And they get to enjoy the heads and other remains at home.Ī few nations, including Iceland, Norway, Scotland and the U.S., send frozen or dehydrated cod and salmon heads to Africa and Asia, and Toppe says entrepreneurs around the world are edging into this business.įrank Allen runs an operation called Live Online Seafood that transfers frozen cod heads from Alaskan fishing vessels directly to trans-Pacific freighters at the port of Dutch Harbor. Toppe, who has studied diets in Africa, notes people living around Lake Victoria who catch Nile perch fillet the fish and send the meat to Europe.

In Southeast Asia, fish head curry is a popular item. Of course, eating fish heads isn't a novel idea in many parts of the world. (The exception, he notes, is shark, orange roughy, swordfish and some tuna heads, because they could contain high levels of mercury and other toxins.) 'From the nutritional, environmental and economic points of view, it makes perfect sense to use all parts of the fish,' Toppe tells The Salt. And using such scraps for human food could also benefit the environment by reducing pollution from processing facilities. He says there are lots of incentives for developing the market for fish heads and bones at a mass scale.įish bones, brains, cartilage and fat are nutritious, containing extra-high levels of vitamin A, omega-3 fatty acids, iron, zinc and calcium, according to Toppe. Jogeir Toppe, a scientist with the FAO in Rome, studies the economics and logistics of utilizing fish byproducts. Filleting a fish and tossing the scraps can be extremely wasteful, producing two to three pounds of head and scraps for every pound of boneless, skinless meat, the National Marine Fisheries Service reports.Īlastair Bland for NPR Heads of farmed Atlantic salmon for sale at an Asian-owned grocery store in San Francisco. Norwegian fishermen alone dumped an estimated 220,000 tons of wild fish parts at sea in 2011 after processing their catch on the water, according to a report published in February in the journal Trends in Food Science and Technology. 'We must ensure that these byproducts are not wasted,' Audun Lem, chief of FAO's products, trade and marketing branch, said in a statement. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization recently called out the absurdity of this waste, suggesting it's time to get more fish heads on people's plates.

And with little demand for fish byproducts worldwide, most heads, tails and carcasses are processed into livestock feed or farm fertilizer or thrown back into the sea. I devoured all but their backbones and ribs, which I threw in the fire pit to char.īut most North Americans and Europeans miss out on the joys of fish heads, preferring to eat only clean, boneless filets. Even the eyeballs and the softer pieces of cartilage were delicious.

The highlight, for me, were their heads, which oozed with sizzling fat and were packed with extra-tender meat along the jawbones, around the eye sockets, below the gill plates and in the cheeks.

About a decade ago, I backpacked the coastal desert of Baja California, Mexico, feasting daily on snapper and corvina that I caught and grilled whole over driftwood beach fires.

Fish heads fish heads song