Commercial fishing boats from Boston and and King's Lynn hand-raking cockles in The Wash, a large inlet on England's east coast.
The cockle fishery in The Wash is hand-worked by boats from Boston and King’s Lynn which in summer and autumn steam out after high tide to the sands on which they are allowed to work and then circling tightly on the falling tide, a technique known as prop-washing by which each boat’s propeller disturbs sand to reveal the cockles which live just below the surface. When the tide recedes, the boats settle on the sand and crews get out and rake the cockles into hand-nets which are emptied into baskets which are in turn emptied into one-tonne bags acquired from the fishery regulator. Eastern Inshore Fishery and Conservation Authority (EIFCA). The overriding concern of EIFCA, along with Natural England, (the government’s adviser on environmental matters) is to ensure that enough cockles remain to feed overwintering birds. But many thousands of tonnes of mature cockles die each summer as juvenile cockles grow and push them out of the sand in a process known as ridging out. Fishing boats in The Wash are limited to a 14 metre length except for bigger boats that were fishing there before that provision was brought in.
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Photo credit: © John Worrall / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
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Keywords: bag, bags, baskets, boat, boats, boston, cerastoderma, coastal, cockle, cockles, commercial, distance, edule, fishing, hand-worked, hand-working, inlet, inshore, kings, lincolnshire, lynn, maritime, norfolk, north, sandbanks, sea, tidal, tonne, wash
