Fish Sculpture is Tackling Plastic Waste

A huge scrap metal fish sculpture in Portsmouth is helping raise awareness about the global war on plastic waste.

The Treadgold Fish Sculpture was created by local artist Pete Codling and has been moved across various sites in the city, including Gunwharf Quays, Hotwalls Studios, Southsea Common and the Anglican Cathedral in Old Portsmouth.

The sculpture is made of scrap metal to collect plastic bottles, with a man on his phone in the middle of the artwork. The idea is that the man is "slowly drowned by the plastic waste" put in for recycling. The sculpture also features solar panels and lights up at night.

Members of the public are being encouraged to bring clean plastic bottles and help fillet the fish. The design echoes Portsmouth’s star and crescent motif, and the person on the phone inside refers to the Jonah and the Whale story of a man in denial of the impending doom he was tasked to save his people from.

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Now situated in its 9th location, thousands of plastic bottles have been collected and recycled locally by Colas Ltd and GHS Recycling Ltd.

For the first time, the sculpture is nearly completely full - with 12,000 plastic bottles inside - and was on display to coincide with the COP26 talks and Portsmouth Climate Festival. It sends a strong visual message about the importance of tackling single use plastic pollution.

The project was crowdfunded and supported by the City Council and local businesses, and was made with scrap metal from Treadgold Heritage Museum - the 200 year old ironmongers in Portsea - with the steel having to be cleared for restoration work.

Portsmouth has joined a network of communities across the UK who are leading the way to tackle throw away plastic at source.

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The city was awarded Plastic Free Community status by marine conservation charity, Surfers Against Sewage (SAS), in recognition of the work it has done to start reducing the impact of single-use plastic on the environment.

Local environmentalist, Clare Seek, said: “It’s been great to see growth in the city’s passion for reducing single-use plastic over the past couple of years. There has been a real breadth of effort from collecting litter and preventing it getting into our sea, through to education, changing habits and research into future solutions and stemming the flow at source.”

You can follow the latest updates on the Treadgold fish sculpture and it’s whereabouts on its website.