Nearly pooed myself didn't I

Well not literally, but being on the radio this morning was pretty scary. For those of you who were lucky enough to miss it, I was live on Radio Cumbria's breakfast show for a few precious minutes today, during which I tried to waltz neatly around the direct "can I eat this fish? What about this fish?" questions, because as I may have mentioned once or twice... it's rather hard to say.

Take the Solway salmon fishery for example, which was one query raised this morning. So, if I've got my facts right, it's a local fishery managed by the Environment Agency and the season is only opened and fishing permitted once enough fish are deemed to have passed up the river to spawn to enable the fishery to be sustainable. It is also a traditional fishing method (called haaf netting), conducted by individuals on a small scale. But in general Atlantic salmon stocks are considered so severely depleted that common advice is to avoid all wild-caught Atlantic salmon. So what to do?


Not having the exact "right" answer (is there one?), my response would have to be what's probably better known as distraction. Watch me dance, here I go...
Forget about the salmon, pah salmon schmamon. Try something else, something different, look at this shiny new range of gurnard in the fishmonger counter...
See me twirling away into the distance!

In all seriousness, if you can't face the stress of trying to work out if it's better to support a local small-scale, selective, traditional salmon fishery, or to buy fish flown in from Alaska (where you can find sustainably managed wild stocks of salmon), or to purchase farmed salmon (the issues of farming can wait for another day) then just buy something else. Anything else marked as local and/or sustainable. Something line-caught or hand gathered is a good place to start. Which is where your local fishmonger comes in handy. On that note I would like to thank Nik at Kendal Fish and Seafoods (who was on the radio alongside me) for the hand-gathered scallops he presented me with. Are fishy presents going to be a perk of this job? I do hope so!

Now if you'll excuse me it's Friday night and I have scallops to eat, accompanied by Grandpa's pinot, which I may or may not already have started...