Simpler Times on Atlantic Voyager
Today, like most days as a filmmaker in Cornwall, we were playing make-belief. We were to be north cornish crab fishermen spending our days on an open deck collecting and loading pots in secretly guarded wreck and reef sites across the North Shore. We arrived at a harbour lit by the faint blue glow of early sunrise. Most of the boats were still moored up, unlikely to move for weeks or even months. Fishermen in the South West almost exclusively rely on the restaurant trade to keep their business afloat. For many, this meant an abrupt stop to fishing as soon as the pandemic hit, with no restaurants there was nobody to buy their fish! For others, this offered an opportunity to turn the industry on its head.
Carrying everything we would need for a day out at sea we made our way along the pier to find Chris Lowe, our captain for the day. We heard him before we saw him “hello boys, we’re down here” he boomed in a thick Cornish accent. Chris stood waving atop a twin-hulled 20ft fishing vessel named Atlantic Voyager. Chris climbed the ladder to greet us. He was everything we wanted and more. Bright yellow wellies poked out from under a vibrant yellow, dungaree style, fisherman’s overall. He wore a blue t-shirt leaving his arms free to work and boasted a thick moustache above an always present smile. “Put these on, even if you’re a good swimmer they’re a must if you’re on the boat” he handed us two life jackets and gave us a quick airline-esque safety briefing. After learning that our escape roots were any side of the boat that we pleased, we climbed aboard.
“This is my son Ben, he’s the real captain of this boat, I’m just helping him during the crisis. Normally I run wildlife and shark diving tours from my own boat docked over there”. Ben waved over from the helm and then redirected his attention to navigating our exit from the harbour. The sea was millpond and other than a few faraway shadows no clouds hung in the sky. Standing at the front of the boat Chris walked us through the day “So we’re heading out to collect all our gear from our inshore sites to move them into deeper water. Crabs and lobster don’t like warm water so we’ve found ourselves having to fish the deeper and deeper waters each year where it’s cooler”.
The journey out to the first pot was steady and still. Chris took the time to give us the full wildlife tour, a whole summer without his day job had him keen to tell us all he knew. He pointed out jellyfish in all shapes and sizes, from Blue Fires to Barrel. Straight-winged fulmars flew by, their wings inches from the sea’s surface and a confetti of herring gulls hung in continuous suspension behind the boat. Nearing our first set of pots Chris pointed to the horizon and smiled “dolphins, about 30 of them I reckon, Common dolphins” the water was bubbling with fins and jumping fish, the occasional glance of soft yellow was a sure sign of the Common species.
Chris and Ben handled the pots in choreographed chaotic perfection. Chris would hook the marker buoy and feed the rope through a winch, Ben manned the winch whilst keeping one hand on the steering wheel through the side window of the cabin. As a pot came to the surface Ben would empty the catch and Chris would re-bait and stack each pot for re-entry.
Lobster pots aren’t designed to only catch lobsters and crabs, life of all sorts and sizes come up in their grasp to be kept as bait or released back to the blue. One of the hauls brought up the dark grey wriggling body of a Conger Eel, for this pot the boys simply tipped the contents onto the deck. “You gotta be careful of these” Chris began, “I’ve got four toes on one of my feet because of a conger, they’ll take off anything they can fit in their mouth”. We decided not to ask how the eel got so close to his bare feet, it seemed like a strange set of circumstances that could lead to such an event. “Ah, this is what we call a berried hen” Chris held up a bright blue lobster with a thick tail, her underside glistening with thousands of black eggs. “It’s illegal to keep berried hens if we catch one we simply put them straight back in the sea.” Chris placed the lobster in the water and continued “we also work alongside the Cornish Lobster Hatchery in Padstow to release thousands of baby lobsters every year, it’s great fun and the lobster fishing has never been better”.
The cabin at the front was small, big enough for two people at a push but offered perfect shade from the midday sun. Ben sat with one hand on the wheel and the other tucked beneath the strap of his yellow dungaree overalls, only moving occasionally to pick up his fifth coffee of the day. “You see, the thing is, there’s nobody out here telling anyone how much crab to fish. If I wanted I could pick up 1,000 pots and spend all day out here and keep fishing until I drop dead. We’re getting less and less crab inshore which is partly due to warming seas but who's to say it’s not from unrestrained potting?” he paused “The problem is you have people like us who fish small boats and are restricted by this but we fish enough to pay for our house, our boat and our holiday a year but then you have the million-pound factory vessels who put 3,000 pots out and fish day and night to sell to the mass market. It’s just not comparable. We are sustainable and they are fishing until there is none left”. Ben shouted to his dad and they began the last haul!
The back of the boat was starting to look more like a floating aquarium than a nearshore fishing vessel. Lobster and crabs filled giant blu tubs, their claws held shut by elastic bands. A large hose pumped cool saltwater through each tub to keep the catch fresh. Now and again the hose would come loose and writhe across the deck spraying high pressured water in every direction, a terrifying event for any filmmaker. Chris went to a tub and picked out a large crab with a leg span over fives times the width of the body. “This is a spider crab, it’s the majority of what we catch at this time of year. It’s funny, nobody in the U.K. eats them, the Spanish and the French love 'em but nobody in the U.K. wants them so we just throw them back! The same can be said about Pollock, we catch heaps of them but the U.K. just don’t want much of them. They tried to rebrand the thing but it never got around to anything. It’s just sad how much we’ve got around here that people just don’t want to eat”. It's hard to not to notice how much food there actually is in these seas if we were to have an open mind.
After reaching the Camel Estuary the boat turned back for its return journey, we passed sea caves and free-standing stone pillars whose waters rippled from undersea current. Ben came out holding a line decorated with flamboyant lures “the tides about to go slack which is perfect for catching Pollock”, he attached the line to a machine on the back of the boat “this is called an automatic jigging machine, it’s an automated fishing rod of sorts that pulls in the fish when it feels a tug” Ben stopped and looked up at the camera “would you mind not filming me bait the hooks, these lures are a secret project of mine and I don’t want nobody else finding out about them”, we lowered the lens and he lowered the line. Barely a moment had passed before the hooks were at the surface and the line was being reeled in. Five large fish the size of a man’s arm were attached to each hook, the fish was similar to a cod but deeper and more golden. The father-son team jumped into yet another well-rehearsed movement soon the line was back out the end of the boat and five fresh pollack were alive in a tub of fresh seawater. This continued for the best part of an hour before the tide began to change. Ample time to fill two large barrels full with Pollack.
Pulling into the harbour Chris began to stack and count the days catch. “Seventy-Five!” he said with a big grin on his face “we got seventy-five lobsters today, at ten pounds a lobster that’s not a bad catch at all” he smiled at Ben “don’t forget the 40kg of Pollack as well” Ben replied. Fishermen like Chris and Ben have seen a shift in the industry over the last three months. With restaurants closed and supermarket trade decreased fishermen have looked to their community to sell fish. Supporting these small scale fishermen is much more than just an interesting experience. Their methods are highly selective and often only catch the fish they are looking to land with very little bycatch (the trapping and catching of unwanted fish that are discarded dead). Most fish you find in the supermarket have been flown or shipped across entire seas, caught using unsustainable methods and are often weeks less fresh than a more local option. Many organisations see the support of these small scale fishermen as a key to driving sustainability and local empowerment in these key areas of local marine management. The Cornwall Wildlife Trust, who created The Good Seafood Guide, has been working extensively to help cornish fishermen by connecting local customers to their local fisherman through an online database and have teamed up with us at Carrick Roads Studios to make a short film about the issue. Other people have set up simple Facebook pages for their local area, something that’s seen a lot of success.
COVID has opened many peoples eyes to the fragility of large sprawling supply chains and reliance on multinational corporations. The pandemic has almost forced us to go back to a simpler way of living from a time not so long ago. This could be a brilliant silver lining for the oceans around us as it reconnects thousands of people with where their food comes from and gives a voice to the people who supply it.
Contact Chris Lowe for fresh Newquay fish: 07860927833