Hugh’s Fish Fight

Half of the fish caught in the North Sea are thrown back overboard, dead.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall left the comfort of River Cottage and went on a journey to find out what was really going on at the industrial end of our fisheries. What he found was that things are not just bad, they’re mad.

The multi-platform campaign that ensued went on to attract over 850,000 supporters online, and received the support of Jamie Oliver, Stephen Fry, Coldplay, Richard Branson and other high-profile fish fighters, collecting a BAFTA along the way.

The website was built and set up very quickly to start collecting signatures to abandon the scandal of discarding fish at fish. It was phenomenally successful winning many awards including a Broadcast Digital award. It was the first truly multi-platform campaign that brought together television and the internet in a unified response to a national problem.

You can’t conserve fish stocks by throwing dead fish back into the sea. Simple as that. If we all get behind this campaign the policy makers in Europe can’t ignore it. We owe it to the fishermen, we owe it to the fish and we owe it to ourselves if we’re going to keep our self respect as fish eaters – Jamie Oliver