Day boat fish means the fish was caught that day by fishermen who went out fishing and returned that same day. This ensures you get the freshest catch straight to your door for best quality, greater nutritional value and longer shelf life than the average fish you get from supermarkets (which have a much longer supply chain).
Everything is sustainably caught, delivered fresh and suitable for freezing. We're dedicated to sourcing seafood responsibly, right from the British Isles. We've got a solid relationship with fishermen we trust and who use low-impact methods we have seen for ourselves!
Our produce is 90% wild, caught using;
Hand diving - our scallops are picked from the seabed by hand, by brave, committed divers in the Isle of Mull and Brixham. This means minimum disturbance to the seabed enabling stocks and the wider ecosystem to continue to thrive, unlike the devastating impact of dredging the seabed.
Pots - crab, lobsters, langoustines and Torbay prawns are all pot-caught, meaning the open mesh frame pots are baited and placed on the seabed to attracting shellfish who climb in over a 24 hour period.
Rod & line fishing - exactly as it sounds, this is small volume line fishing, starting from just one rod on the back of a boat. This eliminates bycatch as there are no unwanted discards - anything not of size is returned live to the sea - and is a minimal-stress method.
Small gillnets - these generally have low environmental impacts with minimal seabed interaction. The size of fish caught can be determined by the mesh size, helping to avoid catching juvenile fish.
Rope growing - mussel seeds go into a sock around a long rope. On the water, the sock with the rope is connected to buoys, dropped into the water, and left to grow in the ocean for at least a year. After one year, juicy mussels are bursting through the socks.
Farming - we use Chalk Stream trout from Hampshire, and Loch Duart salmon from Scotland - both farmed sources rather than wild. Stocks on wild salmon and trout are so low that farming is the only possible option for us. Both have lots of further information on their website.
Sometimes we buy from bigger 8-crew boats around the coast who are able to catch bigger, prime fish such as turbot and brill, from deeper waters and in inclement weather. These boats make longer trips than the day boats and can fish when the majority of our small crew day boats cannot, but commit to short tows to ensure quality of the landings.
In British waters the ecosystem is so diverse that you could eat a different fish every day of the year - incredible seafood is on our doorstep, and shouldn't need to be shipped from the other side of the world. Enjoying seasonal produce is one of the best ways to lower the impact of a diet that includes seafood.