The world is your lobster - at least, if you’re a Pender. The Pender family have been fishing for lobster and crabs off tiny Bryher for as long as anyone can trace, and still today three generations of Penders venture out in search of the tasty crustaceans.
The oldest is Mike Pender, now 78; the youngest, his grandson Shamus, who is 22 but has been hauling pots since he was was 10. Between them is Mike’s son Mark, who has fished since he could walk, and in 2015 decided to join forces with his sister Amanda to make fishing work as a business. They christened it Island Fish.
The season casts off in April, when the spring equinox storms have abated and there’s less risk of a ground sea, which can damage precious lobster pots. It’s also when visitors start arriving. Sunrise baggers may spot Mark’s blue and white boat, burgundy mizzen at its stern, chugging up the channel past Hangman’s Island and towards Bishop Rock lighthouse. Its soft putter putter is often the only sound breaking the early morning silence. By then, Shamus will already be out in his wooden vessel Ma Vie. “Shamus likes the peace of the early morning, and seeing the sun rise out at sea,” says mother Amanda. Mike’s day starts a little later; after decades of dawn starts, he now sets out at a leisurely 8.30am. Each of the three drop up to 250 baited pots in a morning, retrieving them again 48 hours later.
The fishermen may all be chaps, but two of their boats are named after female family members. Mike’s, which he built 43 years ago, is called Emerald Dawn, after his mother’s favourite colour and Amanda’s middle name (with its early riser connotations). Mark’s is Dorothy Ethel, the names of his two grannies. “Women are the unsung heroes,” he says. “They’re the ones who do the really hard work - the processing.”
Swing by Island Fish, Amanda and Mark’s fish shop-deli-café, at 5.30am and you see what Mark means. Amanda is already in the kitchen, busy checking the day’s orders, cooking the lobsters and picking the crabs that have been cooked the night before. At six, she’s joined by helpers Flo and Joe, and the trio continue their painstaking work until early afternoon. With shell and dead man’s fingers (crab lungs) everywhere, it’s not a job for the faint hearted. “I can manage six or seven hours a day of picking, but only provided it’s mixed with other jobs,” says Amanda. “The smell permeates your clothes, so I dash home at around 8am to grab a quick shower before we open.”
Pristine fresh, the porcelain-white crabmeat flies off the deli counter at Island Fish, and what isn’t sold there is snapped up by the islands’ restaurants and merchants on the mainland. Others enjoy it in Amanda’s famous crab sandwiches and dressed crab, or in mother Sue’s crab quiche. “When people buy whole cooked crabs and take them home, they appreciate how much hard work is involved in picking out the meat,” says Amanda. “Usually the next time they buy the picked meat!” It’s pocket-friendly too. Because there’s no middleman, she can sell it at less than half the price it would sell for on mainland Cornwall.
It’s a similar story with lobster, which at more than £20 a kilo, is not cheap, but still considerably cheaper than on the mainland. A whole lobster is a lot simpler to deal with than a whole crab, and well worth buying so that you get the delicious juices too, says Amanda. “If visitors aren’t familiar with them we show them how to cut a cooked lobster in half. We give them skills they can take home, that’s what we’re here for.”
But if cooking shellfish sounds too hard work, you can pop by Island Fish on a Monday evening and pick up half a Pender-caught lobster with potato wedges and homemade coleslaw for just over a tenner. On Thursdays, Mike’s wife Sue cooks up a monster paella on the decking outside the café. Or if you prefer a sociable, sit-down affair, you can book a shellfish supper at Hell Bay hotel’s Crab Shack, overlooking Bryher’s storm-bashed rocks. Or for something gastronomic, treat yourself to dinner in the hotel itself.
Amanda and Mark have come a long way since 2015. “When we started, we sold our shellfish from the front porch of my house. Mark and I had both given up well-paid jobs and used up our savings to set up the business, so it was a real leap of faith. I remember Mark and I stayed up all night picking crab before we opened on 1st May.”
Happily, there was strong demand and business was brisk, so by April 2018 they were able, with the help of grant funding, to open a purpose-built shop-cum-café right beside the quay. Local artist Alex Bagnall was commissioned to daub the walls with vibrant paintings of fish, and tables were installed on the verandah outside so that it could become a destination.
“We’re incredibly lucky to have a fantastic raw product, thanks to our unpolluted waters,” says Amanda. “And being local, wild and plentiful, it’s highly sustainable. Stocks are healthy, helped by strict regulations over the size of permitted catch and the fact that there are relatively few fishing vessels in our waters so they’re not overexploited. In winter, when the fishermen rest, so do the fish. It’s vital we leave stocks in good shape for future generations.”
Island Fish, Bryher
Image credits: adjbrown.com
