Lobster fisherman Scott Samson is one of many who has been left perplexed and frustrated by the apparent lack of lobsters in Jersey’s waters.
Earlier this week Don Thompson, the president of the Jersey Fishermen’s Association, said that rough seas and bad weather had led to the worst period of fishing for ‘12 to 15 years’.
Scott agrees, even going so far as to say that in the 20 years he has worked as a commercial fisherman, the past 12 months have been the toughest he has experienced.
‘These last 12 months have been absolutely terrible, probably the worst I’ve known,’ says the 41-year-old. ‘There don’t seem to be any lobsters about and with all these gales, it’s restricted the amount of fishing we can do.
‘Over the two months leading up to Christmas the lobster fishing just died and it hasn’t recovered yet. I think they must also be changing their shells and breeding at the moment.
‘But in the bad weather the lobsters don’t need to move anyway – they can hunker down in holes on the sea floor for weeks. They are scavengers so they can stay there and eat whatever passes by. It’s very frustrating.’
A fourth-generation seafarer, Scott’s father, grandfather and great-grandfather all fished commercially for lobsters and just like them, he is a native of Grève de Lecq – where he lives with his wife Dayna and their two children, Taylor (7) and Chloe (4).
Have there been times when he has wondered how to put bread on the table?
‘It does get to that point because you don’t know when you are going to go out to fish sometimes – the wait can be for weeks on end when there is bad weather. Luckily my wife works so that helps.
‘You also worry about the damage that might be caused to your gear in the storms.
‘Six or seven years ago the seas were really rough in the winter and a lot of my gear was destroyed – the pots are pretty strong but they can only take so much before they are crushed by the power of the sea.’
Like every seafarer worth their salt, he views the ocean as an unpredictable beast that can never be underestimated: ‘It’s mad, the sea, but although I’ve been out in force six winds before, gusting seven the odd time, you don’t want to be out there risking your life so you have to gauge it and if it’s too bad, you come in.’
Scott fishes up to six miles off Jersey’s coast and says members of the fishing fraternity will always come to one another’s aid out on the water, if needs be.
‘We all help each other out and most of us get on – you have to because you never know who you might need. I’ve responded to phone calls from other fishermen to help tow them back to port. It happens every now and again – everyone’s boat will break down occasionally and I’ve had to be towed in myself when my engine blew up a few years ago.’
It may seem like an age to Scott since the waters were calm, but when the sea is placid he will often spend up to eight hours a day fishing for lobsters and crabs in Banana Split, his bright yellow catamaran.
Although his patience has been tested by increasingly elusive lobsters, he enjoys the sense of anticipation when he peers into the pots he has hauled up from the sea floor.
‘You never know exactly what might be in the pots and when you catch a big lobster it’s a great feeling. Some of those big lobsters can be up to 40 or 50 years old.
‘Sometimes you might haul up pots with nothing in them at all and other times there will be three lobsters in a pot.’
Suffering a painful nip from a lobster’s pincer movement is, Scott says, par for the course.
‘You get the odd “squashed” finger, but as long as you know how to handle them, it’s fine. You have to grab them out of the pots from behind the head so that the claws are in front of your hand.’
From time to time octopuses will inadvertently invade Scott’s lobster pots, too.
‘I had two octopuses over the past year. They are not dangerous as such, but you have to grab them by the head and get them out as quick as you can, otherwise their suckers will stick to you and it’s really hard to get them off!
‘And if you’re not careful they will squirt their ink all over you, which is horrible stuff. Still, people do eat octopus.’
Scott’s love of the sea was kindled on family trips aboard his father’s fishing boat.
‘I used to go out on my dad’s fishing boat all the time – every weekend and every holiday. You just get bitten by the bug because there’s something about the ocean that draws you out there.’
Over the years he has caught many different types of shellfish, the biggest of which was a ten-pound chancre crab – ‘there’s loads of meat in them and all the hotels and cafés in Jersey can’t get enough of them in the summer’ – but he is no fan of culinary compositions of former crustaceans.
‘I don’t actually eat much lobster or crab. My wife likes it on the odd occasion but we’re not too fussed – and when you catch so many of the things, the last thing you want to do is eat one! Personally, I prefer a nice bit of steak on my plate.’
With his livelihood dependent on ensuring other Islanders can put lobster on their plates, Scott – a lifelong Manchester United fan – is hoping for a return to a high strike rate netting lobsters.
‘I’m hoping there will be calmer seas ahead to get back to catching lots of lobster again in the pots. I’ll never be a rich man doing this job, but as long as I can make a living I’m happy with that because job satisfaction is a massive part of enjoying life.’
YOU could excuse Jamie Price, the manager of Faulkner Fisheries’ shop in the Fish Market in Beresford Street, of feeling battered at the end of a working day.
‘I normally get up about 6 am and I’m down here before the market opens at 7.30 am,’ says Jamie. ‘The market closes at 5.30 pm and after cleaning down the premises, I usually get back home about 6.30 pm. By the time you’ve showered and eaten, it’s getting on for 9 pm and I’m often quite early to bed.’
He says he wouldn’t have it any other way.
‘There’s a great atmosphere working in the market – a much better one than, say, in a supermarket which can possibly be a bit robotic,’ says the 29-year-old, who has been working at Faulkner Fisheries for the past decade.
‘And there’s plenty of good-natured banter between the different fish shop sellers. We like to wind each other up, but we’re all friends.’
The 176-year-old Fish Market is open every day except Sunday and Jamie says Faulkner Fisheries always does a healthy trade throughout the week.
Traditionally, fish dishes were synonymous with the diet of Christians at the end of the working week, as many religious devotees refrained from eating animal flesh on a Friday – and in particular, on Good Friday. But does the phenomenon of ‘Fish Friday’ really exist today?
‘I’d say yes because a lot of people do like to buy and eat fish on a Friday. We’re always very busy on Mondays and Saturdays too, and our fish sell well throughout the week.’
The recent storms that have battered Jersey may not have been of Biblical proportions, but Jamie says they have affected the amount of fresh fish the shop has been able to sell – although not as much as you might expect.
‘We get our fish off the boats so if the fishermen can’t go out during the storms, it does affect us a bit. However, we always have fresh fish available for our customers to buy. If we get fish in on a Saturday but we can’t, for example, get fish in the following Wednesday because of storms, we make sure we get them in the next day.
‘So although the fresh fish stock got a little bit low during the bad weather, we still had some to sell.’
And Jamie says that when customers come to the counter, there is plenty of choice to satisfy their palates.
‘We probably sell somewhere between 15 to 20 types of fish. Bream, bass, salmon, cod and tuna are among the most popular. Most of our fish is from local waters and we also sell farmed salmon from Scotland, which is about the best salmon you can get. We import some of our bass and bream from Greece too.’
While many of their customers will buy in bulk and cook at home, he says others enjoy eating fresh fish on the go.
As such, Jamie and Conor cook some aquatic appetisers on site so they are ready to be eaten on the spot, including prawns, mussels and whelk. The shop also sells portions of Conga eel.
The eel, which can range from three- to ten-ft in length, is known to have been fished at least as far back as the 12th century and is a popular ingredient in soups. Traditionally the head is boiled in milk, with marigold petals and leaves added to the mixture.
‘Conger eel has a strong flavour and it is getting more popular with customers,’ adds Jamie, who – as you might imagine – is a dab hand at filleting fish.
I let it be known that I once went on a disastrous date in a Devon pub where fish was on the menu.
Perhaps understandably, the fish that lay limply on my plate had a gutted expression on its face, even though it had yet to go under the knife.
Regrettably, my rudimentary filleting skills meant that I was coughing up tiny bits of bone throughout the meal, while my date constantly asked me whether I was going to choke.
‘As long as you know what you are doing, you can fillet a fish pretty much any way you want,’ Jamie assures me as he takes a bream in his hand and indicates where best to apply the cuts with the knife.
Like great champagne, all the fish that Faulkner Fisheries sell are kept on ice.
‘We receive the fish in crates and then check the fish over and weigh them, before storing them in crates of ice in our big walk-in cooler, which we keep between 0 and -2 degrees Celsius.
‘I make three orders a week and although all the fish have a [sell-by] date of a week, we always sell all our fish well before then,’ adds Jamie, who developed a passion for seafood from his grandfather.
‘My granddad worked as a fisherman and I used to do shore fishing as a kid. I still go shore fishing all around the coast in Jersey, including up by St Catherine’s Breakwater and Elizabeth Castle.
‘And I’ve also got a little fishing boat called Sebastian that I use in my leisure time too. It’s nice to take the boat out to a quiet bay, turn off the engine and relax.’
