Issue link: https://viewer.e-digitaleditions.com/i/122153
Right and below: Brendan Guidera of Pristine Oysters; Coffin Bay angasi oysters at The Oysterbeds restaurant. with agricultural run-off. It is widely believed to be the best place in Australia to grow oysters, and Brendan Guidera of Pristine Oysters is the trailblazer, winning gold at every major Australian oyster-judging contest. While the Japanese transformed Port Lincoln's tuna industry, the Hong Kong Chinese have begun a love affair with Coffin Bay oysters. Taking us out on his punt, Brendan shows us his horizontal oyster baskets on adjustable longline systems and explains how he raises or lowers them to manage shell growth and to capture the wave action that rumbles them for cleaning. While he produces about six million deep-shelled, plump Pacific oysters a year, he is passionate about Coffin Bay's native angasi oysters, which are gaining accolades for their intense flavour. But how to describe the differences between a Pacific and an angasi oyster? Enter the Seafood Flavour Wheel recently released by the Eyre Peninsula seafood industry as a world-first initiative to accurately describe the appearance, aroma, flavour and texture of 12 Eyre Peninsula species. A specially trained panel under the guidance of Queensland sensory scientist Heather Smyth developed a new vocabulary for seafood, which is akin to wine terminology, so that now the angasi oyster can be described as plump, flat, pinky-mushroom in colour, having an aroma of tidal rock pool and mangrove plus intense hazelnut, rocket-like, slightly salty and complex savoury flavours, compared with the Pacific oyster's plump, bright, creamy appearance Fast Fact Port Lincoln's Boston Bay is three times the size of Sydney Harbour, and the Eyre Peninsula is home to the with a hint of pink, whose aroma largest commercial fishing is fresh, clean ocean with cucumber fleet in the Southern and fresh fish notes, and whose Hemisphere. flavour is intense sweet ocean, salty and savoury with a hint of asparagus. Coffin Bay has an exceptional restaurant, The Oysterbeds, where you can taste these oysters and other seafood, as well as local beef, lamb, pork, olives and other produce in dishes inspired by chef Marion Trethewey's travels in Spain, the Middle East and South-East Asia. Marion suggests visiting the lookout at the township's entrance to marvel at the swirling sands and water of the magnificent estuary. It's a one-and-a-half-hour drive through blond wheatfields (the Eyre Peninsula is no slouch in the grain-growing biz and huge silos stand sentinel in every coastal port) to the pretty mural-dotted community of Elliston, where we visit Pedro's Crayfish to buy a brightred southern rock lobster, which he'd harvested that morning from among his 58 pots in the ice-cold ocean. The next day it's time to feel just how cold that water is firsthand with Alan Payne at Baird Bay Ocean Eco Experience. For 20 years he's been taking guests to swim with Baird Bay's sea lions and resident pod of XXVII Images: Susan Gough Henly regionalstopover