The big five species refers to the five most commonly eaten species by UK consumers. There has been much discussion over the impact of the big five, with conservationists and fishing organisations claiming that the limited tastes of UK consumers mean that these five species are placed under immense fishing pressure and other species which could be eaten are ignored. This has resulted in high-profile campaigns, some of which have been backed by prominent celebrities, to introduce a wider range of fish species to British consumers.
The Big Five Species
The big five species are
These five species make up 80 per cent of all seafood eaten in the UK. All other seafood, which includes all other fish species, shellfish and cephalopods (squid and cuttlefish) falls into the remaining 20 per cent. These five species have made up the majority of UK seafood sales for many years, despite high-profile campaigns to encourage consumers to eat a wider range of fish to take commercial fishing pressure off the big five species. Such campaigns to change British tastes appear to have had little long-term success and may have actually increased consumption of the big five species of fish.
The reasons for the relatively limited and unadventurous tastes of British people were explored in a Daily Telegraph article in 2022, and a BBC Radio 4 programme entitled A Fishy Phobia, also from 2022. In both the article and the radio programme was noted that Britain had a coastline twice as long as Spain’s (although coastlines cannot be accurately measured), but British people ate three times less fish than the Spanish. Reasons for people in the UK avoiding fish included poor cooking skills (the article claimed that British people often overcook fish making it dry and tough), and a dislike of smelling and even touching raw fish (the article said that fish are increasingly sold in a foil pack so they can be placed in the oven without being touched), and UK consumers being averse to trying new species of fish which they were not already familiar with.
The Impact of the ‘Big Five’
The fact that five species dominate the UK market means that there is disproportionate pressure on these species. Cod and haddock stocks around the UK, and the rest of the world, have been reduced due to the intensive commercial fishing of these species, as have stocks of tuna species. Many of the prawns eaten by UK consumers are warm-water species which are farmed in countries such as Indonesia, where there has been widespread environmental damage to create farms to raise prawns – in Indonesia an estimated 70 per cent of mangrove forests have been destroyed or degraded to supply mostly Western consumers with prawns. While salmon is raised in fish farms which are almost entirely located in Scotland the rise of this form of aquaculture has led to serious issues with pollution, parasite infections, high levels of fish mortality and farmed fish escaping into the wild, potentially putting the genetic health of wild salmon stocks at risk – read more on this here. Clearly, relying on five species does place immense pressure on stocks of these species as well as having wider environmental and ecological issues.
The big five also mean that other species which are native to UK waters, such as coalfish, megrim, sardines, whiting, gurnard, dab and many others – all of which are perfectly edible and to some people better tasting than big five species – end up being ignored by consumers. However, in a mixed fishery (which all of the seas around the UK are) it is inevitable that these species will be caught along with the cod and haddock which are being targeted. While these lower-value species can sometimes be sold as food fish they are more likely to be used as fish in processed products, exported or simply thrown back into the sea dead as bycatch.
Campaigns to Promote Alternative Species
From 2011 onwards attempts have been made to get British consumers to diversify their choice of seafood and move away from the big five species. These campaigns have received significant media attention, greatly aided by the Channel 4 programme Hugh’s Fish Fight, presented by TV chef and activist Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. Moving away from the big five species would, in theory at least, allow over-exploited stocks to recover as the demand for fish would be spread across a wider range of species. Fearnley-Whittingstall actively campaigned for this on Fish Fight, while Sainsbury’s launched their Switch the Fish promotion, giving away seven tons of non-big five fish species such as mackerel to get shoppers to try new species. Celebrity chef and TV personality Jamie Oliver also added his voice to the campaign and called on people to try new species. An article in The Guardian in August 2011 examined the impact of Fearnley-Whittingstall and Jaime Oliver’s promotion of non-big five species. There was no doubt that it had been a success with Waitrose Supermarket saying that sales of whiting, brill and pollock had increased by three tons a week. Similarly, Asda said that mackerel sales were up by 69 per cent and whole trout sales were up 72 per cent. Tesco credited the Jamie Oliver effect for sales of Vietnamese river cobbler increasing by 30 per cent and sea bream by 40 per cent.
However, the campaigns may have backfired in a significant way and actually had the opposite effect of what they aimed to achieve. As well as reporting increased sales of alternative species Waitrose said sales of cod and other big five species had remained “steady” and not reduced. Asda said that cod and haddock sales had also increased along with sales of the less commonly eaten species. Tesco said sales of bass, a species which was soon to see its numbers crash in European waters, had doubled.
The British think-tank the New Economics Foundation described the promoting of other species as an alternative to the big five as a “risky gamble which could lead to more demand for fish” and stated that “there is no evidence that encouraging people to be more adventurous with new species will ease the pressure on fish stocks.” Despite this, conservation groups such as the Marine Conservation Society (MCS) have not given up on changing the tastes of British consumers. In 2018 the organisation called for UK consumers to eat species such as hake, dab and the deep-water flatfish megrim in order to take the pressure off traditional species such as cod and haddock. Bernadette Clark, the Good Fish Guide programme manager told the Daily Mail:
“Although they may not trip off the tongue like cod, mackerel and plaice, these could, and should be, the fish supper of the future. UK consumers tend to stick to their tried and tested top five – both in taste and familiarity but not always sustainability.”
In 2024 another campaign to promote alternatives to the big five species was launched. The Plymouth Fish Finger saw the University of Plymouth work with fishing organisations across the south west to eat fish caught locally by the region’s fishermen. One aspect of this was creating fish fingers which would be served in schools with species such as dogfish and pouting, instead of the usual cod and haddock.
The Future
More than a decade on from the original campaign led by Fearnley-Whittingstall the big five remain the most commonly consumed species by UK consumers, and it appears that any boost to sales of less commonly eaten species has been short-lived. In 2021 the i newspaper reported that the big five species continued to dominate seafood sales, with UK consumers spending £600m on cod, £1.2bn on salmon, £300m on haddock, £500m on tuna and £400m prawns each year. In 2019 just £130,000 was spent on mackerel in the UK (according to i newspaper), a key alternative species which was promoted by the campaigns in 2011, with the vast majority of mackerel caught in UK waters being exported.
One area of success appears to be in the availability of less common species. Species which were once hard to find in the UK such as octopus, tilapia, red mullet (goatfish), sprats, sardines and dab are appearing more often in British fishmongers and the wet fish counters of supermarkets. But British consumers switching away from the big five and to these less-common species in numbers significant to take fishing pressure off the big five seems as far away as ever.