Sustainable fish to be focus of Dorset Seafood Festival

09-Mar-2011 - Last updated on 26-Apr-2021 at 18:10 GMT

The Dorset Seafood Festival will encourage visitors to make their fish eating habits more sustainable

Sustainable fishing will be the key focus this year at the Dorset Seafood Festival, in an effort to promote education on the use of less well known species of fish.

Due to take place on 9-10 July in Weymouth's historical old working harbour, the festival will attract around 50,000 visitors and is earmarked to become one of the UK’s largest seafood events.

While sustainability has always been on the radar at the annual Dorset Seafood Festival, this year the emphasis will be greater in support of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's Fish Fight, which aims to end the practise of fish discards.

'We wholeheartedly support the fantastic work that HFW is doing by encouraging a diversification of our fish eating habits and trying to change policy so that it works for fish, fishermen and consumers,” said Brian Cooper, spokesperson for the festival.

Celebrity chefs

Celebrity and local chef cooking demonstrations will take place across two stages, and will involve fish caught from sustainable fisheries.

Chef demonstrations at the event will this year come from names including from Lesley Waters, Mat Follas, Ed Baines, Shaun Rankin, John Wright and GilesThompson.

They will join over 100 stalls, many selling a range of seafood dishes.

Passionate About Fish, a company that aims to educate children about fish, will also be running a fish identification session where visitors learn about the less known fish species.

“It is the perfect platform from which to reinforce the importance of using less well known species and to furnish visitors with delicious recipe ideas in an entertaining and educational way,” say the organisers.

For more information on sustainability in the hospitality industry, see BigHospitality’s Sustainability Feature.