Tradition on the half shell: Picking oysters in post-Brexit Britain

|
Jonathan Browning
Oyster catcher Tom Haward (front) brings a dredging cage filled with oysters on Mersea Island, England. The Haward family has harvested oysters for generations.

For eight generations, going back to the 1700s, Tom Haward’s family has been harvesting succulent oysters from the mud flats of Mersea Island. Located 75 miles northeast of London, the estuary island is known for its shellfish.

The Hawards, who run an oyster bar in London and a small market on the island, also exported their mollusks to Europe – that is, until Brexit wreaked havoc on the industry. The European Union placed a ban on live shellfish from the United Kingdom, and since then, the shellfish trade has ground to a halt. 

The British fishing fleet was one of the loudest voices in the pro-Brexit camp. But not Mr. Haward, who opposed leaving the EU. “Brexit’s negative impact is going to reverberate through the shellfish industry for many years,” he says. 

Stewardship of the estuaries is important to the Haward family, which owns 14 acres of mud banks. The beds are rich in nutrients for the spawn to settle into and become oysters. The Hawards pick them up by hand or use a dredger if they are deep and out of reach, and return any that are not fully developed. Mr. Haward likes the fact that he’s doing the same work as his ancestors.

“The world has changed so much, and yet what we do has barely altered. I find that incredibly humbling,” he says. 

Jonathan Browning
Bram Haward steers the boat as the oyster beds are dredged. The shallow creeks of Mersea Island in England provide good growing conditions for the mollusks.
Jonathan Browning
Tom Haward, an eighth- generation oystercatcher, hand-picks oysters off the mud beds. His fifth great- grandfather in the 1700s did the same work.
Jonathan Browning
These mud flats are only available to hand-pick during low tide. The tall sticks mark the boundaries between different beds.
Jonathan Browning
Oysters often need to be separated with a metal tool and thrown back into the nutrient-rich mud to grow further.

Jonathan Browning
Tom Haward shucks and eats a fresh oyster at the bow of his boat. The Hawards own an oyster bar in the famous Borough Market in London and also supply the top restaurants in the city

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Tradition on the half shell: Picking oysters in post-Brexit Britain
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/2021/0527/Tradition-on-the-half-shell-Picking-oysters-in-post-Brexit-Britain
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe