People want more seafood than the oceans can sustainably supply, so a German firm aims to plug that gap with cultivated fish – but are consumers ready to buy it?

The redbrick offices, just north of Hamburg’s River Elbe and a few floors below Carlsberg’s German headquarters, are an unexpectedly low-key setting for a food team gearing up to produce Europe’s first tonne of lab-grown fish.

But inside Bluu Seafood, past the slick open-plan coffee and cake bar, the rooms are dominated by gleaming white tiles, people bustling about in lab coats, rows of broad-bottomed beakers and pieces of equipment more at home in a science-fiction thriller. A 50-litre tank (a bioreactor) is filled with what looks like a cherry-coloured energy drink. The liquid, known as “growth medium”, is rich with sugars, minerals, amino acids and proteins designed to give the fish cells that are added to it the boost they need to multiply by the million.

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Celebrate the freshness of a new season with ricotta gnocchi with raw pea pesto, fennel sausage penne and broccoli orecchiette

Prep 20 min
Cook 1 hr 25 min
Serves 4

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Paris claims ban breaches UK-EU trade deal but environmentalists say dispute is ‘hypocrisy’, given Macron’s rhetoric on saving oceans

France has been accused of hypocrisy by conservationists over a fresh post-Brexit dispute with the UK over fishing rights.

France launched an official protest after the UK banned bottom trawling from parts of its territorial waters last month, with the aim of protecting vulnerable habitats.

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Crunchy with fennel, lettuce and green beans, with soft boiled potatoes, this tuna salad comes with the double whammy of a tuna-laced sauce

My parents live in Mallorca, and one of my favourite things to eat when I visit them is the most simple ensalada mixta . The best ones are just a mountain of lettuce, white asparagus, a mound of tinned tuna and some capers. As a child, I’d eat all the tuna first, so here is my favourite tuna salad: tuna with tuna dressing, which is inspired by Italian tonnato sauce. A double tuna salad! To me, that’s perfect.

Make More with Less: Foolproof Recipes to Make Your Food go Further by Kitty Coles is published by Hardie Grant (£22). To buy a copy for £19.36, go to guardianbookshop.com

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Underwater mountains are biodiversity hotspots and researchers exploring the Salas y Gómez ridge off Chile have found 50 species probably new to science. How much more has yet to be discovered?

• Photographs by ROV SuBastian/Schmidt Ocean Institute

Squat lobsters , bright red sea toads and deep-sea dragon fish were among more than 160 species never previously seen in the region that were spotted on a recent expedition exploring an underwater mountain range off the coast of South America. Researchers from the California-based Schmidt Ocean Institute believe that at least 50 of those species are likely to be new to science.

A Chaunax ( member of the sea toad family) found to the south of Rapa Nui, near the western end of the Salas y Gómez ridge

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Removal of nearly 500 barriers last year will help restore disturbed waterways to their natural state, says Dam Removal Europe

Europe removed a record number of dams and other barriers from its rivers in 2023, a report has found, helping to restore its disturbed waterways to their natural states.

Nearly 500 barriers were taken out of European rivers last year, according to figures compiled by Dam Removal Europe, an increase of 50% from the year before.

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It really is easy to crumb flathead from scratch, especially with some judicious use of Kewpie mayonnaise, says the cookbook author. But at a pinch, frozen fish fingers will do

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Recently I was at a bean conference (it was called BeanCon) in Mexico , where I picked up some tips for cooking better beans (that I’ll share in due course) plus some other useful bits and bobs over my travels: a traditional Talavera platter, some granite dominoes, a colour-changing T-shirt emblazoned with an axolotl and confirmation that fish tacos are always a sure bet.

There I was, in a Cancún taqueria, with two friends from opposite ends of the earth, perusing a menu of prolific taco fillings (nopales, huitlacoche) when the best-travelled among us suggested we go all in on fish. The other friend and I initially resisted, but he was right. We ordered six more, and it remained my go-to order for the rest of the trip. When in doubt, taco de pescado !

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Three joyful dishes for a new year: a mild yellow curry, street food-style fried pork and a simple dish of baked mackerel and rice

Songkran , the Thai New Year on 13 April, is a vibrant and joyous celebration marked by a famous water festival that symbolises the cleansing of the past year’s misfortunes through playful water fights and anointing one’s elders with water at the hottest time of year. Traditional Thai dishes play a central role, reflecting the culinary heritage that unites families and communities at this auspicious time.

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Smalltooth sawfish are behaving oddly, eliciting a first-ever plan to rescue and rehabilitate species from wild

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is launching what the agency described as an emergency response effort in south Florida after emerging reports of smalltooth sawfish spinning, whirling and displaying other abnormal behaviors.

In a statement released last Wednesday, NOAA said that in addition to the abnormal behaviors, there have been reports of fish deaths in the lower Florida Keys, including more than 28 smalltooth sawfish as of 24 March.

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