Restaurateurs boosting fight to save vanishing fish stocks

Conservationists say there has been a “phenomenal” advance in increasing sustainability and that attitudes are changing.

The survey for campaigning online guide Fish2fork showed improvements had been made by some of the country’s top restaurants as well as local favourites.

The review, the first since Fish2fork’s launch in 2009, found that more than 45 per cent of restaurants had improved their rating in that time.

Website founder Charles Clover said: “To get 45 per cent of restaurants we reviewed last time improving their scores in two years is a phenomenal figure.

“Even though a few have slipped back, they are outnumbered more than two to one by those who have grasped that sustainability is now important to consumers of seafood.”

Clover, author of The End of the Line which was turned into a documentary highlighting the issue of rapidly depleting fish stocks, said he believed “the market has moved” as a result of their work.

He added: “We are grateful for the endorsement we have had from leading proprietors and chefs, such as Richard Caring of Caprice Holdings, Raymond Blanc and Jamie Oliver, and the quantum shift in public awareness caused by the terrific Fishfight campaign run by Hugh Fearnley- Whittingstall. Would that this message was heard as clearly elsewhere in Europe. At the moment the UK is showing the rest of Europe what can be done if restaurateurs create a demand for sustainably caught fish.”

A total of 82 per cent of the world’s fisheries are fully exploited, over-exploited, in decline or in recovery from over-fishing, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation. Fish2fork judges restaurants on where their fish comes from and their attitudes to sustainable fishing. A total of 443 have been re-reviewed, with 202 improving their rating, 152 staying the same and 89 getting worse.

Some 97 restaurants are scored for the first time with eight getting the highest-rating yet given, of 4.5 blue fish, including Harbour Lights, a fish and chip shop in Falmouth, Cornwall.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall said: “Fish2fork is doing a great job done of injecting a sense of responsibility into fish sourcing in the vital restaurant sector which is of course a massive consumer of fish. It is independent and uncompromising and by putting us restaurateurs on the spot makes fish sustainability an issue we can’t ignore without the risk of losing business.”