England's Seafood Coast

Mitch Tonks has a passion and understanding of seafood in this country and has made it his mission to get more people enjoying it and changing how they experience our seafood. Along the big stretch of coastline from Dorset through Devon the conditions are conducive to producing amazing seafood, some of the best he has tasted on his travels over the years in search of great seafood eating and sustainable fishing. Here he explains why he has spearheaded this idea of our Seafood Coast. 

“I was making a programme in Australia about 8 years ago in a place called the Eyre Peninsula, it was a wonderful environment with some really great seafood.  A group of producers had got together and made a booklet about the seafood they caught and farmed, things like oysters, abalone, lobster, snapper, it was their attempt to get people to go the area and enjoy the joys of such things, of what was caught and available that was so fantastic and so close to their doors.  Some years later I was pondering on this and how it show-cased their great coast and I thought about where our restaurants are near to the amazing fishing ports of Brixham, Newlyn and Plymouth and I thought back to that trip and came up with the idea that we needed to tell more people about this great local wonderful food and get to enjoy more it ourselves, rather than exporting so much.  It is the place where the most diverse catch in the country is found, most of the country’s  fishing effort is here in Brixhamand the quality is the best in the world. So this is England’s Seafood Coast and we should celebrate it. Our coastal towns have changed and there are so many more places to eat seafood, even fishermen have diversified and opened restaurants and fish shacks which are superb experiences, so coming to Englands Seafood Coast means you can not only enjoy the beautiful coastline but also the best seafood in the world which is the unique reason to come.”