The can design...

The image on the can is of me on my little ship, the Alf Smythers, which you can also see in this film: 

Firstly, I am extremely sad to hear of the passing of my dear friend Ben Abbott, he was a boss who sacked me from a graphic design company, and we became like brothers for that!

"Ben, you took my sketches and images and made the can design as it is, and it is now iconic, thank you... RIP brother x and Oh Dot, I will never live down that night, and I will always tell the story too!"

I spent almost two decades dreaming of preserving my catch, I started gathering wild native oysters under sail in 2008, in 2009 I set up a purification centre so I could sell my catch direct, and called it CornishNativeOysters.co.uk because 'Falmouth Oysters' had a bad reputation for being small...

Despite the old reputation, in 2012 I helped secure an EU 'Protected Food Name with Protected Designation of Origin' (PDO) status for our unique fishery, and the aspirations of the 'Fal Oyster', so formed Fal Oyster Ltd, and as London orders grew (for +80g native oysters) I then started to encourage new skippers to get involved, buying from other boats to meet demand, which then acquired Cornish Native Oysters from my investor... but others filled 2/3rd of the buckets with under 75g oysters (juveniles) as they wanted to be paid by weight...

In 2017 I attended the World Oyster Symposium at University of Bangor, North Wales, where I was horrified to learn that globally 85-95% of the species (Ostrea edulis) has been lost due to 1) overfishing 2) pollution 3) disease 4) invasive species, and the Fal is one, if not the last, naturally spawning native oyster biomasses left, certainly a significant percentage of that last 5-15%!

So, I pretty much decided I must campaign for a change, the only conceivable change, would be to the 'Minimum Landing Size' (MLS) and statutory holder for the PDO... In 2019 I incorporated the 'Fal Fishery Cooperative CIC'... and with the help of the Co-op Foundation support for our SavingESTER campaign, by 2025 I had achieved the first 'increase' to the MLS in 101 years, and a change in regulatory policy to reverse the demise of a corrupt industry...

In a BBC article way back in 2014, my campaign was about the markets, but apparently "change could be a silly mistake", recent BBC article carries the same narrative, even though the species is at risk!!! Here is another version of the interviews...

So, I am taking a step back from my 17 year career in the toxic backstabbing oyster industry, to focus on preserving catch from skippers who support sustainably managed fisheries, such as the Cornish Sardine and Cornish Bluefin Tuna, but I had already had 27,000 cans printed as that was the minimum order!

The * where it says "*hand, sail, and oar" was for this reason, incase I started canning other species...

 

... And the story doesn't end there.... TBC