August 2009 - a trip to East Wittering, Bracklesham Bay - in search of the brown shrimp.
Below is the Atomic Shrimp Net (you see what I did there?). it consists of a rectangular frame supporting a large pocket of soft net mesh, carried on a long, strong handle.
At (what will be) the bottom edge of the net, there is a stout wooden plank - I'll explain all about this in a moment...
What Is The Brown Shrimp?
Crangon crangon - a shy little sandy-coloured semi-transparent crustacean that inhabits most the UK shoreline, especially the sandy bits. It grows up to about 7cm long (so not large - in fact truly deserving of the term 'shrimp')
It lives in burrows in the sandy sea bottom - when disturbed, it emerges and tries to escape by flicking its muscular tail.
So to catch it, it is necessary to wade into the shallow water and push the net along the bottom - the wooden bar at the front of the net disturbs the shrimps and they swim up and are captured. Or that's the theory.
The net is periodically dragged back to shallower water for inspection. I strung a plastic milk bottle around my shoulder to put my catch in - not too hard to drop them in - not to easy to spill them out again.
Initially, I only caught a few, but as the tide dropped and more of the flatter part of the sandy bay was accessible in shallow water, the catch increased.
Here's one of just about the minimum worthwhile size - maybe 3cm long.
It was a calm, sunny day, but the occasional big wave threatened to knock me over - and I didn't want this to deprive me of the whole catch.
So I returned to the shore every ten minutes or so to deposit my shrimps into a bucket..
It took me a very long time - something like two and a half hours - of wading about pushing my net, to catch maybe a big double handful of shrimps for my dinner - probably an energy-negative exercise, altogether.
I dropped the shrimps into a pan of rapidly boiling water (this kills them instantly)
They only take about two minutes to cook - at which point they turn a pinkish tan colour.
Eating Brown Shrimp
They're tiny and almost impossible to peel completely - however, the shell is quite delicate (and no doubt somewhat nutritious), so the best way to consume them is just to pull off the head - the tail fan too, if tough - and eat the rest - it's only a bit of crunch.
The flavour is subtle and delicate, but unmistakably shrimpy - they are traditionally eaten with brown bread and melted butter - maybe next time...
Conclusion
An enormous effort for a tiny morsel of food. Pushing that net through the sand for hours on end was really exhausting.
But I'm still glad I did it - just to have tried something new. I reckon maybe there are other places in the UK where the shrimps might be a bit larger and more abundant - which would make it more easily worthwhile.
One of the bycatch items has interesting potential too - see the side column for details...
Revisited
I returned for a second attempt a week later - this time to West Wittering beach - and I had a lot more success this time - see the next page for details...
