At Port Lincoln on South Australia‘s Eyre Peninsula, tour options include shark cave diving, visiting the Coffin Bay oyster farms and seeing behind the scenes in the hugely lucrative seafood business.
The journey towards the Neptune Islands
The fish that most have come for are huge, and have very sharp teeth. From Port Lincoln’s marina, Calypso Star Charters’ cage diving boat chugs towards the Neptune Islands where the great white sharks congregate around their buffet of seals. But what it passes on the way is what really makes Port Lincoln tick.
Bobbing in the waters of the Spencer Gulf are scores of white and yellow rings. They look like the remnants of a rhythmic gymnastics competition for clumsy giants. Inside them, however, tuna and kingfish are being farmed. And, given that Port Lincoln is often said to have the most millionaires per capita of anywhere in Australia, they are big business.
Tuna and kingfish farming in Port Lincoln
By the port, tens of thousands of pilchards are being offloaded, and David Doudle of Australian Coastal Safaris explains how the kingfish industry works. “90% of them are used for the sashimi market,” he says. “They’re bred at in catchery, then come here when they’re 40 to 60 grams. They grow to five kilos, and then they’re sold to Asia.”
The hub of the Eyre Peninsula’s southern tip is home to the largest fishing fleet in the Southern Hemisphere, and not all of the catch makes its way to the Asian market, as we discover at the Fresh Fish Place. This is where less lucrative species are processed, such as whiting, garfish and prawns. Tours head round the back to look at the rather grim reality of the step between boat and fish counter. Workers are stood at tables descaling at lightning speed, and cutting heads of prawns with startling efficiency. It understandably smells in there, the work is repetitive and the clock is ticking. Drop below a certain speed, and the business is no longer profitable.
Sea-to-plate at the Fresh Fish Place
The results are seen at the front end though, where super-fresh fish and chips are served up in an art-surrounded café area. The time between sea and plate is at its bare minimum.
If Port Lincoln is king for the fish, then nearby Coffin Bay is the place for oysters. It’s a small settlement of holiday homes, kangaroos blithely hopping down the main street and oyster baskets being dragged up and down the boat ramp.
Why Coffin Bay is ideal for oysters
Due to a few handy quirks of geography, the bay has near-perfect conditions for farming oysters. Plankton is washed right across the Great Australian Bight, but a narrow gap created by a large, protruding sandbar creates something of a bottleneck. As the tides wash in and out, the food oysters feast on gets logjammed in the sheltered area behind the sandbar.
Surprisingly little of the farming process is done at sea. And to find out where the real grunt goes in, we head to one of Coffin Bay’s oyster sheds.
Inside Pure Coffin Bay Oysters
Outside Pure Coffin Bay Oysters are the baskets that the oysters are raised in. Owner Chris Hank explains why they’re on a liftable line-based system. “They’re intertidal,” he says. “They like being in and out of the water.”
It also helps in terms of longevity. The more practice the oysters get surviving out of the water, the longer they’re going to stay fresh when taken out for the last time and put on the refrigerated trucks for transportation across the country.
The oyster-farming process
But it’s not simply a case of plonking them in a basket, lifting them up a few times, and waiting. The farming process involves a surprising amount of meddling.
“They’re in and out of here about six times over the course of 18 months,” says Chris. “We put them in a clean basket, and there need to be fewer in each basket as they get bigger. There also need to be bigger gaps in the basket mesh.”
“They need sorting by size too. If small ones are put in with bigger ones, the bigger ones take all the food, just like with any creature. So they need to be in baskets with oysters that are roughly the same size.”
Tasting Coffin Bay oysters
We buy a dozen for $8, and open them on the spot. “The best in the world,” says David. And he might well be right.
Tours from Port Lincoln
There are several interesting tour options from Port Lincoln, including koala-spotting at Mikkira Station, an Eyre Peninsula highlights tour and a wading tour at a Coffin Bay oyster farm.
More South Australia travel
Other South Australia articles on Planet Whitley include:
- Swimming with sea lions in Baird Bay.
- Why you should book a Coorong kayaking cruise.
- Guide to visiting the Remarkable Rocks on Kangaroo Island.
- What to expect at Admirals Arch on Kangaroo Island.
- Why I enjoyed the drive across the Nullarbor.
