Nobody wants to take a dip in a dirty great slick of fish poo, but you know, I can’t help feeling that the authorities and the fish farmers have missed a trick with all the fuss about the fish farms’ so-called unfortunate effluent.
I mean – have they checked it out? Have they analysed it? That filthy slime could well be a very valuable by-product of the fishing industry. On the other hand, it could just be… filthy slime.
But let’s, for the sake of this piece, assume it is something more, something of intrinsic value, something from which we… or at any rate the fish farmers could make one hell of a killing.
For example, we are constantly being told that fish oil is extremely good for us. Well there’s bound to be buckets of the stuff in that vile, viscous, floating sludge, so why not collect it, sanitise it and market it as an extremely efficacious cure for a wide range of complaints, diseases and conditions?
I can see the blurb now: “Are you suffering intolerable pain/discomfort from chronic dysentery, swamp fever, beri beri, black death, gout or ingrowing toenails? Do not despair, hope is at hand: Try miracle Offshore Gloop, the natural cure. In pills or easy-to-take lozenges, Offshore Gloop is the most effective and natural organic means to a lasting cure: Remember: Offshore Gloop.”
For a start, Offshore Gloop sounds so much nicer than fish-farm sludge, (Actually, anything sounds nicer than fish-farm sludge) so your innovative entrepreneur is half way to making his million already. But why stop there? Having extolled the curative properties of fish-farm slime – real or imaginary – your astute businessman/fish farmer can then branch out.
He may start marketing it as an entirely legal non-narcotic aid to sportsmen and sports women. There would obviously be the need to change its name to something like Marinotonic or Seazest and to mitigate its undoubted foul taste with sugar syrup and fruit flavourings.
Then it could be marketed as: “Every high-achieving sports-person’s essential accompaniment. Seazest builds stamina and wards off fatigue, especially in physically demanding activities like marathon running, triathlons, rock climbing, round-the-world canoeing and contract bridge.”
What we also need to do is market the stuff as a natural skin product
Our enterprising entrepreneur would be looking at his next million long before the authorities thought about exposing him as a fraud and a con merchant.
One thing is essential if marketing of this sludge is to be successful, and that is divergence.
We are doing OK flogging it as an ingested cure-all and entirely legal athletes’ supplement. What we also need to do is promote the stuff as a natural skin product.
Well if Anita Roddick could do it at Bodyshop, why not Challie and Ġużi at Fair Horizon Fish Farm, off St Paul’s Island?
They could market their fish gunge product – suitably sanitised and perfumed – as: “Marine Scrub, the newest and most effective skin care product, skimmed straight from the surface of the Mediterranean Sea; Marine Scrub enhances the complexion… whatever it is, from black to pasty… and is also recommended as an effective cure for unpleasant skin problems such as acne, liver spots, impetigo, dandruff and leprosy.”
And following on from that use of sea slime, I also suggest packaging a cleaned-up version of it as a natural, organic (two very important words those) hand cream. It may – or may not – be any good, but at least it gives a whole new meaning to the words fish-fingers.
One problem I foresee is just how to get away with creatively notating the ingredients of any of the above products on the packaging. I mean, you’re hardly going to describe say fish-farm skin products as: “Contains 80 per cent tuna poo, plus 20 per cent dentiċi puke.” No, you would much rather depict the product as: “Contains 80 per cent natural organic marine enliveners and toners, with 20 per cent processed aquatic nutrients.”
Yes, I think if some enterprising businessman took marketing the whole fish gunk thing on board, he/she should make a killing.
Just part of the Sylvanus public service mission. All I want out of it is the satisfaction of seeing a brilliant idea noted on the packaging… Oh yes… plus, of course, the usual 10 per cent.