Two-thirds of the fish Australians eat is wasted.
After the fillets are taken, the rest is usually thrown away.
Such poor recovery impacts on price.
"You're paying for the whole fish but only actually eating one third, yet all parts of the fish actually have enormous value, like the head, the tail, the skin," Fisheries Research and Development Corporation managing director Patrick Hone said.
Chefs are slowly coming around to using more of the fish, including their offal.
Delicious waste
The beef, lamb, pork and chicken industries have much higher recovery rates, ranging from well over 50 per cent and into the high 70s, but why is seafood recovery so low?
"With the average net profit in a food business being sometimes only 1 per cent or less, it's really crucial we start educating people how to take a little-known product that has a low price point, and really elevate that into a menu item people enjoy, and you could actually make money from."
Ms Dixon trains apprentice chefs at the Institute of Culinary Excellence in Brisbane.
Her team recently prepared fish dishes using off-cuts, as well as under-utilised fish species to show Brisbane chefs the flavours and savings they're missing out on.
"I've never come across one of these under-utilised species that's unpleasant to eat," Ms Dixon said.
Exploring new flavours
The event was the brainchild of seafood provedore and former chef Umar Nguyen who represents some of Australia's most prestigious seafood brands.
Despite working with high-end seafood, she's campaigning to get chefs to use more of each fish and serve more lesser-known species.
Targeting chefs has the full support of the fishing industry.
One of the most surprising dishes was a pâté made from a 1.5-kilo eagle ray's liver.
In Australia, the liver is normally binned, but Gold Coast executive chef Dayan Hartill-Law took inspiration from a French fish pâté dubbed the "foie gras of the sea".
"Monkfish liver is one of the most-revered menu items in Paris, so why wouldn't we try [to] do that with something that's in our waters here?" he said.
Chef Shane Veivers described the pâté as "elegant and rich".
"We're going to see a lot more products that traditionally would have been discarded, as they're delicious," Mr Veivers said.
Stunning blue, pearl-like scampi eggs were also on offer.
Once thrown away, the "caviar" is now worth more than the scampi meat.
Unadventurous eaters
Darwin skipper Grant Barker supplied the under-utilised fish species for the event.
Hundreds of good eating but under-utilised fish have long needed a cheerleader but, Mr Barker said, it would take a lot to change people's preferences because Australians are tribal seafood eaters.
Ms Dixon was excited to see how much the chefs enjoyed the roasted monkfish tales.
"People think that those little tails, those irregular sizes, aren't really worth it but — for the price point that it could bring to a chef's menu and the flavour and the versatility of that fish — it really needs to be showcased," she said.
Chef Matt Golinski was surprised fishers found them such a hard sell.
Ms Nguyen said chefs could lead the way in tackling the issue of seafood waste and under-utilisation.
Chef Telina Menzies runs the kitchens of 50 hotels in Melbourne.
She says the times suit Ms Nguyen's message.
"We can't just take, take, take [from the ocean]. We really need to look at ways to give back and look at other ways to put food on the table and give the customers something interesting as well," she said.
Australians eat just a fraction of the 5,000 fish species in our waters.
Industry research predicts using more overlooked fish species could increase the national fishing catch by 250,000 tonnes.
Relying less on imports
"That's about two-thirds of what we import from overseas," Dr Hone said.
Dr Hone was impressed with how "The Fish Girl" — as Ms Nguyen is known on Instagram — uses social media to connect fishers and chefs.
The ambassador for unloved fish has plenty of her own fans in the culinary and seafood communities.
"Umar's tenacity and her ability to see the industry as a whole means that she can get these products to markets that would typically go, 'No, thank you'. So the role that she plays as an advocate for these under-utilised species is so incredibly important," Ms Dixon said.
Watch this story on ABC TV's Landline at 12:30pm on Sunday, or on ABC iview.
