Island People

Read on to discover how Speech Debelle and Alexis Lee found a kindred spirit in Argoe’s founder Rich’s approach to catching and eating fish, and how the experience prompted them to explore Britain’s relationship with seafood through the histories of race, class and colonialism…

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Black and Brown people in the UK like ourselves will have, whether offering food as a gesture or casually minding our own business eating by ourselves, experienced being asked about what we’re eating. It begins with a look, squinted eyes, a wrinkled nose, taking in the new smells as enquiry develops. Readying ourselves, we’re not at all surprised to hear, ‘is it that spicy?’ or even more alarming in its possibilities, ‘is that fish?’

A recent trip to Cornwall with Finisterre made me sit with this thought.

We Are Black Fish (a fishing community centring Black and brown folk sharing and learning fishing and eating together on the beach in Kent) were invited to attend an event hosted by Finisterre and Xtratuf. There, we met Rich, the owner of Argoe, a restaurant in Newlyn where we had the pleasure of enjoying a meal amongst other community builders and creative thinkers in the outdoor space. The restaurant is perfectly perched on the walls of a working harbour, shaped by fishing since the 1500s.

Argoe’s ethos is built on a premise so simple it shouldn't need description: Eat a more varied catch and use the whole fish - a mission we very much share. This includes the cheeks, usually more delicate in texture and sweeter in flavour. And fish collars, loaded with meat on larger species, with more natural oils that make it perfect for the grill. Both are normally discarded in the UK as more often than not it is decided that only the fillet is worth keeping.

On any given day, Newlyn's fishermen land 35 to 40 different species, including Spider crab and megrim sole. Species revered in other places in the world, which is why 80% of the UK’s catch is exported.

But there is a fish that reigns supreme here; a familiar fish, prized for its white flesh, considered a cleaner taste - not too fishy - and found in every fish and chip shop (which there are more of than McDonalds and KFC combined) on the island, the royal Cod. England’s appetite for this fish accounts for roughly a third of all cod eaten globally, which has pushed domestic populations to near collapse. In April, The Marine Conservation Society warned “that fish numbers have reached a dangerous point of decline” and encouraged UK consumers to stop consuming domestically caught Cod.

We Are Black Fish, and Rich at Argoe, are advocating for a more sustainable way of eating seafood, as right now in the UK our food has lost its direction, clocking up miles upon miles before it gets near our plates. And the question Alexis and I kept returning to as we travelled back from Cornwall to our homes on the Kent coast was, “why does an island, surrounded entirely by water, need a mission to eat more fish and seafood?”

Great Britain has spent centuries reimagining itself as something much larger than its geographical self. An empire. A more civilised civilisation. A standard-bearer, imposing its norms on others. So, it’s no surprise that the story of how Britain lost its connection to its surrounding waters and the food in it – besides the reigning Cod – isn’t just a culinary story. It’s a colonial one.

In the 17th and 18th centuries, as the British empire reached its most brutal in the colonies, a rigid class system was developing at home. This system of class designated some seafood ‘noble’ and the rest, less so. Oily, nutritious, abundant mackerel and sardines were strictly for the poor and colonised and eating fish with bones or skin deemed undignified – it required too much work, and work was the yolk of the ‘Other’.

This colonial mindset persists, with similar boats that went out in search of people and spices now swallowing up a food source they no longer know what to do with. A whole sensory world of taste, touch, communion, and connection with the seas absent. In Britain the forgetting has encouraged the over consumption of one type of fish and eroded the connection to the abundance of the seas that surround the island, even though, as of January 2026, an estimated 12% of UK households, representing roughly 6.3 million adults, experienced food insecurity according to data from The Food Foundation.

The fish throat served that night at Argoe was gorgeous. Not only because of the team’s culinary skill and passion, but because it was always gorgeous. There have always been people who ate this way, without the privilege of forgetting. And for us, the descendants of those enslaved from the colonies, in the context of fishing and eating fish, the catching, the preparing, the seasoning, and the communion have been passed on from generation to generation, as remembering is the glue that binds our culture. And while we sit on the beach each month at our monthly hook at, We Are Black Fish, eating fresh fish down to the bone, with a likkle peppa for the spice kick, it’s a reminder that not forgetting is a beautiful tool for reconnection.

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We Are Black Fish is a free monthly fishing group centring Black queer joy, on the Kent coast. Join us: weareblackfish.com