BEACH FISHING I Dungeness, Kent, England

Nuclear dogfish, the boil and other stories of high tide

Images and text by The Coracle

The Coracle is sat on Dungeness beach, in weak but luxuriant early spring sunshine, the warm nuclear outflow from the power station drifting east to west with the tide. The outflow attracts a feeding frenzy of indestructible gulls, sleek black cormorants and those avian fighter pilots, the gannets, spearing themselves into the murky soup. It’s the warm water that attracts the plankton, that draws the fish and reels in the fishing folk. How long can a person stand out in the cold wind waiting on a fish? A very long time!

At the end of a lumpen dirt track, next to an army live firing range, this is as remote as you can get in the UK’s uber-populated southeast corner. It’s a slight surprise that there’s a more diverse group here than the expected solitary males escaping ‘her indoors’. Andrea and Mihai are here with their kids, Mahmut and Mindhir have driven down together and there’s a small group belting out an old Jason Donovan number, maybe he too was into fishing.

The shingle spit of Dungeness juts out its chin toward the Europe it was once connected to, as though reaching for Cap Gris-Nez which mirrors it in France. This is Farageland (he lives nearby) and a couple of people tell me there are more fish post-Brexit which they put down to a decrease in big fishing boats.

Everyone is DFL (down from London) though: Canning Town, Purfleet, Plaistow. Everyone seems to be from Eastern Europe originally: Romania, Lithuania, and Poland. There’s not much chat between groups, more of a shared uncompetitive camaraderie. Most seem to be gleaning a bit of me time from busy lives, many reporting they were enjoying a break from their jobs as construction workers or from young kids at home. Clem from Turkey says it’s a healthier pastime than drinking or drugs. A nip of whisky keeps them warm in winter though.

Caught much tonight? It’s largely dogfish (rebranded as rock salmon in your chippy) but pouting, common hound, corkwing and wrasse also appear and haven’t been rebranded yet…..The best time is after a storm or on a strong tide, if its been rough fish know they might find the previous night’s dead to feed on. Dungeness also has the famous ‘boil’, a mass of water bubbling with action just offshore from the nuclear power station outflow. Small fish which have been caught in the station’s filters are spewed out along with water at a balmy 12 degrees, creating a fishy stew that seabirds devour.

Many of these fisherfolk will be here until long after the sun has gone down over the flat horizon. After dark, fish feel less vulnerable and come closer to shore, weevers and conger eel come out from their rocky hiding places as the humans hunker down in their weatherproof onesies.

On another day you might catch some Chinese restaurant owners picking ‘sea broccoli’ on their day off, a delicacy that most of us have long since forgotten what to do with.

Clem says it would be cheaper to buy fish in a shop when you take petrol into account. Some don’t even like fish. But as the smiley Mihail says ‘You need your place to recharge’. It’s a lovely evening with the promise of summer, catching fish is just a bonus.