Brilliant Bivalves

There’s a small oyster and mussel restaurant on the edge of the harbour in Falmouth, Cornwall, tucked down a narrow alleyway next to a chandlery and opposite a sailmakers.  You’d never know the alley was there if you hadn’t had the occasion to go shopping for marine hardware bits in the past, and if you go more than five steps past the closed door you could easily fall into the dark waters of the harbour. 

It serves nothing but shellfish.  They only accept cash.  It’s one of the most highly regarded food destinations in south Cornwall and you have to book well in advance.  A few of us got lucky last weekend and scored a cancellation, allowing us to enjoy some oysters (the final four that they had left) in celebration of a project that we completed last year for Hog Island Oyster Co in California. 

It set me to thinking; despite being an island nation with strong, deep, ties to the seas that surround us, we British have developed some funny attitudes to shellfish. 

Shortly after being commissioned to write the web copy for Hog Island’s new website I gave a friend-of-a-friend called Nick a lift to a stag party a few hours drive away.  He got in the car after work on the Friday and we got talking, and within a few minutes he told me about his PhD doctorate thesis, studying consumer attitudes to shellfish consumption in the UK.  The shellfish industry plays an important part of the Cornish economy, with £10 million in landings in 2013, however the vast majority of its output is shipped abroad to markets in mainland Europe.  I went to Falmouth Oyster Festival at the end of 2013 as part of my initial research and of all the stalls serving food, there were only two serving oysters and they had pretty short queues.  There were plenty of foodie types wandering around, but few prepared to put their money where their mouths were and actually eat oysters at an oyster festival.  Why?  When did the British public forget that they enjoyed shellfish?  Why has Nick’s research found that so many people feel excluded from “posh” shellfish, consider it a risky choice and have little to no idea of how shellfish are cultivated and harvested?

We used to eat loads of oysters in centuries past – in Victorian London oysters were viewed as far from exclusive and were more commonly consumed as a cheap source of protein amongst the poor and destitute of the capital’s East End.  But then, as in many other oyster-rich regions around the world, natural resources were over-harvested and stocks collapsed.  By the time you get around to the modern day, when oysters are carefully cultivated and harvested, the post war mechanisation of food production and a mid-century desire to be able to mass-produce and sell us our food frozen or in tins did the British public’s attitude to consuming raw shellfish no favours.  That is changing, but slowly, and I still believe we’re an awfully long way behind mainland Europe, American and Australasia.  It makes me thankful that I grew up in a house with a shucking knife in the cutlery drawer (in a special box of tools labelled "seafood and eat it").

But I digress; prior to going off on an enormous tangent I had every intention of sharing with you some of the incredible oyster facts that I learnt whilst working on the Hog Island project.  I did a lot of background reading, digging through my collection of Steinbeck for references to oysters and learning an enormous amount from Rowan Jacobsen’s incredibly well written (and witty) “A Geography of Oysters”.  Did you know, for example, that oysters are one of the few organisms that actually lose the ability to move and see as they develop?  Yup, as larvae, oysters are able to move (by fluttering tiny cilia hairs) and differentiate light and dark (i.e. up and down) using a primitive “eye” – both of which they immediately devolve once they have found their spot and cemented themselves to their preferred substrate.  Once locked in place they have no further need for such trivial things as seeing and moving, and retaining both of these abilities simply diverts energy away from their chief tasks of eating and reproducing.  The lack of such recognisable requirements for a regular life as eyes and legs should really make them modern society’s ideal food source, as there go most of our qualms about eating a sentient organism. 

Oysters are also very good for the marine environment:  In order to eat, bivalves such as oysters filter seawater across their gills and filter out any plankton to eat.  Oysters can filter as much as fifty gallons a day, so the argument for them actually improving an ecosystem is a very strong and scientifically proven one.  Oyster farms are environmentally benign and are high up on most lists of sustainable seafood.  Before I keep on writing and do myself out of any more work, I probably ought direct you to the Science and Policy pages of the Hog Island site, where you can read plenty more about sustainable shellfish farming and their research into ocean acidification.  And if you’re hungry to get more brass tacks on bivalves then check out “A Geography of Oysters”.

I hope that the next time you have the opportunity to hold an oyster up to your lips and tip your head back you recall this post and choose to do so.  I certainly will, if for no other reason than because they TASTE OF THE SEA, and I bloody love the sea.

All images courtesy and copyright of Hog Island Oyster Co.

        

Rocketeering

The house that I used to live in was, without doubt, the best place to go if you wanted to know what the weather or swell was going to be doing for the next few days in North Cornwall; we worked, breathed and slept the forecast and it was normally displayed on at least one screen in the living area, and not because we surfed:  My housemates founded and run Cornish Rock Tors Ltd, an outdoor activity company specialising in coasteering and sea-kayaking, and are masters of reading weather forecasts because of the central role that it plays in operating their business.  

Coasteering is the pursuit of exploring a largely inaccessible stretch of coastline from the water with a guide: swimming, traversing across the base of cliffs, going in and out of coves and caves and, of course, jumping from the rocks into the water.  It's a journey involving many different disciplines and challenges, and has become an enormously popular summer activity around the south and west coasts of the UK.  My friends were one of the first providers to offer coasteering as an activity alongside sea-kayaking and climbing;  they swam the coast, plumb-lining the water depths beneath safe jumps, measured the effects of the swell and tides, and explored the multitude of caves with waterproof torches and glow-sticks.  It's a strictly controlled activity with a licensing body and some full-on insurance requirements, and as such it demands the utmost professionalism from guides.  That is why it is such a shame that when coasteering is featured in the national press the article is often beneath an attention-grabbing and sensationalist headline that does more to damage the industry through negative associations rather then applaud it for its stringent safety standards.  Tomb-stoning this is not.  Planned, assessed, controlled (as far as you can in the natural environment) and led by experienced and qualified local guides, it is.  

I recently headed out on a coasteering session with Cornish Rock Tors, the first time that I've been out with them in several years, with my camera rig in-tow to see what sort of imagery I could capture.  The stretch of coastline where they operate is truly stunning on a summer day (although I'm heavily biased because home is where the heart is) and never more so than when viewed from the water - a perspective that not many people ordinarily get to experience. 

I asked Jon (CRT's Head Guide) to wave to me from the top of this jump.  He misheard and instead pulled out his party-trick, this enormous back-flip.  Jon is an incredibly experienced guide and has perfected this "stunt" through a great deal of time spent training in a pool, so don't try and copy him.   

A moment of calm in the sea caves.

Cornwall looks positively Caribbean when the sun shines, with beautifully clear and turquoise water.

Whilst I was coasteering a kayaking group paddled past so I swam out into the bay to get some photos of them too.  They're able to travel further in a half-day session and access some really beautiful and remote coves and beaches further up the coast.  

If you're interested in exploring the Cornish coast from the water, learning more about the marine environment and perhaps jumping from a few rocks along the way then give Cornish Rock Tors a call. They offer guided coasteering, ecoasteering (with an emphasis on the marine environment), sea kayaking, wild swimming and climbing around the Polzeath and Port Isaac area, Cornwall.  

Upcycling

“So I don’t think that I like grease and sparks quite as much as I like knitting and baking” Kate said as she handed over a box containing the various pieces of her vintage ladies shopper bike.  She’d found the dilapidated Hercules Balmoral online and proceeded to disassemble and strip the entire bike with the intention of refurbishing it, but now it looked like the task of reassembly was going to fall to me.  I took the opportunity to break down and rebuild my own bike, which had been my Dad’s mountain bike that he used to ride alongside me when I was a child, and come the start of the summer we had two good-as-new bicycles.  Her bike looked classic in black with a brown Brookes saddle and a wicker basket; mine looked like Frankenbike in green and black, with various boxes bolted on and a rack to hold my surfboard hanging off one side.

Kate and I used to live an hour's drive apart, she on the south coast of Cornwall and me about 45 miles away on the north coast.  It seemed like a nice idea for our first roll out last summer to be an overnight bicycle camping trip leaving from my home and travelling to hers, pedalling the coast roads and the cycle trails and stopping off at beaches along the way.  We’d upcycled our bicycles and we upcycled an awful lot of steep hills as we wound our way down the Cornish coast.  What follows is a photographic journal of our trip, shot entirely on 35mm film by Kate and myself:

We should've caught the ferry at high tide.

Long hills and lots of luggage.

Coasting downhill to the beach.

The Upcycling chalkboard.

Kate checking out the distance to our campsite, just the other side of that far headland.

Cyclo-shortcuts to avoid the holiday traffic. 

 Camp.

Washing the road off with a quick sunset bellyboard session. 

Fuel. 

We stopped at backroad farm-stalls to buy fruit and lunch provisions. 

 Two and a half foot at eight seconds with a light nor-westerly wind.  I probably needn't have bothered hauling my surfboard along with me if I'm honest.

A polite reminder to myself for all of the "up" bits.

Can you overflow a bike?

It turns out that Kate's house sits at quite some elevation.

The Last Lane.

The Finish Line.

A big thanks to the team at Babes&Bikes in Wadebridge for sorting out our gears and brakes (and giving my probably quite questionable workmanship the necessary once-over) before we set off on our journey, and to various colleagues of ours for the help and advice that they gave whilst ridiculing how heavy I'd made my bike.

The Blue Blanquillo

Easily recognisable due to their streamlined bodies and blue coloration, with darker stripes running along their bodies and a white belly, the blue blanquillo is a truly distinctive fish.  Ordinarily found swimming alone in Indo-Pacific waters, lurking around coral reefs near the sea floor, it's remarkable to see one jumping out of the water in front of such a decidedly Cornish backdrop…

White surfboards can be stunning and certainly have their place, but I don't half love it when somebody goes for a beautiful resin tint (as is the case here) or spray job and gives their precious sled a name and a personality.  Surfboards are works of craft and art that we spend great deals of time with and money on, so it seems appropriate that when we get one with character we celebrate that.  Decorate it, name it, cherish it…and throw buckets with it.  

Nick Holden of the National Trust did and does with his Blue Blanquillo, making more than most would of a close-out under the Cornish cliffs.

Be A Haymaker

"When the sun shines, make hay.  Which is to say: take time when time comes, lest time steals away"

The Path Is Made By Walking

Walking, hiking, tramping, yomping…  It's the oldest form of human transport, the most accessible, and the one that can still offer us the easiest escape from our busy lives.  It's remarkable how the further you walk away from the nearest car park the fewer people you see.  You don't have to walk very far at all, but modern society is so bound to four wheels, itineraries and mobile phone reception that very few people take those extra few steps and leave the crowds behind.

My Dad had been trying to give me a new pair of walking boots for my birthday for years, but I always asked if he could please give me something more immediately useful.  How little did I know?  I was making do with a pair of his old boots (treads that had done about 1600 miles in the two years that he wore them before passing them on to me - my old man walks a lot) until last summer I relented and he took me to be fitted for a "proper" pair of walking boots.  Little did I realise that he wasn't just giving me a pair of walking boots for my birthday; he was giving me a little bit of freedom, an easy escape and an open ticket to the entire 630 miles of the South West Coast Path (which runs right past my door) as well as any headland or hilltop that I fancied enjoying the view from the top of.  It's as easy as putting one foot in front of the other and letting your body follow along behind, but you'll be amazed at where it can take you.

Don't Buy It, Build It: My Yellow Submarine

Surfing and making photographs are two pretty defining passions of mine, and every now and then they inevitably cross over. 

But, if I’m honest, I’d always choose to be in the sea rather than stood on the beach watching it.  With the cheapest commercially available waterhousing for a decent camera costing at least a grand (I’m not talking about swimming out with a go-pro here) it would seem that water-based surf photography is a game for an ever-shrinking number of professionals or those with a hefty hobby budget.  I mean, how many jobbing photographers these days have at least a grand burning a hole in their pockets for a piece of kit that they’d be lucky to see generate a few hundred quid in sold images?  

Not me.  So I made one.

Measure twice and make a model.

I ended up making two waterhousings actually.  I have long held on to the philosophy that if you’re able to do something yourself then you should do so – not just as a way of saving money or acquiring something that you couldn’t otherwise afford, but as a means of learning new skills and challenging oneself.  Perhaps it’s just that I have a problem with writing to-do lists and not sitting still, born of an awareness that time is a precious commodity. 

I started out researching waterhousings for surf photography – commonly known as “splash” housings and different to their deep-sea diving counterparts.  I had the choice of fiberglass and resin as construction materials (the honours project for my degree involved the use of advanced composite materials for marine engineering applications, so I was comfortable with that option) or folded and welded aluminium which I'm slightly less au-fait with.  I went with the aluminium challenge.  

A photographer who runs a gallery at the end of my street, Nick Wapshott, kindly lent me his commercially bought waterhousing overnight to take a look at, and I asked a few questions of Tim Nunn (editor of Wavelength Magazine and professional surf-lensman) who gave me some advice on how to trigger the shutter mechanism.  This was the biggest issue – I had no problems making a waterproof box of some description to put my camera in, but finding a way of pressing the button without springing a leak was a challenge.  As with most of my projects, I started out with fairly modest intentions until I realised how much time and effort I was investing and then figured that I might as well do a proper job.

I measured up my cameras (I shoot with the slightly puffed-up digital version of an older analogue camera and they’re such similar sizes that I wanted to make a housing that they would both fit and function in) and made cardboard models.  Friends and acquaintances kindly rummaged in the scrap bins of their workshops and garages, and from a range of sources I ended up with some odd lengths of aluminium tubing that I could machine into lens ports, a bigger piece that might fit a camera, and some offcuts of thin-guage sheet aluminium that I could fold into a box. 

Now, I like to think that I’m fairly handy but I definitely know my limits and one of those is TIG welding aluminium and another one is precision milling.  Luckily for me, just down the raod from me on Bradfords Quay in Wadebridge are two companies who specialise in fettling metal:  Daften Die-Casting specialise in precision aluminium work and Grant and Kevin there took my crude CAD designs and machined the face plates for my housings with the incredibly fiddly grooves for the o-ring seals.  I then delivered a box of bits to Will Irons at MGC Engineering a couple of doors along for the guys there to TIG weld together for me.  Where I would undoubtably have blown holes in the thin aluminum they executed seamless joints that are not only functional, but beautiful in that functional raw metalwork sort of way.

The MGC magicians worked wonders with welding.

I now had two containers that looked a lot like camera housings.  I took them back to Daftens where they were powdercoated bright yellow because if you’re going to make a submarine then it really ought to be a yellow one, right?  I’m sure that there’s a functional reason for marine submersible equipment often being this colour but I don’t need to know about it.

The "Soucoupe" and "Jacqui" nearing completion.

I sourced some thick, clear acrylic and had it cut to fit the face plates and ports then got back at the handles of a lathe and surprised myself at my ability to actually work accurately when I turn my mind to it, turning down the tubing into lens ports to accept my 50mm prime lens.  A fisheye lens would require a domed port, something that there is no way I could produce, so I settled for the fact that I would be shooting from slightly further away from the action and capturing a realistic point of view of what the human eye would normally see.

I stayed late at Otter Surfboards one Friday and mixed up a small batch of epoxy glue to nervously assemble the faceplates and ports, horribly aware that just one tiny smudge of resin on the lens port would bin the entire project.  Finally, to solve my switch concern, I found a company that produces housings for underwater dive cameras and scientific survey equipment (Greenaway Marine) and ordered a simple mechanical switch from them that I could machine to fit my housing and camera.  I assembled everything and then, in early December, took one of the empty containers for a swim in the waves, relieved that it didn’t fill up with seawater and drag me down to the seabed like an anchor.  I then put a roll of film in my analogue camera and took that out, realising just what surf photographers would have had to go through in the days before the digital revolution – swimming back to the beach every thirty-six shots to take the whole business apart and change the film must have been hard work: Thirty-six shots really doesn’t last very long in the sea.

Then the “weather” arrived, and the sea was near enough off-limits for any sane attempts at water photography for weeks on end.  Until this week.  Torn between making up for a lot of lost wave-riding opportunities and testing my handiwork, I tried my best to strike a balance in between actually doing some work.  Having surfed on one day with great waves and beautiful flat, grey, wintery light that looked as cold as it was, I returned to the following spot with my housemate Ben the following day with my digital camera nervously ensconced in it’s (hopefully) waterproof yellow case.  With more than thirty-six exposures to play with, I think that in between swimming against a rip like a river, wearing some monstrously thick wedges on my head and getting bounced off the seabed a lot, I got some alright shots for a trial run.

Here below are some of the results:

Under a pitching lip.

Foam textures.

Scratching over a lump.

Difficult conditions for surfing and shooting.

Benny dodged this barrel and tore into a massive turn just as the whitewater engulfed me.  He's been kicking himself ever since for not tucking himself in there.

The lefts here are normally not much good.  

Not on this day though.

Pitching