Sustainable coastal foraging

We do love to be beside the sea, but how can we continue to forage along the coast sustainably?

The sea has been feeding humans, animals and wildlife for millennia. Before we decided to coat our fish in batter and deep fry it, we used to sit in caves and crack open mussels to cook over a fire. 

In 2007, Researchers at the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University found ancient signs of life in the Indian Ocean near South Africa’s Mossel Bay, which included harvested and cooked seafood. They dated this ancient feast to be from around 164,000 years ago. 

All this time later, we have a thriving sea-harvesting industry in the UK. We farm mussels, fish, seaweed, oysters – pretty much anything edible from the sea. We enjoy the bounty the coast has to offer in huge quantities.

This fishy abundance has come at an environmental cost. In 2006 the journal Science published a four-year study that outlined a worldwide loss of wild caught seafood by 2048 if we continued farming at the rate we were. The scientists stated that such a vast decline would be from overfishing, pollution and other environmental factors.

Since then, we have improved our harvesting methods and in 2019 a FAO report had some positive findings. Global production of fish, crustaceans, molluscs and other aquatic animals had grown and reached 172.6 million tonnes in 2017, with an increase of 4.1 percent compared with 2016.

While foraging is already more sustainable than buying from mega sea-farming corporations, if we all went out and scraped the sea of its natural produce it would cause damage to the coastline, reefs and sea life. 

Forager Christian Amys, who is the founder of Urban Forage in Stanmer Park, holds coastal foraging courses along Brighton Marina.

He was previously a Michelin star chef but left the industry during the Covid pandemic in order to connect with nature. He now uses his culinary skills and self-taught foraging knowledge to teach others about the foods we can find on our doorsteps. 

Christian takes extreme care when walking along the shores and cliffs of Brighton as he is passionate about enjoying the food the sea can provide without causing damage.

“We don’t have a lot of shellfish on our seafront [in Brighton] so we will often leave the shellfish. With mussels I would recommend taking one from a patch, if you see them growing more abundantly you could take one from each patch but don’t rip them all off. You want to be very careful in just taking one mussel away,” he says. 

He says we are not the only ones partial to a mussel or two, as seagulls will swarm overhead looking for their next feed. “I recommend being pedantic about it, taking one at a time and making sure you’re respectful of the rest of the seabed. Bear in mind that seagulls and other nature will live off some of this marine life as well.”

His advice for foraging seaweed is similar – we should only take small amounts to ensure the environment can be sustained: “I wouldn’t forage seaweed where it’s not abundant. As long as you’re not taking a lot you can give it a ‘haircut’, as we like to say, and the seaweed will grow back pretty quickly. I would never take more than 10% of a seaweed plant. Using scissors and being careful when cutting it will mean it will grow back.” 

Christian learnt most of his foraging skills from books he read about foraging. He will check areas he intends to forage for permission or for any reason he should not forage there. 

“It’s illegal to forage in places of scientific interest or nature reserves,” he says, “but they’ll normally let you know on their websites or the local authority will be able to tell you. It’s really important that we respect these laws.”

While he recommends foraging sustainably for the natural wildlife, he expresses concern for how it could affect humans as well. He has seen climate-change-related issues crop up in his foraging. 

“We’ve been really affected by climate change so everything grows at random times at the minute. Seaweed is very hard to predict,” he says.

For safety, he wouldn’t recommend picking things next to a really busy road or where you believe there has been pollutants. 

Christian holds coastal workshops to show people how to safely forage their own feasts along Brighton Marina, click here to go along with the Briar team to learn more about coastal foraging.

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Roadkill: A meaty treat?

“Just don’t try to make steak tartare out of a badger” and other practical advice on selecting and eating roadkill from expert forager Fergus Drennan

If Fergus Drennan ever asks “can I put something in your fridge”, proceed with caution. 

Times journalist Nick Wyke discovered this in 2005. The something in question was an “immaculate” dead fox Drennan had found on the road driving from Canterbury to London for their interview – and into the fridge it went.

The dead-fox-in-fridge situation made quite the impression on Wyke and dominated his piece on Drennan – originally pitched as a story about urban foraging.

“I told him I didn’t want to talk about roadkill, I was there to talk about foraging. I didn’t want that to be the piece at all,” Drennan laments 20 years later.

But his roadkill exploits kept demanding attention. Various interviews and TV appearances culminated in 2007 with a BBC programme about Drennan called The Roadkill Chef – which he agreed to after refusing four times. “It took me five years to rebrand myself as Fergus the Forager – who wants to be The Roadkill Chef?”

Despite his reluctance to be pigeonholed by roadkill, Drennan certainly knows his way around the tarmac. “I mainly go for deer these days; I’ve got about 200 jars of pressurised venison stew at home.”

If you decide to try harvesting roadkill yourself, the first thing to do, says Drennan, is research into animal diseases. “You’ve got to think: ‘although this animal is dead, does it seem like a healthy dead animal?’ And obviously, you won’t be scraping things off the road. If it’s flattened, it’s not healthy. It’s flattened.” You can’t fault the logic.

The animal also needs to be fresh. Some indicators are: “If, on a cold day, the animal is warm. Or with a bird, are there feathers nearby? If so, it is probably super fresh, because the next few cars tend to blow the feathers away.” 

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Drennan says the best indicator of freshness, rigor mortis, is often misinterpreted by people as a bad sign. “Depending on the size of the animal, rigor mortis sets in up to 12 hours after death, and takes the same time to leave.” So, a stiff carcass is a good carcass. 

Are there any species that you should avoid? Not according to Drennan’s past menu: “I’ve had otter – that was unusual to find as a roadkill; and swan – that was a sad case of a dog kill; lapwing ravioli after one flew into a power line; manx shearwater was surprisingly good and not too fishy; herring gull…” One gets the feeling the list goes on.

Once you think you’ve got a fresh, healthy specimen, take it home to prepare the meat. You could take it to a butcher, but that’s not very Ray Mears. “Hygiene is important,” says Drennan, “it could still be diseased in some way. Make sure you don’t have any cuts, or wear latex gloves, and make sure you can clean down immaculately.” 

Not many recipe books feature badger in the index, but you can usually swap your ingredient in for a regular meat. “Just make sure you cook it thoroughly,” Drennan advises.

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Another thing to consider is the law, although it basically follows common sense. You are free to take a dead animal as long as you didn’t kill it yourself.

Despite the media’s steady interest in Drennan and others’ roadkill habits, it remains a minority pursuit. Why are people so reluctant to eat meat from the street? And why were those journalists 20 years ago so much more interested in Drennan’s roasted fox than, say, pickled blackberries?

Perhaps it is morbid fascination; foraging roadkill challenges our relationship with meat. Looking at a full carcass and considering it for food removes the usual buffer between the animal and the formless lumps of meat we see on supermarket shelves. The carcasses can bloody and mushed, reminding us that violence and death are inherent in the process.

If you are, however, keen to join Drennan’s ranks, his main advice is to follow common sense: “Cook things well, keep hygiene and butchering practices really good, and you will avoid most issues.” He points out there will always be “a miniscule risk”, but it’s about minimising that. “Don’t make steak tartare out of a badger. Although I do like pigeon breast rare.”