SHOW US YOUR MUSSELS
Rope-grown mussels are one of the most sustainable forms of seafood, and every year Gary Rawle harvests 500 tonnes along the Cornish coast
Gary Rawle harvests one of the most sustainable seafoods off the Cornish coast, although he never eats them himself…
It was a ragged piece of rope that inspired Gary Rawle to set up a mussel farm. He had left it dangling in the River Fowey while he was working at a salmon farm and, after several months, glossy black molluscs had settled up and down its length. “We had bucketloads,” he remembers. “I offered them to local restaurant owners and they kept asking for more.” And so Westcountry Mussels of Fowey was born as a small-scale grower in the river’s estuary.
Thirty years on and business is booming. No longer confined to the riverbed, Gary’s farm is based two miles off-shore in St Austell Bay, a ten-mile-wide inlet on Cornwall’s south coast. On the surface, the farm – the size of 70 football pitches – looks little more than a scattering of grey barrels, bobbing up and down in the waves. Far more spectacular is the surrounding scenery – sandy beaches interspersed with rugged caves. But beneath the surface are hundreds of ten-metre-long ropes, heavy with mussels, plunging deep towards the seabed.
It’s a crisp morning in early March – peak mussel reproduction season. Each shell will release 30 million young, which swim through the water in search of a place to call home. Of these, less than one per cent will settle, growing over 15 months into golf-ball-sized mussels for which Gary’s business has become famous locally. The wind is bracing as he makes his daily commute on a powerboat across the water to a larger boat anchored two miles out at sea.
‘Boat’ is an understatement for what looks like a floating factory, complete with conveyor belts and heavy industrial machinery. It’s on this vessel that Gary and his team of 12 harvest 500 tonnes of mussels a year – equating to 1.5 million portions of moules marinières. To do so, Gary clips a hydraulic winch to a rope of mussels, which snakes out of the water like a gnarly sea monster. With a clatter, the line is pulled through the teeth of a machine, which strips away the shellfish, before cleaning them and spitting them through a funnel into sacks on the deck. The boat will then take them to nearby Fowey.
Gary spent his childhood here – playing in the shallows, catching crabs and devising a plan to work on the water when he grew up. There was just one problem: he suffered from seasickness. “The next best thing was to work on a salmon farm,” he says. And so, aged 16, that’s what he did. Ten years later, he began to see signs of the environmental impact of intensive fish farming and and grew concerned about the chemicals being leached into the sea. “Looking back, it’s horrifying,” he says, “but we didn’t think much of it at the time.” Meanwhile, temperatures were rising as a result of climate change. “Salmon like the cold, but by the time I was in my 20s, the water was warming so quickly that many were dying. We had a few hot summers, which wiped the business out,” Gary adds.
Mussels, by contrast, are much more sustainable. Settling naturally on the ropes, they need no human intervention, food or chemicals to thrive. Nor do they require lighting or excessive energy, just fuel for the boat. As a result, they have been heralded as the holy grail of aquaculture – and one of the most environmentally friendly sources of protein. As well as requiring little from farmers in the
Mussels are more sustainable – settling naturally on ropes, they need no human intervention, food or chemicals to thrive
production process, the molluscs are ‘filter feeders’, with each shell cleaning up to 50 gallons of water in a day.
But mollusc farming can be challenging. Flooding, for example, can pollute rivers, leading to mussels with high levels of E. coli. That’s why, five years ago, Gary faced his seasickness and moved offshore as pollution is less of a risk in open water. Lifting the crop from the seabed also ensures predators, such as starfish, can’t reach it. Still, the farm acts as a ‘natural reef ’ and a haven for marine life – mackerel, sardines, cod and crabs are all regular visitors. Local fishermen now praise this strain of aquaculture, but Gary says they weren’t always on side: “There was concern at first that the farm would look unsightly with plastic sheeting everywhere, but the barrels are only visible on the calmest of days and appear as specks on the ocean. Also many people laughed at us when we said we would be offshore. They never thought it would work because the area is so exposed, and the waves can be huge.” The rope-grown method is used a lot in Scotland, where islands provide shelter, he explains, but here, where the English Channel meets the Celtic Sea, strong currents and inclement weather mean that the entire farm could be swept away by a single storm. To protect the mussels, Gary and his team are on the water rain or shine, hauling ropes and keeping buoys in order – and, despite the occasional storm, the farm has kept on floating.
Warmer sea temperatures, of around 10°C in winter and 18°C in summer, mean Cornish mussels grow at double the rate of their Scottish counterparts, and Gary says his crop has never been better. “Meat from sea-grown mussels is much bigger, while the shells are thinner,” he says. Yet he fears climate change could lead to unsettled
times. “As the ocean absorbs carbon, it becomes more acidic, making it harder for mussels to build solid shells,” he warns. “Rising temperatures also encourage algal blooms, which can poison the crop.”
Cornwall’s crystal waters are perfect at the moment, as shown by the piles of fat shells being shipped back to shore. From Fowey Harbour, they’ll be packed off to restaurants, including those belonging to Rick Stein. Jamie Oliver and Hugh Fearnley-whittingstall are also fans, having cooked with them on their television programmes. Yet no customers are more valued than Sam and Emma Sixton, owners of Sam’s, a popular haunt in Fowey. Before Westcountry Mussels started up, they sourced shellfish from Wales but, as Gary’s first customers, have remained loyal. “People come from all over the world and say they’re the best mussels they’ve ever had,” Sam says. Gary attributes this to the fact that, unlike bed-grown varieties, ropegrown mussels aren’t gritty because they feed from the top ten metres of the ocean currents, which are rich in nutrients.
Gary, however, doesn’t like mussels – a source of much amusement to the restaurateurs he supplies – and has watched our changing eating habits with interest. “Thirty years ago, they were seen as a poor man’s food, but now they’re highly sought after,” he says. As our marine ecosystems become more fragile, mussels offer an opportunity for shellfish lovers to enjoy seafood sustainably. Boiled with white wine, garlic and plenty of butter, they’re a true taste of the West Country. Gary doesn’t know what he’s missing.
“People from all over the world say they’re the best mussels they’ve ever had”