environmentally friendly credentials.

The unlikely star of the menu? - Pollack, a once unfashionable fish that is cresting a wave of popularity amid assurances that it is cheaper, greener and maybe even better for consumers than the well-loved but overfished cod.

Salmon, cod and haddock still dominate diets, but cod sales in supermarkets, fishmongers and restaurants fell by more than 10% in volume last year, while those of pollack went up by more than 150%.

Seafish, the government's Sea Fish Industry Authority, suggested that a 5% year-on-year rise to mid-May in the UK seafood market, to £2.67bn, may be driven in large part by consumers making choices arising out of concern for the environment and a demand for locally sourced food. Sales of sea bass, also a favourite of TV chefs, rose by more than 30%, langoustine, increasingly sourced from Scotland, is popular as shellfish not just as scampi, while pilchards and sprats from the south-west coast are also finding ready markets.

Squid, now appearing more regularly in UK waters, is spreading tentacles across the British palate too, showing rises of nearly 50% over a year.

Chef Mitch Tonks, founder.....continued below

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of the FishWorks restaurant and fishmonger chain, said: "There is so much more willingness to try new species as the interest in seafood grows and people really discover how good it is and how easy to cook. That is great because we can all eat fish with confidence knowing that efforts to promote sustainable choices and fisheries are really working."

Sea bass, from a French fish farm or, more expensively, from off the coast of Guernsey, Cornwall and Devon, was by far the most popular choice of the company's customers, FishWorks said.

Anthony Demetre, chef at London's Arbutus and Wild Honey restaurants, said attitudes to pollack had changed radically. "When I used it at my former restaurant Putney Bridge, I could not sell the bugger."

He added: "Chefs have woken up to the fact [other fish] stocks are dwindling and quotas are falling. Because of the popularity [of pollack] I have seen prices double in the past few years.

"I still use it. It is one of those species that needs a bit of work and that is where the chef comes in. It can be very watery. We lightly salt it to exude some of that. The really good stuff is big, chunky with all the characteristics of cod. It is never going to be as nice in flavour but it comes damn close and makes us all feel better ethically."

Big processing companies are also seeing pollack sales rise. Last September Birds Eye introduced its omega-3 pollack fish finger, cashing in on the fatty acid health benefits, and importing the fish from Alaskan stocks with green certification from the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), an independent global organisation that assesses environmentally responsible fisheries.