Outdoors: Eat small, oily fish and we all benefit

Mackerel are the centrepiece in a shop window in Amsterdam. Smoked whole mackerel cost about $18 a kilogram and fillets $36 a kilo. Photo / Geoff Thomas

The display at the fish counter at Harrods in London looked like a famous work of art in a gallery. Whole fish were laid out around the base of a huge pile of ice, with skate and stingray wings artfully arranged among the cod and haddock. In pride of place on top of the ice mountain was a set piece with small fish stacked like firewood and a sign which proclaimed "Sardines, 12".

That translates to about $30 in our money. The only problem was the condition of the pilchards, for that is what they were. The good old pillies we use for bait, except they would not have been much good for bait as the ribs were showing through the skin on the flanks, which were red with blood. They had been too long out of the freezer.

In another shop window in Amsterdam the only fish on display were mackerel, from smoked to soused, long thin eels which had been skinned, and herrings. Roadside stalls throughout The Netherlands offer herrings, pickled or smoked, and are popular with people wanting a snack on the way to work.

It is a similar story in other European countries where people eat what we use for bait - mackerel, herrings, anchovies and sardines.

And we should all be eating more of them, say a group of the world's leading chefs who gathered in Spain recently to promote the message that by eating more small fish, both human diets and the world's seafood populations would improve. The chefs saw it as a solution to the threat facing many of the larger fish species that overfishing has pushed to near collapse.

A US-based ocean conservation group, Oceana, wants these chefs to use their star power to convince people to consume more of the small oily fish like mackerel and sardines. Known as forage fish, these species are part of the food chain which supports large predators like tuna and swordfish, both of which are threatened.

Oceana CEO Andy Sharpless said: "Though anchovies and sardines and similar small fish are treated as delicacies in much of the Mediterranean, in the rest of the world they often end up as feed for farmed salmon, chicken or pigs. They feed one and a half kilos of fish to make half a kilo of salmon. That's not a great way to feed a planet.

"We can feed tens of millions more people if we simply eat anchovies and other forage fish directly rather than in the form of a farmed salmon or other animals raised on fish meal and fish oil."

The owner of Peru's famed Astrid y Gaston restaurant, Gaston Acurio, said, "It's the right moment and the right ingredient. The same food revolution that has turned sushi into convenience store food around the world could work just as well on this idea."

Some Auckland restaurants are doing this already. When pilchards are caught in Northland waters for the bait market they are snap frozen on the boat and sold as IQF product, which means individually quick frozen. These are eating quality fish and are served as sardines in some restaurants, pan fried or on pizzas.

A friend from Japan who is a regular visitor to our shores enjoys fishing on the Waitemata Harbour, but would rather catch aji, as he calls jack mackerel (the common yellowtail) than any other fish to take home for dinner. When the fillets are rolled in crumbs and cooked in light oil and soy sauce they are delicious.

Other mackerel in our waters like slimy mackerel or blue mackerel are rich in the oil and cheaper than fish oil pills. But like all fish which are destined for the table, the little fish should be put straight on ice when caught to keep them fresh.

Fresh Water
A fishing contest on Lake Okareka last weekend showed how good the winter fishing can be. About 80 trout were caught, and one boat reported catching 16 fish while trolling a black toby at six metres deep. Like many of the lakes it relies on liberations of yearling trout as there are few streams for the fish to spawn in, and Fish and Game release 5000 trout each year - half in May and half in September.

Bite times
Bite times are 6.40am and 7.05pm tomorrow, and 7.25am and 7.50pm on Sunday.

Tip of the week
Try pilchards pan fried whole, or jack mackerel fillets with the bones removed and cooked quickly in soy sauce and oil. They are delicious.

More fishing action can be found on Rheem Outdoors with Geoff, 5pm Saturday, TV3, and at GTTackle.co.nz.