The lost fish of Doggerland

Oyster farmer Willie Athill on his plans to repopulate a sea gasping for breath

January has blown in on a cold north wind this week, bringing on its wings, the last of woodcock, their beady black eyes in our hedgerows, and feeding on the worms at night.

I was out on Blakeney Point yesterday morning at daybreak, the angry sea separated a beautiful spit of high sand dunes and marram grass. A thousand grey seals howled, and snarled as they protected their pups amongst the dunes where I sat. Waders in their thousands screamed at a peregrine that patrolled the foreshore. Ten thousand geese roosting on the sand lifted before the big tide, then flew inland in squadrons to feed on the sugar beet tops. I was home there.

In the New York Times not long ago there was an article that asked ‘Are shellfish good for you?’ It pointed out that shellfish — specifically bivalves like oysters are full of vitamin B12 zinc, iron and something called Omega 3. They are relatively short lived so aren’t full of mercury, unlike those beautiful bluefin tuna. And the bete noir of the sea, all that micro-plastic, just gets spat out by oysters. Oysters farming and mussel farming are the most sustainable and low impact of all the aquaculture models. Neither of them need to be fed on anchovies, krill, sardines and all the other keystone species that Russian and Chinese trawlers are sucking up, depriving whales of their grub, just to feed the likes of farmed salmon. And Oysters, unlike farmed salmon, don’t need antibiotics, nor do they need steroids. Oysters just get on with life, filtering seawater for all the nutrients they need to get fat on. They are little heroes of the ocean deep.