An award-winning Lincoln fish and chip shop owner has slated an academic report which has claimed that haddock and chips may be threatened by global warming.

Burton Road Chippy boss Des Anastasou claims that university boffins have literally got their fish facts wrong. The multi award-winning fish frier, who won a trip to Norway as part of his latest National Fish & Chip Awards success, believes the report from the joint team from Oxford and Bristol universities are wide of the mark.

So-called experts have published claims that, as the North Sea warms up, haddock and other cold-water fish like plaice and lemon sole could be off the menu. The North Sea warmed four times faster than the global average in the last 40 years, scientists found.

And they say fish like haddock would be prevented from swimming northwards to colder waters as the depth would not be suitable.

Scientist Louise Rutterford said: "We will see proportionally less of some species we eat."

And colleague Dr Steve Simpson added: "Cold-water species will be squeezed out, with warmer water fish likely to take their place. We need to look to Southern Europe for our gastronomic inspiration," he said in the journal Nature Climate Change.

But Mr Anastasou said that they^re wrong. "This is appalling because when we went to Norway the scientists there told us that there^s so much fish in the Barents Sea that many are migrating into the North Sea, increasing the fish stocks there. And I know this simply isn^t a true report because we get all our fish direct from Peterhead Market in Scotland and are in touch with many of the trawlermen. They keep telling us the North Sea fish stocks are actually increasing, not decreasing, so i don^t know why the scientists are saying this."