With the humour that characterises this man from Cadiz, Javier Garat presented Pesca España's initiatives to promote fish and seafood at the Encuentro de los mares, with the aim of reversing the decline in household consumption, which, according to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, has fallen by 32% in the last 10 years. As the voice of the fishing industry in Spain and an authority on the international scene, Javier disagrees with the catastrophic figures plaguing the sector. "According to the latest FAO data, 62% of stocks are sustainably managed and 77% of landed catches come from sustainably managed stocks. Although there is room for improvement, we believe these are positive figures," he argued.

Founded in 2022, Pesca España works to raise awareness in society about the need to consume fish products, creating and disseminating interesting campaigns that use direct language and even humour to demolish the myths that attack the industry and its products. For example, the Metapesca campaign, which invents an apocalyptic future without sustainable fishing and invites us to "prepare our industry for a new world". Because those who live from the sea do not destroy it". The strategy, according to Javier, "is to strike a balance between the conservation of marine biodiversity, the sustainable use of our natural resources and food security, in order to restore the value of fishing and win back consumers and institutions".

Learn about the fish you buy

Most of the time you like fish, but you don't know what to buy or how to cook it", explains Javier, presenting a series of entertaining campaigns that the association is currently distributing through networks "because we don't have enough resources to go to the big channels", such as "Take fish with you", in which a grandmother shows young people how to select hake at the market and prepare it at home, or "The best of our diet", which highlights the good advice that a mother or doctor would give on eating seafood.

Also important are the spots developed by the association to combat the demonisation of fishing gear such as trawling, under the title "The positive footprint", or other myths such as those relating to the consumption of mercury or illegal fishing. To share all this knowledge, Pesca España has started to produce the friendly Pezcast, a podcast based on the three Cs of fish (heart, brain and cancer), and to develop children's workshops, such as the one recently sponsored by Carrefour, to instil a love of fish from childhood.