January 17th 2008
it starts of course
with the finished product.
nothing starts with the 1st.
Nothing. The end
is first. Always.
There is no beginning
unless the end
has been reached. First.
Ed Dorn (A Theory of Truth / The North Atlantic Turbine)
Sunart oakwoods are what they are because (among other factors like high rainfall) of the southern ocean’s heat borne here from the Gulf Stream, along the North Atlantic Drift, travelling thousands of miles, cooling a little on the way to invigorate our coastlines. These gloomy days, the Drift is perhaps threatened by icemelt entering the Atlantic & moved south by Greenland Sea currents. A cooling of the North Atlantic Drift could have strange & unguessed effects on the oakwoods, with temperatures perhaps falling by 5 degrees; though there may be increased rainfall, which might or might not counteract the drop in temperature.
The ecosystems we share with ocean current & climate are as fragile as wrens' eggs. Last spring at Aird Tobha the crofter was piking loads of the sea’s weeds from the foreshore into his trailer for the potato crop on his sandy soil, as Highlanders have done for generations; six hundred cartloads for a small croft each spring not being unusual. The weed in question was a Laminaria (digitata) which I’ve taken myself in smaller quantities for drying & adding to stock for soup. It’s every bit as good as the Japanese variety Laminaria saccharina which can be bought now at great cost in delis & “health food” shops. This saccharina is found here too, but is less common. There’s another Laminaria – bulbosa, that I’ve not found, appearing as it does only at equinoctial low tides & which Fraser Darling describes as “rather like coarse tripe turned inside out”. The Laminarias are also the chosen delicacy of sea urchins, whose skeletons, or fragments of, are washed up on all the open Atlantic shores here, common wherever the Atlantic Drift licks the shallows. These graceful creatures have an exoskeleton no larger than the size of a small apple, covered in spines & deep purple or pink. The mouths of urchins are underneath the skeleton & have five beak-like teeth for nothing much other than scraping seaweed.
If the North Atlantic Drift were to cool further, or divert slightly because of wind, what would become of these creatures, who depend on its warmth; what would happen to their food-source & my stock?
Build a better mouse trap, they say. At Aird Tobha, what I took to be a fish hatchery (it’s that too) turns out to be breeding sea urchins. They have twenty or thirty of both Paracentrotus lividus, the purple sea urchin & Echinus esculentus, the “edible” sea urchin. Edible here refers to us humans eating urchins, not in any Swiftian sense, but the sea creatures; though in Brittany, the urchin of choice is the Paracentrotus, (oursin violet) which is lightly boiled in plenty of salt water for two minutes, then cracked & eaten like a boiled egg. The purpose at Aird Tobha, though is not culinary, but for urchins’ scavenging qualities.
it starts of course
with the finished product.
nothing starts with the 1st.
Nothing. The end
is first. Always.
There is no beginning
unless the end
has been reached. First.
Ed Dorn (A Theory of Truth / The North Atlantic Turbine)
Sunart oakwoods are what they are because (among other factors like high rainfall) of the southern ocean’s heat borne here from the Gulf Stream, along the North Atlantic Drift, travelling thousands of miles, cooling a little on the way to invigorate our coastlines. These gloomy days, the Drift is perhaps threatened by icemelt entering the Atlantic & moved south by Greenland Sea currents. A cooling of the North Atlantic Drift could have strange & unguessed effects on the oakwoods, with temperatures perhaps falling by 5 degrees; though there may be increased rainfall, which might or might not counteract the drop in temperature.
The ecosystems we share with ocean current & climate are as fragile as wrens' eggs. Last spring at Aird Tobha the crofter was piking loads of the sea’s weeds from the foreshore into his trailer for the potato crop on his sandy soil, as Highlanders have done for generations; six hundred cartloads for a small croft each spring not being unusual. The weed in question was a Laminaria (digitata) which I’ve taken myself in smaller quantities for drying & adding to stock for soup. It’s every bit as good as the Japanese variety Laminaria saccharina which can be bought now at great cost in delis & “health food” shops. This saccharina is found here too, but is less common. There’s another Laminaria – bulbosa, that I’ve not found, appearing as it does only at equinoctial low tides & which Fraser Darling describes as “rather like coarse tripe turned inside out”. The Laminarias are also the chosen delicacy of sea urchins, whose skeletons, or fragments of, are washed up on all the open Atlantic shores here, common wherever the Atlantic Drift licks the shallows. These graceful creatures have an exoskeleton no larger than the size of a small apple, covered in spines & deep purple or pink. The mouths of urchins are underneath the skeleton & have five beak-like teeth for nothing much other than scraping seaweed.
If the North Atlantic Drift were to cool further, or divert slightly because of wind, what would become of these creatures, who depend on its warmth; what would happen to their food-source & my stock?
Build a better mouse trap, they say. At Aird Tobha, what I took to be a fish hatchery (it’s that too) turns out to be breeding sea urchins. They have twenty or thirty of both Paracentrotus lividus, the purple sea urchin & Echinus esculentus, the “edible” sea urchin. Edible here refers to us humans eating urchins, not in any Swiftian sense, but the sea creatures; though in Brittany, the urchin of choice is the Paracentrotus, (oursin violet) which is lightly boiled in plenty of salt water for two minutes, then cracked & eaten like a boiled egg. The purpose at Aird Tobha, though is not culinary, but for urchins’ scavenging qualities.
The plan, with the aid of the millions of eggs these urchins produce, is to stock waters around farmed salmon cages, where they will eat particles of fish food which have escaped the salmon in such large quantities, that together with their excreta, make the seas murky for divers. The urchins will also be fed seaweed, Laminaria & Alaria (probably esculenta, used until recently here & in Ireland in soups – I know this as oarweed) which will be bred specifically for this purpose.
All this mouse trapping activity is of course about financial feasibility. We like to eat salmon, but there’s too many of us, & salmon increasingly move towards extinction; no longer swimming inshore “thick enough to walk on” like a huge flock of underwater passenger pigeons. We invent then the farming of salmon, but the salmon cages pollute the seas. We breed urchins to clean the ocean around fish farms. To help the urchins on, sea vegetables are bred. This could be “viable on a commercial scale”: urchins & weeds sold to fish farms, salmon sold to supermarket.
I’m not sure where this cycle leads; if urchins, Laminaria & Alaria can be eaten by us, (& in harder times were) where might that leave the salmon & their farmers if we all took to eating them. How would Tesco market small purple spiny creatures & sea vegetables that would be pungent in a very short time from harvest? How long before we need to clean up after urchins? What will happen to fish, urchin, sea weeds & oak woods if the North Atlantic Drift cools & our climate with it?
The story of the tree surviving because it is too crooked, gnarled & cracked to be of any use to the carpenter also possibly applies to sea creatures. It seems they’ll only survive our predations if they are inedible to us.
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FISH PRICES
Hake 60p-£7.50; plaice 60p-£2.50; cod £2-£3.40; lemon sole £1; whiting 20p-£1.40; sole £7.40-£14; roker 60p-£2.20; John Dory 50p; coley £1.20-£1.40; red mullet 60p-£4 (kg);megrim £3.50-£6; ling £1.50-£1.80 (kg).
As ever, monks (£2-£3.50) & witches (£3) everywhere.
Boats: Provider, Gratitude, Bountiful, Just Reward, Ocean Bounty. Also landing fish: Avocet & Osprey III.
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