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.
