Nurturing Tomorrow’s Ocean Stewards
Fish City’s Kids Club Educates on Seafood Sustainability
Fish City Owner Grainne Lavery shows a class of Primary 7 schoolchildren freshly caught monkfish at St George’s Market.
By Aaron Norton • 17 August 2023
Seafood is both a vital source of nutrition and an integral part of the cultural heritage of coastal communities such as ours here in Northern Ireland. In a world facing increasing environmental challenges, the need to cultivate a generation of responsible and environmentally conscious citizens has never been more crucial. Whilst strides are being made towards sustainability across sectors, placing Belfast notably in the top 10 Most Sustainable Destinations in the World in 2022, the plight of warming oceans and the global seafood industry demands urgent attention. As we seek to secure the future, imparting knowledge about seafood sustainability to our children emerges as a paramount responsibility.
The Web of Life Beneath the Waves
Covering near three quarters of the planet’s surface, our oceans are teeming with life. The oceans play an integral role in regulating Earth's climate by absorbing carbon dioxide and capturing excess heat, and they provide sustenance to coastal communities around the globe. Nearly 2.4 billion people worldwide live within 100 kilometers of an ocean, with coastal communities representing around 40 percent of the global population.
With fish being one of the most important sources of animal protein, fisheries and aquaculture contribute 260 million jobs to the global economy. Here in the UK, our commercial fishing fleet in 2021 landed 651,800 tonnes of fish and shellfish, generated income of £921 million, and provided over 6,800 jobs.
Whilst the oceans are a valuable source of food with a relatively low carbon footprint (comparing fish to terrestrial proteins such as beef and pork), overfishing, destructive fishing methods, and habitat degradation have pushed many species to the brink of collapse. Canada’s Grand Banks cod fishery collapse in 1992 was a resounding wakeup call for the fishing industry and the catalyst for the creation of the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), an international non-profit organisation committed to ending overfishing. A troubling two-thirds of the world’s commercial fish stocks are reported as exploited or overexploited. The intricate web of life between the waves highlights the delicate equilibrium that characterises the interdependence of marine species and our dependence on them for our food and livelihoods.
To do what we can to help protect our oceans, we choose to serve MSC-certified sustainably sourced cod, haddock and hake, with the rest of our seafood responsibly sourced from well-managed fisheries and aquaculture farms, many within 50 miles. We only source species that are rated high for sustainability according to the latest data published in the Marine Conservation Society’s Good Fish Guide.
Understanding the Impact of Our Choices
Seafood education– both internally for our team and with the public– is a cornerstone of our wider sustainability approach and touches on two of our core values: sustainability and education. We are very proud to be the first MSC-certified restaurant on the island of Ireland and to be recognised for our sustainability efforts, including recognition as an MSC Regional Hero and the UK’s Environment & Sustainability Champion at the 2023 National Fish & Chip Awards. We share what we know and what we are learning on our sustainability journey with our local communities through our social platforms, business events, and an extracurricular programme for schools.
Educating children about seafood sustainability goes beyond preserving marine life; it empowers them to make informed choices that reverberate throughout the economy. When children grasp the importance of choosing responsibly sourced seafood and avoiding species that are overexploited, they become active participants in shaping a more sustainable future. Through such awareness, they can exert a positive influence on markets and supply chains, encouraging industries to adopt ethical and sustainable practices.
This is why we at Fish City started the Kids Club, the UK’s first seafood sustainability workshop for schoolchildren, nine years ago in 2014. The Kids Club is a free educational initiative we offer for Primary 7 schoolchildren in the greater Belfast area to learn about the importance of seafood sustainability to the fishing industry and the health of our oceans. The key objective of our Kids Club is to build youth awareness and understanding of the MSC’s ‘blue fish’ eco-label and how choosing MSC-certified products helps support the long-term health and wellbeing of fishing communities, our oceans and our planet.
An Immersive Learning Experience
At St George’s Market, schoolchildren get to speak with local fishermen about what it is like fishing at sea and to see different species of the day’s catch up close.
Participating classes join our manager and team at St George’s Friday Fish Market, where the children get to interact with local fishmongers and experience firsthand the different species of that day’s catch. For many, it is their first-time seeing so many different species of fish, molluscs, and crustaceans up close. The rather scary looking monkfish is always a curiosity, and the kids revel in the opportunity to see live lobsters landed from the fishing villages of the Antrim Coast. For the kids, the fish market showcases Northern Ireland’s seafood industry in action in real time; and, the experience of speaking with fishermen, hearing how demanding it is to catch fish, and seeing so many different species of seafood helps establish a deeper connection to the processes of food production and the food itself. We particularly enjoy taking the kids to the fish market as it helps the kids connects the dots on where fish comes from.
The children are then welcomed to our restaurant for a seafood sustainability workshop. Through a series of engaging activities, the workshop introduces and reinforces the connection of living organisms in the food web. The kids learn about producers and consumers and are challenged in a card game to determine an aquatic food chain of six marine animals from apex predators such as sharks to microscopic zooplankton. The Food Chain Card Game is provided by the MSC as an educational resource for educators, and their website contains a treasure trove of free lesson plans and activities centred on seafood sustainability.
In the workshop, we introduce the Marine Stewardship Council’s ‘blue fish’ and the Aquaculture Stewardship Council’s (ASC) green eco-labels. We do this by handing out several different tinned and packaged seafood products purchased from local supermarkets, both with and without these eco-labels, and challenging the kids to find out what differentiates the products. They can observe the wide variety of MSC- and ASC-certified products available in local supermarkets, from tinned mackerel and farmed salmon slices to breaded cod fillets and mussels in sauce. We show them that many of the dishes on our menu are also marked with the ‘blue fish’ eco-label, which denotes seafood from a sustainable, well-managed fishery– one in which the fish population remains productive and healthy, environmental impacts such as bycatch are carefully monitored and minimised, and their operations comply with the law.
In the Kids Club, our working definition of sustainability is ‘the small changes we can make to help look after the planet,’ and the choice to purchase and eat responsibly and sustainably sourced fish and shellfish is one concrete way the kids know they can make a difference. A key takeaway is that choosing the ‘blue fish’ in the supermarket, at a restaurant or chippy rewards sustainable fisheries and supports the future of our oceans. Choosing the blue fish is one small change we can make to help look after the planet.
The kids then get suited in aprons and gloves to investigate several whole fish and are challenged to determine what species each fish is using informative fact sheets. Provided by Keenan Seafood, one of our suppliers, these whole fish have included plaice, lemon sole, mackerel, herring, monkfish, and even Atlantic cod, which was so large it sat across two tables. The kids were also provided shellfish including prawns, mussels, oysters, and live crab and lobster.
All smiles at the end of the Kids Club, with a special appearance by a live brown crab for the photo.
And the tastiest part of the day– the kids get to enjoy a complementary lunch of MSC-certified Atlantic cod and chips in our Fisherman’s Hut dining room. We have found that roughly 10 percent of kids join us having said they never tasted or do not like fish; by the time we finish, we reduce that figure to 3 percent or less. This aligns with one of our broader goals as a business– promoting fish and shellfish as a regular part of a healthy, balanced diet, as per NHS guidelines. For such a fun and rewarding field trip for classes, the Kids Club is profoundly educational, and for many of the kids, it has proved to be an illuminating and meaningful learning experience.
Fish City is now taking Kids Club bookings for the 2023-2024 academic year. Teachers interested in enrolling their school can learn more at www.fish-city.com/kids-club.
Sources
Belfast City Council. “Belfast Ranks in the Top 10 Most Sustainable Destinations in the World for 2022.” Belfast City Council, www.belfastcity.gov.uk/news/belfast-ranks-in-the-top-10-most-sustainable-desti. Accessed 9 Aug. 2023.Marine Stewardship Council. “Overfishing, Illegal and Destructive Fishing.” MSC UK & Ireland, www.msc.org/uk/what-we-are-doing/oceans-at-risk/overfishing-illegal-and-destructive-fishing. Accessed 9 Aug. 2023.Monterey Bay Aquarium. “Consider Climate.” Seafood Watch, www.seafoodwatch.org/seafood-basics/sustainable-solutions/consider-climate#:~:text=Seafood%20can%20be%20a%20low,carbon%20footprint%20similar%20to%20poultry. Accessed 9 Aug. 2023.Seafish. “Fishing Data and Insight.” Seafish, www.seafish.org/insight-and-research/fishing-data-and-insight/#:~:text=In%202021%20there%20were%204%2C269,fleet%20was%20£923%20million. Accessed 9 Aug. 2023.United Nations. “UN Ocean Conference Lisbon, Portugal: Latest Ocean Data.” United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, https://www.un.org/en/conferences/ocean2022/facts-figures. Accessed 9 Aug. 2023.