What does a tub gurnard have to do with climate resilience? More than you might expect.

The Cooking Forgotten Fish project has released a free online course exploring the ecological, culinary, and business dimensions of underutilised fish species in European waters. The course is open to everyone – no prior knowledge of fisheries or gastronomy required – and takes approximately two and a half hours to complete across four modules.

The modules cover the marine biology of forgotten fish species and why wiser use of fishery resources matters for ocean health; how to promote forgotten fish in dining and gastronomy; practical fine dining techniques and culinary exercises for working with underutilised species; and how to build sustainable business models and productive relationships between restaurants and artisanal fishermen.

For NWA’s audiences in health, wellbeing, and community development, the course offers something that goes beyond fish. Coastal communities across Europe are among the populations most directly exposed to the consequences of climate change – shifting species distributions, collapsing traditional livelihoods, and the gradual erosion of the ecological relationships that sustained local economies for generations. The forgotten fish challenge is a precise, practical expression of that broader disruption: fishermen catching species the market was not built to absorb, restaurants unable to adapt menus because the culinary training system never prepared them, and consumers unfamiliar with what their local waters actually produce.

Learning to cook bogue, or to tell the story of a gurnard on a menu, is a small act. But the skills it requires – adaptive thinking, supply chain creativity, cross-sector collaboration, and confident communication of unfamiliar value – are exactly the entrepreneurial and resilience competencies that coastal communities need to navigate a changing environment.

The course models those skills as much as it teaches them.

Participants who complete the course and its assessments receive a certificate of participation. The course is freely available in Danish, English, Greek, and Italian.

👉 Access the Forgotten Fish MOOC

The Cooking Forgotten Fish project is an Erasmus+ KA210-VET partnership led by Marstang Mad & Vin, with Nordic Wellbeing Academy, Lazareta Cultural Association (Syros, Greece), and Igor Vitale International (Foggia, Italy).