Periodic Reporting for period 5 - FAIRFISH (Hidden Hunger, Forgotten Food)
Período documentado: 2024-08-01 hasta 2025-01-31
Food Security is a grand challenge of our time. However, a failure to tackle food security in an interdisciplinary manner, incorporating ecological, social, and health sciences, has limited progress towards meeting global food security targets. Small-scale fisheries have been largely left out of food security discourse, and thus fish appears to be a ‘forgotten food’, despite fishing involving 90% of the world’s fishers – supporting nearly 500 million people - predominantly low-and middle-income countries.
Yet small scale fisheries hold considerable potential to address ‘hidden hunger’, or micronutrient deficiencies- one of the most pervasive forms of food insecurity, implicated in over a million deaths annually. This is because fish are particularly high in many micronutrients essential to health and development. Although considerable variation exists in nutrient concentrations between fish species, we do not have a systematic understanding of which species are most likely to address the most pressing nutritional needs. To better comprehend the role fish can play in global food security, efforts are needed to understand which species have the greatest concentrations of key nutrients, where these species are found, and how they are likely to respond to contemporary fishery threats. To ensure fish can support food security, efforts are needed to understand key barriers to access in geographies where the potential for fish to meet people’s needs is great, but benefits are not yet being realised.
This project addresses this challenge by developing a theoretically grounded and interdisciplinary understanding of the ecological and socio-cultural determinants of the nutritional contributions Small-Scale Fisheries make to human health, focusing on untapped potential and barriers to access. Specifically, FAIRFISH will for the first time:
1. Establish the ecological and environmental determinants of nutrient availability from fish.
2. Determine what power relations enable or constrain access to nutritious food.
3. Quantify the impact of key social drivers of nutritional inequality and uncover opportunities to meet nutritional needs.
Yet small scale fisheries hold considerable potential to address ‘hidden hunger’, or micronutrient deficiencies- one of the most pervasive forms of food insecurity, implicated in over a million deaths annually. This is because fish are particularly high in many micronutrients essential to health and development. Although considerable variation exists in nutrient concentrations between fish species, we do not have a systematic understanding of which species are most likely to address the most pressing nutritional needs. To better comprehend the role fish can play in global food security, efforts are needed to understand which species have the greatest concentrations of key nutrients, where these species are found, and how they are likely to respond to contemporary fishery threats. To ensure fish can support food security, efforts are needed to understand key barriers to access in geographies where the potential for fish to meet people’s needs is great, but benefits are not yet being realised.
This project addresses this challenge by developing a theoretically grounded and interdisciplinary understanding of the ecological and socio-cultural determinants of the nutritional contributions Small-Scale Fisheries make to human health, focusing on untapped potential and barriers to access. Specifically, FAIRFISH will for the first time:
1. Establish the ecological and environmental determinants of nutrient availability from fish.
2. Determine what power relations enable or constrain access to nutritious food.
3. Quantify the impact of key social drivers of nutritional inequality and uncover opportunities to meet nutritional needs.
FairFish collected qualitative data on the contributions fish make to people’s diets, uncovering key barriers to access, at a global scale. This work was complemented by a mixed methods approach collecting qualitative and quantitative data in three countries in Africa: Kenya, Seychelles, and Ghana, to evaluate the barriers to accessing these nutrients in geographies where micronutrient gaps persist. This work has resulted in the publication of thirty peer reviewed publications, in some of the top interdisciplinary (e.g. Nature and Science), medical (e.g. The Lancet), ecological (e.g. Current Biology) and social science (e.g. Antipode) journals underscoring the high quality and interdisciplinary mature of this project.
Using the concentration of micronutrients nutrients in more than 500 species of marine fish, we were able to estimate how environmental and ecological traits predict nutrient content of marine finfish species. We used this predictive model to quantify the global spatial patterns of the concentrations of nutrients in marine fisheries and compare nutrient yields to the prevalence of micronutrient deficiencies in human populations. We found that species from tropical thermal regimes contain higher concentrations of calcium, iron and zinc; smaller species contain higher concentrations of calcium, iron and omega-3 fatty acids; and species from cold thermal regimes or those with a pelagic feeding pathway contain higher concentrations of omega-3 fatty acids. Our analyses suggest that fish-based food strategies have the potential to substantially contribute to global food and nutrition security.
We demonstrated how trade and foreign fishing moves nutrients from where they are most needed, to where people are most able to pay (Nash et al 2022 PNAS). This increasing global concentration of food systems is affecting access across the world. Small scale producers in Ghana are forced to compete with increasingly global actors for access to fish (Standen 2025 Journal of Agrarian Change). Although many are successful in adopting strategies to survive (Allegretti et al 2025 World Development Perspectives), however these tend to make fish less affordable and accessible to the most vulnerable groups and poorer consumers. Although fish is more important for supporting the food security of poorer households it is richer households who are most able to access fish (Robinson et al 2025 PNAS). As prices increase poorer households lose out first, because they can no longer afford fish, and the social practices such as gifting and traditional lending circles that maintained access in difficult times have eroded or changes. This work has highlighted the importance of territorial markets, traditional systems of gifting and lending, and the importance of aquatic foods in supporting healthy and sustainable food systems (Omukoto et al 2024 Food Policy, Marine Policy).
FairFish involved two PhD students, two full time post-doctoral researchers, many part time post-doctoral researchers and collaborators from all over the world. The team received a number of prestigious awards for their work, including the 2019 Leverhulme Prize in geography, the Royal Geographical Society’s Gill Memorial Award, and the Monaco Thesis prize.
FairFish was actively engaged in the dissemination of findings in Seychelles, Kenya, Ghana and internationally involving the presentations to key government and multilateral agencies, at scientific and policy relevant conferences and workshops, as participants and keynote speakers. The team developed press releases, print and online news coverage, museum exhibitions, videos, documentaries to audiences in Europe, Africa, Asia, North America, and Australasia.
We successfully launched our open access public good database of nutrient estimates for over 5000 species of finfish and invertebrates on FishBase, and established a Community of Practice in collaboration with the FAO.
Using the concentration of micronutrients nutrients in more than 500 species of marine fish, we were able to estimate how environmental and ecological traits predict nutrient content of marine finfish species. We used this predictive model to quantify the global spatial patterns of the concentrations of nutrients in marine fisheries and compare nutrient yields to the prevalence of micronutrient deficiencies in human populations. We found that species from tropical thermal regimes contain higher concentrations of calcium, iron and zinc; smaller species contain higher concentrations of calcium, iron and omega-3 fatty acids; and species from cold thermal regimes or those with a pelagic feeding pathway contain higher concentrations of omega-3 fatty acids. Our analyses suggest that fish-based food strategies have the potential to substantially contribute to global food and nutrition security.
We demonstrated how trade and foreign fishing moves nutrients from where they are most needed, to where people are most able to pay (Nash et al 2022 PNAS). This increasing global concentration of food systems is affecting access across the world. Small scale producers in Ghana are forced to compete with increasingly global actors for access to fish (Standen 2025 Journal of Agrarian Change). Although many are successful in adopting strategies to survive (Allegretti et al 2025 World Development Perspectives), however these tend to make fish less affordable and accessible to the most vulnerable groups and poorer consumers. Although fish is more important for supporting the food security of poorer households it is richer households who are most able to access fish (Robinson et al 2025 PNAS). As prices increase poorer households lose out first, because they can no longer afford fish, and the social practices such as gifting and traditional lending circles that maintained access in difficult times have eroded or changes. This work has highlighted the importance of territorial markets, traditional systems of gifting and lending, and the importance of aquatic foods in supporting healthy and sustainable food systems (Omukoto et al 2024 Food Policy, Marine Policy).
FairFish involved two PhD students, two full time post-doctoral researchers, many part time post-doctoral researchers and collaborators from all over the world. The team received a number of prestigious awards for their work, including the 2019 Leverhulme Prize in geography, the Royal Geographical Society’s Gill Memorial Award, and the Monaco Thesis prize.
FairFish was actively engaged in the dissemination of findings in Seychelles, Kenya, Ghana and internationally involving the presentations to key government and multilateral agencies, at scientific and policy relevant conferences and workshops, as participants and keynote speakers. The team developed press releases, print and online news coverage, museum exhibitions, videos, documentaries to audiences in Europe, Africa, Asia, North America, and Australasia.
We successfully launched our open access public good database of nutrient estimates for over 5000 species of finfish and invertebrates on FishBase, and established a Community of Practice in collaboration with the FAO.
The ERC project FairFish has pioneered the field of Blue Foods, integrating ecology, nutrition, and fisheries science to reveal how aquatic biodiversity underpins human nutrition, and developed predictive models that have transformed global understanding of nutrient availability in fisheries. This work has reframed debates in fisheries and food systems science away from scarcity and growth toward sufficiency and equity, advancing concepts like Maximum Nutrient Yield and exposing how global trade and climate change exacerbate nutritional injustices. By embedding ecology and justice into food systems science, FairFish has advanced the field in three key areas:
1. Nutrient-Biodiversity Dynamics
2. Beyond Scarcity in Fisheries Science
3. Food Systems Justice
1. Nutrient-Biodiversity Dynamics
2. Beyond Scarcity in Fisheries Science
3. Food Systems Justice