Fish heads making a splash

An online initiative is connecting those Kiwis who would normally dump fish heads and frames on the beach or chuck them in the bin with thousands of others who love to eat them.

Free online swap and trade website Free Fish Heads was set up by the ITM Fishing Show’s Matt Watson in 2012 to stop Kiwis wasting fish.

Mr Watson noticed how bad people were becoming at dumping fish heads and frames on the beach but, at the same time, noticed a demand from people for the cast-offs.

“I see things from both sides. I’m a fish head lover myself, and so are my kids, but my wife isn’t. She can’t even stand to watch us eat them, let alone eat one herself,” said Mr Watson.

“I came up with this idea about how to put the two different sorts of people together, and it’s worked.”

The Free Fish Heads website has a database of people who want fish heads, and donors can access it and get in touch with people in their area.

There are now 16,000 people registered to receive fish heads on the site currently, with hundreds of new registrations every week, and fish head exchanges every day.

The group also has a Facebook page, where people can swap details to exchange the goods.

Matt Watson and his kids, Hannah and Shaw, tucking into a feed of fish heads. Photo: Tightlines Media

Free Fish Heads user Steve Greene runs a hunting and fishing page on Facebook, called Hunt Gather Fish & Forage NZ.

He used the Facebook page to give some heads and frames away, and said that people came to collect them within the hour.

Mr Greene said most people don’t know what to do with fish heads, so “knowing that there’s people out there that want them is probably the biggest message to get out”.

His favourite way to eat fish heads is to hot smoke the head, wings and frames together, or just make a fish head soup.

Facebook user Joye Baker posted her best recipe on the group. “The big fish heads make the sweetest fish cakes. You boil them up, take the meat off the bones and mix it together with mashed potatoes, finely chopped onions, parsley, veges and herbs, bind it with eggs, roll in flour, then fry in dripping. Delicious”.

The Free Fish Heads website states that “utilisation of our fish is conservation of our fish”.