Sustainable seafood

Growing demand and industrial fishing techniques are pushing some populations of cod and tuna to the brink of collapse. Meanwhile, millions of tonnes of less marketable fish are used as fertiliser, fish food, or simply discarded. According to some experts, 90 percent of the world’s fish stocks are being fished at or beyond their sustainable limits.

Soleshare, a tiny startup based in east London, is challenging this worrying trend by encouraging its members to do one thing – eat a wider variety of sustainably-caught fish.

“I used to work in conservation so it’s a bit of a strange step for me to go from saving fish to now saving fish through eating fish,” explains SoleShare co-founder Jack Clarke. “But there are methods of fishing that need support.”

SoleShare sources all of its fish from local, small-scale fishermen who use static nets to avoid catching juvenile fish and inflicting the kind of seafloor damage caused by industrial trawlers. SoleShare customers support these fishermen by giving them a good price for whatever fish they catch, helping ease the pressure on cod, tuna, prawn and salmon populations and keeping small-scale fishermen in business.

Sylvia Rowley joins a fisherman off the coast of Newhaven and takes part in a SoleShare workshop designed to get customers hooked on sustainable seafood. 

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