Ireland’s Economic Surfers
The Salmon of Knowledge-Based Business
Sligo Oyster Experience and Shines Seafood
Food is a knowledge-based industry. Working with food is all about what you know, not just what you can do.
The Irish-born economist W. Brian Arthur pointed out almost three decades ago that most modern industries are actually knowledge-based activities, even if they are basically processing raw ingredients. That’s because, in order to thrive, they have to be on the lookout for the Next Big Thing, and they are perpetually on a mission to find it.
Strangely enough, this involves our heroes playing in a casino-like environment, deciding what game to play, what the game is about, and what to stake on that game. And all the while, they are adapting, speculating, guessing which way the next wave will break.
In fact, if you have ever wondered why surfing clips are so prominent in social media, it’s likely because surfing has become a metaphor for modern working: stand still, and you get dunked.
Artisanship sounds like an ancient practice, the transformation of base materials into something with market value. In fact, artisanship is all about seizing opportunity, thanks to your skills.
Some artisans have recognised this. Brigitta Curtin of the Burren Smokehouse is one of the outstanding examples, using the processing of fish as a springboard for a host of fish-related offers and experiences, and catering to multiple markets, virtually all of them far from the home base of Lisdoonvarna, County Clare.
And two more recent piscine artisans, in Sligo and Donegal, are showing just how to catch the wave at the culinary casino.
Aisling Kelly Hunter and Ciara Shine both head up fish businesses which are archetypal West Coast food SMEs, creating value from – in Aisling’s case – Sligo-grown oysters, and, in Ciara’s case, Atlantic-caught fish, in particular tuna.
Aisling’s has already begun to gather in the awards for her pickled Sligo oysters, including this year’s Seafood Innovation Award at Blas na hEireann. Her ingenuity in creating the handsome jars of pickled oysters is terrific. What it is about oysters that stresses people? Opening them. Getting rid of the shells. Storing them safely. The fact that you can’t eat them during the summer months.
Aisling just solved all these issues: boom!
But the pickled oysters are just the latest step that Aisling has made to demonstrate her knowledge-based grasp of the seafood business. Back in 2018 she created the Sligo Oyster Experience in her coffee shop, WB’s Coffee House, having created the café in her family pub. She then created oyster tours, taking groups out to the oyster farm owned by her husband, Glenn, in Sligo Bay.
Further north on the Wild Atlantic Way, in Killybegs, Ciara Shine and her parents, John and Marianne, have created one of the most recognisable new Irish brands with their cans of Shine’s seafood. Shine’s present their seafood as if it is a couture range, the Chanel of canned fish. In 2021 they introduced a Selection Box of Irish tuna and wild sardines which was as sexy a piece of product design and marketing as you could imagine. A six-pack selection box of canned fish? Why, yes, why not.
Shines spin out ideas like fishermen cast nets. In their visitor centre in Killybegs you can have your selfie taken standing in the world’s largest sardine can, then learn all about seafood fishing and taste a welter of their products. Their social media is slick as an albacore swimming at speed, and Ciara fronts it all up with confidence.
Their footprint in shops is now so extensive that it comes as a shock to realise that they only started selling canned seafood less than a decade ago, beginning in 2015 with wild albacore tuna.
Their newest riff on the riches of the ocean are a quartet of fish patés, which includes lobster, tuna, anchovy and salmon. Anyone who can recall the little tubs of patum paperium anchovy paste – sold as Gentlemen’s Relish and created by John Osborn almost two centuries ago – will fall on the handsome pots of fishy richness.
Historically, fishers knew everything about the sea, and nothing about what happens on land. Shines and Sligo Oysters are correcting that knowledge gap – the Salmon of Knowledge has come ashore, bringing seafood to the place where people want it, in the style that people want it.
Extract:
KATSUOBISHI: Dried, smoked skipjack tuna that is shaved on a razor-sharp planing blade set into a wooden shaving box. The curled flakes are used to make stock or to flavor vegetables.
NIBOSHI: Juvenile sardines that are salt-simmered before air-drying until completely dessicated. Used for making Niboshi Dashi. Also eaten as a healthy snack (or manna for cats).
AGO: Juvenile flying fish, salt-simmered or charcoal-grilled before sun-drying. Used to make ago dashi.
SAKURA EBI: Tiny shrimp from the deep-sea waters of Suruga Bay in Shizuoka, Japan, during two seasons annually. Used in stir-fries and kimchee.
CHIRIMIN JAKO: Laval-stage teeny fishes of the sardine family that are salt-simmered and semidried in the open air.
SUREME IKA (AIR-DRIED SQUID): Used to make pickles. Also eaten torn into strips as an accompaniment to sake after being wafted over low-ember coals.
Preserving the Japanese Way by Nancy Singleton Hachisu (Andrews McMeel Publishing)
