On the deck of the Kayla Emma, Mark McLean’s rubber-gloved fingers are holding live, orange langoustines caught fresh from Loch Creran.
“These are wee prawns and they live in wee mud holes. They like to come out at sunrise and sunset,” he says, as I admire their orange hue. The crustaceans — known as prawns on the west coast of Scotland — are caught in creels, wicker baskets that Mark ties to a rope and fixes to buoys in the tidal sea loch. Since he’s creeling and not trawling (which involves dragging anything up from the seabed) he can be selective about the shellfish he takes from the water. “I know myself what size they should be and I don’t keep anything that’s not good,” he says. “On average, I’ll take around 400 — plenty on a wee boat on your own.”
Mark was born and raised in the nearby seaside town of Oban, working with
