Foodlover editor, Emma Dance, finds out more about the west country seafood scene. From seasonal and sustainable produce, to top seafood restaurants.
SEASONAL AND SUSTAINABLE
We might be used to seeing all kinds of seafood in the supermarkets all year round, seafood is — just as most fresh foods — seasonal. Seasonality in seafood, however, isn’t just about climactic seasons. In fact, it’s primarily about when fish are at peak harvest and at their most abundant. For example, if fish are harvested during spawning season then stocks could diminish. Additionally, buying “out of season” fish doesn’t only have a negative effect on fish stocks, but also means that in all likelihood, they’ve been sourced from far away, so bring a lot of food miles.
Here in the West Country, we’re lucky enough to have miles and miles of coastline, with waters that produce some of the best seafood that the UK has to offer, so there’s plenty of delicious fishy goodness on offer all year round. Fresh, locally caught seafood will almost certainly taste better than frozen varieties, which will likely have travelled large distances before reaching your plate.
Caroline Drever owns Dorset Shellfish, which provides quality fish and shellfish caught from her partner Graham’s boat, as well as other day boats working out of Weymouth, so is something of an expert when it comes to the best locally-caught seasonal seafood available.
“We catch all year round,” explains Caroline. “The fishing tends to be better in summer and autumn with more species, but it is very weather and tide dependant.
“At the moment, we are catching crabs, lobsters and sea bass, which are our main species. We produce dressed crabs from our own catch which are great just with some watercress and Jersey Royals. Sea Bass is good baked in the oven whole or pan fried fillets, served with homemade salsa verde.”
DOING THE RIGHT THING
Eating seasonally is all tied into “sustainability” and “responsible sourcing” — terms that are used frequently when it comes to seafood. But what exactly does it mean? To help us understand more, Seafish, the organisation that supports the UK seafood sector has put together a handy guide.
“Sustainability is about meeting the needs of today’s consumers in a way that does not compromise the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. For seafood to be responsibly sourced, it needs to be caught or farmed in a way that:
• minimises impact on fish stocks and the marine environment;
• supports the livelihoods of fishing and coastal communities; and
• respects basic human rights including welfare and equality.”
Caroline Bennett is the founder of Sole of Discretion, a collective of small-scale fishers fishing out of Plymouth harbour, and she is passionate about spreading the message of the importance of sustainability in seafood.
“I started Sole of Discretion because I’d been working on marine issues for two decades, and being a pragmatist, it troubled me that there was no bridge between the well intentioned and highly knowledgeable environmental NGO community and people that wanted to do the right thing,” she says. “Plenty of my friends would ask me what fish to eat and where to buy it, and there really were no easy answers. The only thing I could tell them was to look out for MSC (Marine Stewardship Council) species in the absence of any other clear guidelines, which was frustrating, as I knew there were far better fisheries out there. So the pragmatist got together with the fantasist in me and Sole of Discretion was borne out of a desire to make it easier for the conscientious shopper to eat fish without that nagging doubt they might be contributing to a depleted and damaged marine ecosystem. It is nigh impossible for most people to be able to differentiate fish that had been caught with minimal impact to the marine eco system and those that have wreaked considerable damage and I was determined to make it easier.
“Knowing where to start in an incredibly complex marine world is tricky — while everyone knows that to limit damage on the seas hand-line caught fish are some of the best, while it doesn’t get much worse than dynamite (outlawed and yet still practiced in some parts of the world), but what about the rest? The vast majority of fishing lies somewhere in the middle of these two extremes. In this 99 per cent ‘grey’ fishing area, there are some practices that are significantly better than others, and Sole of Discretion’s aim is to help you navigate your way through. In a perfect world perhaps we would return to anglers catching all of our fish with a rod and line, but handline caught fish will satisfy only a fraction of demand so becomes elitist, amplifies fishing pressure on a limited number of species, and just as importantly, does nothing to differentiate between the most damaging fisheries and many of the better small-scale ones.
“Small-scale fishers around the globe face similar problems — access to the fishing areas or to quota, limited days at sea due to weather or seasonality, limited or no access to ice or processing facilities, inability to command control over prices and limited or no presence at policy level.
“Moreover, on the land side, their fish is not differentiated from those of the industrial boats, meaning that consumers are not able to actively buy fish from the small-scale fishers. For the most part, recognisable access to market, except at the very local level, is non-existent and all traceability is lost. This is in spite of the fact that more and more people are now actively choosing to buy ‘local’ or ‘ethical’ and take an interest in where their fish comes from as a result of rising awareness of the degradation of our seas.”
SUPPORT SMALL
So, by buying from your local small-scale fishery, you almost certainly getting fresh produce, that has been sustainably and responsibly sourced. At Dorset Shellfish for example, they use static crab pots for the crab and lobsters which allows them to sort the size of the live crab and lobster, and return unharmed any which are too small, or wrong species. The sea bass is caught by a rod and line, and again any undersized or the wrong species is returned to the ocean to live another day. At the same time, you are also supporting a local business in an industry which faces a plethora of challenges.
Caroline Bennett explains further: “There are a number of hurdles the small-scale fishers are up against. Modern food systems are wasteful and inefficient — they require large volumes of the same species, of the same size, in order to be processed mechanically. This in turn requires industrial vessels to target certain species, of a certain size, and in large volume, thus facilitating this wasteful and inefficient means of fishing. The small-scale fishers tend to catch a wider range of species in lower volumes and of varying sizes, making their fish inappropriate for the today’s industrial scale food processing systems.
“It is often suggested that the world can’t rely on the small-scale fishers to meet global demand, and yet, research shows this to be fallacy. We are therefore committed to providing the public with better access to the catch of these smallscale fishers, in the knowledge that used wisely, the small-scale fishers are able to meet demand.”