The New Zealand Commercial Fish Species Poster has not only graced the walls of nearly every fish ‘n’ chip shop but also inspired its fair share of creative spinoffs. But what’s the story behind this quintessential bit of Kiwiana? Claire Williamson investigates.
On series nine of the UK series Taskmaster, five comedians were asked to bring “the best thing from a shed” for judgment by Taskmaster Greg Davies. New Zealand contestant Rose Matafeo confidently shared the best thing from her Kiwi “shid” – a classic pre-2000s fish species poster by Seafood New Zealand. It launched the undeniably Kiwi visual touchpoint into the global waters of the internet – in other words, it went a bit viral.
Three years later, in 2022, Taskmaster NZ paid homage to Matafeo’s joke by actually putting the poster in a shed and challenging contestants to memorise as many names as they could in 100 seconds.
Versions of this Seafood New Zealand poster began circulating in the 1970s. Its riveting depiction of the country’s best kaimoana has provided a visual distraction and boredom-buster for generations of New Zealanders waiting for their hot-from-the-fryer scoop.
The early versions
The first poster was produced in 1977 by the New Zealand Fishing Industry Board (FIB), an early Seafood New Zealand predecessor. Printed by E C Keating Government Printer, it featured 28 species illustrations by noted New Zealand cartoonist Eric Heath. A green and white trawler – one good guess is it’s the Gisborne-based Marine Star –floated idyllically on the waves above.
Established in 1963, the FIB’s mandate was to foster the development of the seafood industry and to market and export seafood; the poster was intended to educate people about the types of fish they could buy – and how to cook them. This mandate gave birth to some pretty catchy campaigns; there was the “Enjoy Fish the Family Dish” slogan, and Alison Holst whipping up seafood recipes out of the FIB home economics unit’s test kitchen in Wellington.
As a companion to the poster, the FIB also published its second species guidebook, New Zealand Seafoods: A Buying and Catering Guide in 1977.
“The earlier [1969] publication was almost a pioneering venture,” wrote then-FIB General Manager J.S. Campbell in the guide’s foreword. “It was aimed at bringing to prospective as well as to established overseas buyers, information about some of the many species of fine flavoured and textured fish available from New Zealand.”
Alastair Macfarlane, former deputy chief executive at the FIB and former general manager of the subsequent Seafood Industry Council, said the poster and species guidebooks underwent several revisions over the years.
“The main use was to promote the wide variety of commercially caught fish species. Implicit within it and the guidebook was the need to promote and develop the domestic market for deepsea fisheries, such as orange roughy and hoki, which were relatively unknown prior to the ’80s. The guidebook in particular was comprehensive and was freelyhanded out at trade promotion events, especially in the US.”
Throughout the ’70s and ’80s, the poster and companion recipes continued to evolve and expand,with the illustrations swapped for colour photos on a plain white background.
“The poster was everywhere in fish ‘n’ chip shops,” Macfarlane says.
Refreshing the fish photos
Though Seafood New Zealand’s poster has featured photographs of fish for some time, the quality of images in its latest versions has taken a big step up – thanks to
photographer Terry Hann. Hann, who immigrated from the UK to New Zealand in the 1960s, has been a photographer since he was 19, working his way up the ranks at the National Publicity Studios. He started photographing fish when he was commissioned by the FIB to take photographs of fish for their export profiles.
This exposure to the industry later inspired Hann to spend six years re-photographing the species in even higher-quality – on his own dime – as a personal passion
project. He published his first version of the poster in 1994, featuring 71 species.
“The quality of imagery is what resonates and has had an impact. It’s of paramount importance because it’s how we represent our seafood,” Hann says.
And getting those high-quality shots wasn’t easy – it required multiple trips out on trawlers and surface longliners to catch the best example of the species to photograph. The white warehou was the last fish eluding Hann’s lens – a fisher finally sent him a frozen one only a few years ago.
One time he went out on a smaller trawler. “One of the crew was sick, so they asked me if I wouldn’t mind cooking the food. So I slept on the floor and cooked all the meals – pasta bakes and fresh fish.”
The poster has undergone minor tweaks since, including rescaling some of the species and re-adding the te reo Māori names (which had been left-off of an earlier iteration) for the fish in 2018.
“There’s some stunning detail in some of these fish. I use them in artwork.”
New posters for new campaigns
Given the posters’ omnipresence in fish ‘n’ chip shops – and, apparently, sheds – it’s no surprise the design has inspired a few spinoffs. From New Zealand-based developer Black Salt Games, there’s the Dredge Commercial Fish Species Poster based on their 2023 indie horror game Dredge.
In the award-winning game, you play a fisher exploring the waters around the village of Ironhaven, filling orders. Their poster features species you’d recognise – barracuda and cod – and some spooky ones you might not...anyone want to eat a “many-eyed mackerel”?
Another example is from 2015 when Te Papa Press released a Fishes of New Zealand poster, featuring a whopping 222 species from its landmark four-volumeThe Fishes of New Zealand.
And then there’s the Trash Species campaign and accompanying poster by Sustainable Coastlines Charitable Trust and creative agency Augusto, shedding a light on the most common “species” of litter polluting New Zealand beaches.
Augusto creative director Adam Thompson said the idea came about out of 2021 lockdowns, when members of the team were taking more walks on the beach – and spotting all the rubbish.
“It’s very iconic, retrospective Kiwiana; it’s beautiful and has an eye-catching design. We had lots of tropes to play with.”
Using data from Sustainable Coastlines’ programme Litter Intelligence, where citizen scientists monitor 100-by-20 metre sections of 414 beaches across New Zealand and the Pacific, their poster features 21 “trash species” – punny hybrids of many well-known commercial species and common types of litter cleverly painted in watercolour by notednatural history illustrator Erin Forsyth.
There’s the “twisted, metallic pest” that’s the Yellowtin Tuna (yellowfin tuna + tin can), or the pervasive Smoki (cigarette butts + hoki) – Little Intelligence has reported over 18,890 cigarette butts to date. Blue Pods (blue cod + vape pods) are a newcomer, though no less invasive.
“We made the shapes fish, to mimic the poster, then worked together to come up with names and stories. Once you start with the sea puns, it’s quite hard to let go. But it needed to be substantiated with data,” says Thompson.
“People do a second take when they see it. We wanted something beautiful, with a hard-hitting message.”
Sustainable Coastlines’ communications manager Helen Adams-Blackburn says the key message is about preventing litter in the first place. (Hence their poster’s tagline: “catch your trash before it fills our oceans.”)
“You don’t inspire people to take action by just emphasising how bad the problem is. Approaching it in a lighthearted way that actually gets people thinking is more likely to motivate people. People aren’t exposed to many of the classic species on the original poster unless you’re a fisher or a diver – but you do see the litter on the coastline. It’s not just at the beach where you can make a change, and we encourage people to reconsider purchasing single-use plastics and go for reusable alternatives where possible.”
A parallel poster from United Fisheries
The Fisheries Industry Board wasn’t the only seafood entity out there producing a commercial fish species poster. At some point, Kypros Kotzikas – founder of Ōtautahi Christchurch-based United Fisheries – spotted the FIB version.
“I liked it and liked the idea of introducing fish and teaching young kids about fish,” Kotzikas says.
Using the FIB photos, Kotzikas produced a United Fisheries version, which the noted South Island exporter still gives away for free – you just pay for postage. He
estimates they’ve given away “hundreds of thousands” of posters.
“Probably every house in New Zealand has one, plus plenty overseas. It hasn’t changed at all – it still has the ‘Kypros touch.’”
That touch included resizing a few of the fish – hoki and squid – and tucking a black-and-white line drawing of a seahorse in the bottom right, overlaid with the words “good luck” in Greek, where Kotzikas is originally from.
“It’s been a very successful exercise,” Kotzikas says.
