The Goldhanger Oyster
Beds
Oyster fishing has
been a Blackwater Estuary activities for over a
thousand years and for hundreds of years there has been oyster cultivation using
man-made beds. A large number of disused oyster beds are still visible on Osea Island. However, in the early 1980s a
temporary end came to this local industry when a disease curtailed production.
Oyster shells have always littered the foreshore at Goldhanger and shell are
still found in the gardens in Fish Street and Church Street. Up until the 1950s
there were two Fish pits close to Goldhanger
Creek. As well as large sea fish catches, they were said to used to hold eels,
shellfish and oysters waiting for a suitable market.
extracts from...
The World Fishing Magazine, in September 2010 at...
http://www.worldfishing.net/news101/industry-news/maldon-oysters-granted-first-use-of-ozone
Maldon Oysters has become
the first UK shellfish producer to be allowed to use ozone as part of its
purification system following the completion of four years of ground breaking
research and development. Ozone is a pale blue gas that is made up of three
oxygen molecules, produced naturally by electrical discharge from lightening or
by the sun’s UV rays upon reaching the Earth’s stratosphere. ...By adding very
small amounts of this natural product to its purification tank system Maldon
Oysters found that it was able to not only improve shelf-life and flavour, but
it was also able to drastically reduce any virus the shellfish may be carrying.
extracts from...
The Maldon Oyster Company website at... www.maldonoyster.com
“The Maldon Oyster
Company was first established in 1960 and was originally run as a cooperative
between several local fishermen, under the leadership of Clarrie Devall. During the hard winter of 1963, most oyster
beds in Essex were devastated by ice and the company became dormant for a few
years, until Mr Devall started growing new stocks of Pacific Oysters in Goldhanger Creek. In the early eighties, Mr
Devall took on David Coward-Talbott as a partner and they successfully grew
several million Pacific Oysters on the traditional beds in Goldhanger
Creek and established some small quantities of native flat oysters
in the main Blackwater River.
The Maldon Oyster
Company now has a large area of the River Blackwater
under their management and has re-established a native oyster fishery as well
as being one of the largest producers of Pacific Oysters in the UK. Our new
modern purification and packing facility for bivalves, with a live holding
system for crustaceans, has been built at Cock Clarks near Maldon. With this system we can hold oysters, mussels
or even cockles in a temperature controlled environment to achieve the optimum
purification for a minimum of 48 hours in summer and winter.
One of our primary
aims is to utilise this Essex estuary to its best advantage without harming the
delicate eco-system and its salt marshes.
For it is an area swathed in natural beauty, supports a wide variety of
flora and fauna and plays an important role providing wintering grounds for
many migratory birds. The area is now enshrined as a Site of Special Scientific
Interest (SSSI) and is also protected and registered under the European Union’s
Shellfish Waters Directive (79/923), whereby it has the distinction of being
one of only a very few shell fish growing waters in the UK.”
The oyster beds at low tide to the
east of Goldhanger Creek in 2014
recent
on-line videos of the oyster beds at Goldhanger...
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OYSTERS FARM GOLDHANGER |
OYSTER FARM-SLAVO |
HARVEST - Maldon Oysters |
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