Rockpools

Catching prawns along the Solway coast on a sunlit morning in August - where there is more than crustaceans on the menu...

It was half past five in the morning, but we were wearing shorts and t-shirts without boots in the early sun of August. Padding through the sea mud, we found that it was already warm - and a jammy sun had set the hills above Gatehouse glowing.

We had only just met for the first time - one of those introductions made across the bonnet of the car, shaking hands and taking the measure of a new person in the shadow of a crab apple tree. I liked your swearing laughter immediately - and as we reached the half-submerged rocks, you showed me how to sweep your strange, triangular net along the fringes of each one. Then you handed me your spare net and I tried to focus my mind upon prawns. The last time I’d used that word, I had been thinking of a wineglass filled to the brim with pink and half-shelled tails. It was hard to make a connection to what these animals are in the wild; those glassy sprites which creep and trill on the edge of an extended palm, confiding only for the narrowest moment before vanishing in a swirl of sediment.

Every child knows those prawns, but while it’s fun to reach for them with a bucket and spade, it’s impossible to catch enough to cover your tongue. They’re just too fast, and with such unblinking insect eyes, they’re surely never food anyway. But you showed me how to sweep beneath the weed with a net designed to scrape and gouge across the barnacles. In a few moments and with little more than two attempts, you had caught enough to fill a dish. They’re not so big as you’ll find them in Pembrokeshire or the Channel, but they’re bigger than anything which lurks in the weeds off Skye and Rhum. And they’re more than worth boiling in a kettle on the rocks; even I could see that.

Beyond the prawns, the nets came up laden with ribbonfish and crabs. In half an hour, we'd caught gobis and a redly furious rockling which belched the sea from his belly. We'd two pounds of prawns a piece, but for all we looked for the chance of a lobster, the moment never came. You told me to watch for the prawns where the stones broke into cracks and burrows. When those holes are empty, prawns will hover at the doorway, facing outwards and ready to flee inside. But when those holes are occupied by a lobster, the prawns will face into the cave and stare like dogs at a bear. They’re looking after themselves, and the habit does more good than they can tell. Because when they face the terror of an occupied hole for long enough, a human will see which way they’re facing – and infer the meaning - and use every trick which comes to hand to catch and boil the blue consumer.

That morning went well, and we had reached the final pool by the time the sun found us. We were working side by side to the depth of our bellies in the water when you stood suddenly back. Reaching out beneath the weed, something dark and heavy rolled into your net like dollop of warm treacle. And finding the mesh bottom, it turned in a single movement and spilled back up and out and over the metal rim. You couldn’t have held it if you had tried, but you only said “oh”, as if you had remembered something you should have told me before. I teased you about that afterwards, because nothing bigger had ever happened to either of us, and all you said was "oh".

The young otter swam out of your net and down across your thighs, then it moved quietly towards me - but there was no panic or desperation in the movement; no froth or foam of anxiety. With only her mask and her bottom showing above the water, she slipped away beneath my arm and back towards the shingle shore, as if the time had come to go, and we'd been only watching.

Once we had lit a fire, we sat on the shore nearby and boiled our prawns in a pan. Then we shelled them like peas and ate their tails in fistfuls in silence, because there wasn’t anything more to say.

First published Bog Myrtle and Peat - Sept 2022.