Line-caught tuna and Norwegian king crab are to share the Billingsgate School Sustainable Award 2013 after the two products received the same number of votes at the 5th annual Billingsgate School Sustainable Fish & Shellfish Awards, held Wednesday 20 November at London’s Billingsgate Fish Market.
The case for line-caught tuna was presented by Emily Howgate, program director for the International Pole & Line Foundation (IPNLF), who explained the five key stages of pole-and-line fishing: baitfish fishing, tuna school locating, chumming, catching and catch storage.
Howgate also highlighted the importance of this traditional fishing method to coastal communities in the Maldives, where as many as many as 30,000 people are directly supported by the fishery. This is more than 10 percent of the country’s population, she said.
Abbas Lalljee and Carl Cecil of seafood distributor Shield Foods (UK) Ltd., along with representatives from the Varanger Brand Association in Norway, presented king crab from Finnmark, Norway’s northernmost county.
In total, this year-round fishery comprises around 470 small day boats, which supply 20 processors. Ten of these processors belong to the Varanger Cooperative.
Whereas the Maldives’ pole-and-line tuna fishing industry has been around for centuries, Finnmark’s king crab fishery only became commercial in 2002. Nevertheless, as is the case in the Maldives, the fishery is extremely valuable to the coastal communities that span the region’s coastline.
Its king crab quota for 2013 was 1,000 metric tons and a similar volume is expected for next year.
In taking the Billingsgate School’s 2013 award, the two products fended off stiff competition from rope grown blue mussels, Loch Duart salmon, European flat oysters and Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC) certified pangasius.
Each year the award, which is sponsored by the U.K. Seafish Authority, is given to the product that secures the most votes from the event’s attendees – an audience that includes food manufacturers, retail buyers, foodservice suppliers, chefs and NGOs.
