Sea Shepherd, a non-profit, marine conservation activism organisation, received worldwide attention with the launch of Seaspiracy, a Netflix-featured documentary about the environmental impact of fishing. One of the facts presented in Seaspiracy stood out: by 2050 plastic in the oceans will outweigh fish. Sea Shepherd wanted to make this fact known to local fish consumers.

We are increasingly asked to stop eating meat by other people and organisations. We don’t often hear somebody ask us to stop eating fish. But we, as fish consumers, are feeding into the problem of overfishing. It’s up to us to make the audience aware of the impact their fish meals are having on our oceans. The way we show this is by showing fish consumers the fish of the future, namely plastic fish. Because if we don’t stop overfishing, by 2050 plastic in the oceans will outweigh actual fish.

A large amount of the plastic that’s currently in our oceans comes from nets abandoned by the fishing industry. If we carry on the way we are at present, by 2050 plastic in the oceans will outweigh fish. To highlight this ongoing catastrophe, we created a look at the future fish market of 2050. We turned discarded fish nets into fish to illustrate the impact of overfishing on marine life.

The target audience of our campaign were all people that eat fish. We wanted to show them how their food choices lead to the destruction of our oceans and marine wildlife. To bring across the message that by 2050 there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish, we needed something thought provoking. Instead of utilising shock tactics that can be often seen in wildlife conservation campaigns, our approach was to create something appealing and lifelike at first sight. After being drawn in by fake fish, fish consumers would then realise they had been misled by fish made of discarded fish nets. These fish formed a tangible and alarming visual metaphor for the future. By directly utilising fish nets to create fake fish, we communicated our message in a way that would appeal to fish consumers.

We collected abandoned fishing nets from the North Sea and collaborated with Universities and Art Students to turn them into fish. To kick off the campaign, we set up a classic Dutch herring cart in the center of Amsterdam, at a time when fresh fish would usually arrive. However, instead of fish, shoppers would find seafood made entirely out of fishing nets. Via QR codes on the price tags of the fish, people could get more information about the project and the threat that overfishing poses to our oceans.

To make people outside of Amsterdam aware of the campaign, we issued a press release followed by a film on social media. The film shows the imaginary journey of the fake fish from the ocean to the market. We published social media posts with images of the fake fish photographed like real fish, making them look as tasty as possible.

With zero media investment, we managed to reach more than 84 million people, generating global interest for the current problem of overfishing. We received attention in social- and mass media, including national and international newspapers and news services. The estimated views total 1.34 million, with 39.3k engagements. After the in-person PR activation, the client was invited to the most popular daytime show in the Netherland, Koffietijd to talk about the campaign. Thanks to this, the fish were shown on national TV to an audience of approximately 259 000.