Shucking Oysters Painting

The Firth of Forth has been a huge natural resource for local communities for thousands of years. Fish, oysters, mussels and seaweed have all been abundant at times, scarce at others and in some cases, such as oysters, now extinct. Oysters The history of oysters in the Firth of Forth is really quite tragic. Oyster middens found round the Firth of Forth date back as far as 6,000 years and show that millions upon millions of oysters were eaten by hunter gathers in the area. At one time there were oyster beds off Edinburgh that covered 50 square miles, possibly the largest in Britain. The story of the exploitation of the oyster scalps is sad and complicated, It is estimated that the annual yield of the oyster beds was around 30,000,000 oysters a year in the 18th century. Oysters finally succumbed completely to human greed, with not one single oyster in existence after a century of grossly unsustainable over-exploitation. Mussels In the 19th century, the Firth of Forth and its approaches swarmed with large fish of many kinds. The way to catch most demersal fish, before the start of trawling was by “lining”. The burden of baiting the lines fell almost entirely on the women. The work started in the early morning when they would go down to the shore to gather mussels. Then they would shell these and put one on each hook. There were around 1,200 hooks per line and each fisherman had two lines. The quantities used were immense.; at Newhaven in 1885 over 80 million mussels were used yearly and this was only one of half a dozen comparable sma’ line fleets in the area. The maths is quite staggering, around half a billion mussels, all locally sourced, to bait the sma’ lines each year! Seaweed Historically seaweed was used as a fertiliser to enhance the organic structure of thin soils as it was rich in nitrogen and potassium. Two main types of seaweed were used – “Wrack and Wair“. The Wair washed up during storms, the Wrack cut from the rocks at low tide. Seacliff My idea was to capture the spirit of the time using traditional costumes and artefacts. The backdrop for these paintings is the magnificent beach at Seacliff, East Lothian. A very atmospheric place with great light, big skies and a well trodden path in history. From one spot on the beach you can view Tantallon Castle, St Baldreds Boat, and The Bass Rock.