Fishing News Awards 2025: Nominations for this year’s 12 categories now open!

Nominations are now open for the 2025 Fishing News Awards, celebrating excellence across the UK and Irish industries during 2024, which will culminate in a gala presentation evening in Aberdeen on Wednesday, 7 May

We are delighted to launch the Fishing News Awards 2025, which will once again take place at the prestigious Chester Hotel in Aberdeen, on the evening of Wednesday, 7 May. The countdown is on to a night when we can gather with friends and colleagues to celebrate the very best in our industry.

The only awards event dedicated to recognising achievement, innovation and success in the UK and Irish commercial fishing industry, the Fishing News Awards 2025 will crown winners in 12 categories.

We will once again have four awards for outstanding fishermen: Over-10m Fisherman of the Year, Under-10m Fisherman of the Year, Young Fisherman of the Year and Trainee Fisherman of the Year. We’ll recognise a Service Provider of the Year, an Initiative of the Year and a Technical Innovation of the Year.

A new award this year will be Fish and Chip Shop of the Year – the key criteria for entry, of course, being that the fish is UK- or Irish-caught!

There will again be two categories to recognise exceptional new and refurbished vessels that have joined the fleet in 2024: Over-15m Boat of the Year and Under-15m Boat of the Year. The Sustainability Award and the Lifetime Achievement Award round off our categories for 2025.

The celebratory awards evening on 7 May will begin with a drinks reception, followed by a gourmet Scottish-caught seafood meal with wine – after which celebrity host Ed Byrne will entertain guests and present the awards to the 2025 winners.

More details of the awards, including details of how to book tickets and tables for the presentation evening, will be announced in the coming weeks, and will be available here.

New award: Fish and Chip Shop of the Year

Fisherman’s Catch in Clogherhead sources its fish from the family-owned seine netter Argonaut IV.

It’s been our national dish since a bright entrepreneur tried pairing fried fish – a Jewish tradition brought to the UK by emigrants from Portugal to London’s East End – with chips, a French invention imported a few decades later in the 1850s.

For 150 years this winning combination was 100% locally sourced: local potatoes, locally caught fish, local beef dripping.

Sadly, this is no longer the case. Just 10% of the cod, haddock and plaice consumed in British and Irish chippies is now from fish landed by UK or Irish vessels. Few consumers are aware that the vast majority of the haddock and cod they consume is imported from Norway, Faroe, Iceland and now even Russia, via China, where frozen fish of very dubious provenance is processed, relabelled and exported to the UK.

In Kent and Essex, where there was great demand for spurdog steaks served as ‘rock salmon and chips’, the EU ban on landing spurdog saw a thriving local market switch to imported frozen steaks from the US fishery.

In a recent survey, just 31% of MPs knew that the vast majority of cod and haddock served in our chip shops is imported. A combination of the loss of our distant-water fisheries, the northward shift of cod and haddock stocks, and Brexit and EU politics have seen a huge decline in our domestic ability to meet the demand for cod and haddock from the chip shop trade.

Yet around the country, the tradition of coastal fish and chip shops sourcing locally caught fish, and inland chippies serving UK-landed fish, survives! There are small Scottish businesses that take boxes of fresh haddock from the family trawler, Cornish chippies switching to using locally caught pollack, the survival, against the odds, of the UK’s last distant-water fishing vessel, and shops in North East Scotland that continue to buy ‘chipper’ haddock landed into Peterhead – all maintaining a tradition that goes back 150 years.

Yet none of the awards across the catering and hospitality industries include a category to recognise the fish and chip shops that continue to source UK- or Irish-caught fish and support their local catching sector. At Fishing News, we think this is something to celebrate!

So we are introducing a new category in this year’s awards, for a UK or Irish fish and chip shop that uses fish caught by our own fleets, rather than taking the often easier option of using imported product.

We’re confident that this new award will attract a host of entries, and help the catching sector to celebrate and support those businesses that have chosen to fly the flag, and back UK and Irish fishermen. We hope the award will raise awareness of the amazing job, against the odds, that many local chippies are continuing to do, as well as highlight the political decisions that have pushed so many others into using imported fish.

Please nominate the local business you think deserves this new award, telling us about your favourite species that it prepares and where it sources its fish. We look forward to a competitive line-up of some of the UK’s best fish and chip shops, and to welcoming the finalists to the awards ceremony in Aberdeen.

Make your nominations now!

The 2024 Fishing News Awards winners – make your nominations now to start the 2025 winners on the road to recognition!

Nominations for the Fishing News Awards 2025 are now open.

The 12 awards set out to celebrate the very best across the UK and Irish industries – so their success depends on Fishing News readers around the coast putting forward their top local candidates for recognition.

You can nominate a colleague, a friend, a family member – or indeed yourself!

If you’re a vessel owner with an outstanding new recruit onboard, a fisherman who has been mentored by an inspirational skipper, or a training college with a first-class student, we need your inside knowledge to ensure that our shortlists really do represent the very best of the talent from around the UK and Ireland. Is there a company, individual or organisation that you feel has provided exemplary service to the industry, or an industry initiative that you think has raised the bar over the past year? Have you been particularly impressed by a recent sustainability initiative? Does your local chippie combine excellent food and service with a commitment to sourcing the best UK- or Irish-caught fish?

Put forward your chosen candidates, and let us know why they deserve recognition in this year’s awards. Please read the category criteria carefully, and provide as much relevant detail as you can, to give your nominee the best chance of progressing to the shortlists. This includes contact details for your nominee, as we will need to get in touch with them in order for them to be shortlisted.

All nominations need to be received by midnight on Monday, 10 February. Shortlists will then be drawn up before voting opens for eight of the categories. A panel of judges drawn from the fishing industry will decide the winners of Under-15m Boat of the Year, Over-15m Boat of the Year, The Sustainability Award and the Lifetime Achievement Award.

To put forward your nominations, click here.

This story was taken from the latest issue of Fishing News. For more up-to-date and in-depth reports on the UK and Irish commercial fishing sector, subscribe to Fishing News here or buy the latest single issue for just £3.50 here.

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