When seagulls follow the trawler

“When seagulls follow zee trawler, zey sink sardines maybe thrown into zee sea"
So said that famous philosopher and footballer, Eric Cantona
Well we were on the beach last Sunday afternoon at Praia do Pedrógão and the seagulls were in evidence and clearly knew something was worth hanging around for. A small fishing boat was out at sea and there were all sorts of trailers on the beach with plastic boxes stacked on them.

Another boat was on the beach and a few people were getting in and a tractor was hitching-up. What we were about to watch is known as Arte Xávega, a centuries old fishing tradition in which, during a period of calm sea, a fishing boat is launched from the beach, it takes a net out with it - something like a mile - crucially though, the mouth of the net is held by tow ropes and one is held at the beach and is paid out as the boat is launched and steers off shore.

The net is then lowered as the boat sails parallel to the beach for a few hundred metres and then it returns to shore, paying-out the other rope behind it. It drives fast onto the beach with a tricky manoeuvre to get it safely onto the sand.
The tractor pulls the boat higher onto the beach and then it is released from the rope which itself is held by this second tractor.

Now fishing starts as the net is slowly retrieved, by winching it back to the beach. Each tractor pulls a rope - that’s all that’s needed is that they are winched-in at the same speed. Well you’ve got to laugh haven’t you. You look at the bronzed bodies and knowledgeable wrinkled faces and assume that they know what they are doing. That’s where things go a little awry, as they don’t always work together.

As the winchers argue a little and shout across from one tractor to the other, the official net mender was working on the net from the previous boat’s fishing trip, which had been completed earlier. Actually it turns out that he’s not mending it but he’s sewing two parts of it together. Once the net is landed on the beach, this is split open to allow the fish to be lifted out.

Finally after about two hours of hauling, the net was brought to the beach. The drama wasn’t over as the rollers started coming in and at the critical point a huge wave almost lifted a tractor out of the water and then dragged sand from around the wheels. This severely altered the tone of the banter between all the men involved (there were about a dozen or so) and massive shouting was the only solution.

The fish are scraped up from the net and into trays which are then dunked into a big tub of water to remove the sand and then sold direct from the beach. No weights and measures are involved, the fish (mainly sardines) were grouped into two sizes and sold at either €10 or €15 per bag to anyone who wanted them - and there were many takers.
Other fish in the net were a few flatfish, a couple of rays, some bigger cod-like fish and a few of those browner coloured ones with bigger teeth which I always thung are red snapper.
In my line of business I often observe processes for hours to determine better ways of doing things. It didn’t take long to see that the way they filled the bags at point of sale was utterly useless and with a tiny bit of thought they could have made it far easier. Fortunately I was restrained by Dawn from intervening and we left them to their centuries old method. This involved spilling loads of fish back onto the beach as they tried to tip a tray into a bag and then having to pick them all up a second time. If they’d been more productive just think how much cost they could have removed!!
I’m not sure how many fish were being put in the bags but it was dozens and far too many for us to take back to Claudia’s. Anyway she's bound to have a rule somewhere there that prohibits the mass handling of fish, so we couldn’t think about offering them to the other campers.

So what do you do when you only want a few fish for tea and not a bagful? The seller couldn’t understand our English but he tried French so that made it easy (easier!) and we bought our own bag of six big sardines and drove back to our camp to get them on the bbq. I was very nervous about gutting them at the campsite and I scurried away from the bin into which I had left the scrapings just as soon as I could, just in case Claudia was out on patrol.
They were delicious!

Bon appetite!!