December 7, 2024 • 7 mins
An unconventional app is bringing Kiwis together through a love of fish heads.
Free Fish Heads allows fishers to connect with seafood lovers who are after often-discarded fish parts - including fish heads - for cooking purposes.
The app is the brainchild of TV fishing personality Matt Watson, who says there's no excuse for discarding perfectly good food.
"It's about making connections with people - because people that often have the disposable income to be able to have a boat and go fishing don't often mix with people who eat fish heads. It's not a conscious thing, it's just different sub-sections of our society."
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudgin
from News Talks EDB.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
It has been touted as Tinder for lovers of fisheads.
Initially launched as a website in twenty twelve, the Free
fish Heads app has relaunched this week. The app helps
help connects fishes with locals who are after parts of
the fish usually discarded, like the fishheads. The project is
the brainchild of TV fishermen Matt Watson and Matt joins me. Now,
(00:35):
good morning, good morning. How did the idea for free
fishheads come about?
Speaker 3 (00:42):
Well, actually unfolded right in front of me what you
said in your intro. Back in twenty twelve, we were
staying at our batch up at Tikeedo Beach in the
Far North. There's lots of holiday makers around, and I
literally saw a holiday maker walk out of his batch
with a bin full of beautiful fisheads and frames and
(01:05):
tip them into the surf, barely into the surf, like
just more or less on the beach. Meanwhile, twenty meters
away there was a couple of locals trying to catch
some fish for dinner, and I thought, well, it wouldn't
it be great, if that guy would walk up to
those other guys and say here, would you like these?
But I did realize that there was a barrier. People
(01:25):
felt like they were giving rubbish away. So that was
the reason they weren't doing it. It wasn't out of
being deliberately rude or ignorant or anything. Gosh, sorry, I'm
at the airport. And so I created a website so
people could just say where they were, what fish had
(01:47):
they had, and then they could get in touch with
locals who wanted them, and it kind of grew really quickly.
We quickly got to thousands of people around New Zealand
that were using the website. But then, of course technology
gets better. We first launched the NAP I think in
twenty seventeen, and now that the geore locating so much better,
(02:08):
we've done it again. And it just makes it really
simple for people that have got fish heads and frames.
They don't want to eat them themselves, I mean, and
the first thing I would do is encourage them to
have a go at eating fish heads. They're actually really good.
But if they aren't going to, they really should be
finding a home for them, because there's no excuse for
(02:28):
throwing away perfectly good food.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
What I love about those app is that most times
apps want you to keep coming back if What I
love about those app is that you're saying you want
to connect people and you want them to never come back.
You want to create new relationships within the community, you know,
and hey, look we don't come back and use this again.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
Yeah onered. I mean there's there a commercial model here.
This is all done purely out of goodwill. The first edition,
I just scraped the money together and funded it myself.
This time around Legacy, it's an organization that I'm a
huge supporter of. It's kind of stepped up and helped
us pull together the funds for it. And exactly like
(03:09):
you say, it's about making connections with people. Because people
that often have the disposable income to be able to
have a boat and go fishing don't often mix with
people that eat fish heads. It's just it's not a
conscious thing. It's just different sub sections of our society.
(03:29):
And what this does is it brings them together. And
the real cool thing that I'm so proud of with
it all is that there's been lifelong friendships made, families
having barbecues together, actually fish head eaters, then encouraging the
fishhead givers to actually, you know, cooking it up and
taking it back to them and saying, here, give this
a go. So yeah, it's pretty neat. We want them
(03:50):
to form a relationship and you know, of trust and
come together through the act of giving some fresh seafood.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Taught me through what you do with a fish head?
How do you cook it?
Speaker 3 (04:01):
I call it all sorts of ways. The easiest way
is roasting them. So you know, if I've been out fishing,
I've fill it the fish. Because my wife is one
that won't eat fish heads, she'll quite happily ed bit
of fish of it. You put enough breadcumbs or better
on it. And so when I'm heating the oven up
(04:21):
to do the chips for the fish and chips, I
actually just throw my fish heads in a roasting dish
dridg a little bit of olive oil, salt, pepper, maybe
some red onions or something. If I've got them not,
it doesn't matter, and I just literally throw it in
there as the ovens coming up to eat, and about
twenty minutes on one the fish d all starts falling
(04:42):
apart and roast in its own juices. And I'll whip
that out and throw it on the bench when the
chips go in, and me and the kids usually devour
it all straight out of the roasting dish as an
entree while we're waiting for the you know, the chips
to be done and throwing the fillets.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
It's great for stock too. How has the fishing been
so far this summer?
Speaker 3 (05:05):
It has been quite incredible. Yeah, it's been good, well
over on the Bay of Islands, at least where I
live on someone way back home there. Now there's been
a really incredible run of tuna that's been unprecedented, Like
I've not known North Pacific Blue and Turner to be
in so close in the bay, and it was like
(05:25):
yellow fin Turner turned up as well, and we've got
our it's our traditional sort of season for snapper to
be coming into the bay as well. So everything's going
going real good. At the moment.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
Tuna's can be quite a big freshed Do do you
use all of it?
Speaker 3 (05:41):
Oh? Yeah, yeah, I mean if we're absolutely tuner, I
just love them raw. It's just a shame even when
I'm cutting it up on myself, just scraping all the
meatiful backbone and just eating it. I've always done that
my kid and because of course my kids have grown up,
I mean they're big now, they that's how they eat
(06:04):
fish because that's what they saw me doing. So it
does make fish prep a whole lot easier when you've
got kids that are quite happy just to eat it raw,
as you know, take take the skin off of it
and let them go for it. So we definitely use
the whole any fish, you know, I say, you shouldn't
be taking a fish out of the ocean unless you
(06:26):
know that you're going to able to utilize the whole thing,
because every kilogram of fish that gets consumed is another
kilogram that doesn't have to come out of the ocean ultimately.
So well, and back to the free fish heads thing,
if you were to give a family somewhere ten kilos
of fisheads, well they're probably not going to now go
(06:49):
down to a fishmonger or the supermarket and buy ten
kilos of fish. That's probably unfortunately in New Zealand, it's
putting caught in the bottom trawler. So there's there's ten
kilos of fish still out there if you're utilizing the
whole fish. And I say to people at the time lot,
instead of going out and targeting your limits saying oh yeah,
I'm going to catch six fish today, so but then
(07:11):
you're only eating half of it. Well, why don't you
go and catch three and eat the whole thing nice
and leave the other three swimming out there? Right?
Speaker 2 (07:17):
A great idea, Mat, And I really appreciate your time
this morning, Thank you so much. Free fish Heads is
the app if you want to check it.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
Out for more from the Sunday session with Francesca Rudkin.
Listen live to use Talks it B from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudgin
from News Talks EDB.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
It has been touted as Tinder for lovers of fisheads.
Initially launched as a website in twenty twelve, the Free
fish Heads app has relaunched this week. The app helps
help connects fishes with locals who are after parts of
the fish usually discarded, like the fishheads. The project is
the brainchild of TV fishermen Matt Watson and Matt joins me. Now,
(00:35):
good morning, good morning. How did the idea for free
fishheads come about?
Speaker 3 (00:42):
Well, actually unfolded right in front of me what you
said in your intro. Back in twenty twelve, we were
staying at our batch up at Tikeedo Beach in the
Far North. There's lots of holiday makers around, and I
literally saw a holiday maker walk out of his batch
with a bin full of beautiful fisheads and frames and
(01:05):
tip them into the surf, barely into the surf, like
just more or less on the beach. Meanwhile, twenty meters
away there was a couple of locals trying to catch
some fish for dinner, and I thought, well, it wouldn't
it be great, if that guy would walk up to
those other guys and say here, would you like these?
But I did realize that there was a barrier. People
(01:25):
felt like they were giving rubbish away. So that was
the reason they weren't doing it. It wasn't out of
being deliberately rude or ignorant or anything. Gosh, sorry, I'm
at the airport. And so I created a website so
people could just say where they were, what fish had
(01:47):
they had, and then they could get in touch with
locals who wanted them, and it kind of grew really quickly.
We quickly got to thousands of people around New Zealand
that were using the website. But then, of course technology
gets better. We first launched the NAP I think in
twenty seventeen, and now that the geore locating so much better,
(02:08):
we've done it again. And it just makes it really
simple for people that have got fish heads and frames.
They don't want to eat them themselves, I mean, and
the first thing I would do is encourage them to
have a go at eating fish heads. They're actually really good.
But if they aren't going to, they really should be
finding a home for them, because there's no excuse for
(02:28):
throwing away perfectly good food.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
What I love about those app is that most times
apps want you to keep coming back if What I
love about those app is that you're saying you want
to connect people and you want them to never come back.
You want to create new relationships within the community, you know,
and hey, look we don't come back and use this again.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
Yeah onered. I mean there's there a commercial model here.
This is all done purely out of goodwill. The first edition,
I just scraped the money together and funded it myself.
This time around Legacy, it's an organization that I'm a
huge supporter of. It's kind of stepped up and helped
us pull together the funds for it. And exactly like
(03:09):
you say, it's about making connections with people. Because people
that often have the disposable income to be able to
have a boat and go fishing don't often mix with
people that eat fish heads. It's just it's not a
conscious thing. It's just different sub sections of our society.
(03:29):
And what this does is it brings them together. And
the real cool thing that I'm so proud of with
it all is that there's been lifelong friendships made, families
having barbecues together, actually fish head eaters, then encouraging the
fishhead givers to actually, you know, cooking it up and
taking it back to them and saying, here, give this
a go. So yeah, it's pretty neat. We want them
(03:50):
to form a relationship and you know, of trust and
come together through the act of giving some fresh seafood.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Taught me through what you do with a fish head?
How do you cook it?
Speaker 3 (04:01):
I call it all sorts of ways. The easiest way
is roasting them. So you know, if I've been out fishing,
I've fill it the fish. Because my wife is one
that won't eat fish heads, she'll quite happily ed bit
of fish of it. You put enough breadcumbs or better
on it. And so when I'm heating the oven up
(04:21):
to do the chips for the fish and chips, I
actually just throw my fish heads in a roasting dish
dridg a little bit of olive oil, salt, pepper, maybe
some red onions or something. If I've got them not,
it doesn't matter, and I just literally throw it in
there as the ovens coming up to eat, and about
twenty minutes on one the fish d all starts falling
(04:42):
apart and roast in its own juices. And I'll whip
that out and throw it on the bench when the
chips go in, and me and the kids usually devour
it all straight out of the roasting dish as an
entree while we're waiting for the you know, the chips
to be done and throwing the fillets.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
It's great for stock too. How has the fishing been
so far this summer?
Speaker 3 (05:05):
It has been quite incredible. Yeah, it's been good, well
over on the Bay of Islands, at least where I
live on someone way back home there. Now there's been
a really incredible run of tuna that's been unprecedented, Like
I've not known North Pacific Blue and Turner to be
in so close in the bay, and it was like
(05:25):
yellow fin Turner turned up as well, and we've got
our it's our traditional sort of season for snapper to
be coming into the bay as well. So everything's going
going real good. At the moment.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
Tuna's can be quite a big freshed Do do you
use all of it?
Speaker 3 (05:41):
Oh? Yeah, yeah, I mean if we're absolutely tuner, I
just love them raw. It's just a shame even when
I'm cutting it up on myself, just scraping all the
meatiful backbone and just eating it. I've always done that
my kid and because of course my kids have grown up,
I mean they're big now, they that's how they eat
(06:04):
fish because that's what they saw me doing. So it
does make fish prep a whole lot easier when you've
got kids that are quite happy just to eat it raw,
as you know, take take the skin off of it
and let them go for it. So we definitely use
the whole any fish, you know, I say, you shouldn't
be taking a fish out of the ocean unless you
(06:26):
know that you're going to able to utilize the whole thing,
because every kilogram of fish that gets consumed is another
kilogram that doesn't have to come out of the ocean ultimately.
So well, and back to the free fish heads thing,
if you were to give a family somewhere ten kilos
of fisheads, well they're probably not going to now go
(06:49):
down to a fishmonger or the supermarket and buy ten
kilos of fish. That's probably unfortunately in New Zealand, it's
putting caught in the bottom trawler. So there's there's ten
kilos of fish still out there if you're utilizing the
whole fish. And I say to people at the time lot,
instead of going out and targeting your limits saying oh yeah,
I'm going to catch six fish today, so but then
(07:11):
you're only eating half of it. Well, why don't you
go and catch three and eat the whole thing nice
and leave the other three swimming out there? Right?
Speaker 2 (07:17):
A great idea, Mat, And I really appreciate your time
this morning, Thank you so much. Free fish Heads is
the app if you want to check it.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
Out for more from the Sunday session with Francesca Rudkin.
Listen live to use Talks it B from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio
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