Come shell or high water

Rugged coastlines, surging tides and deep, cold water put Scottish shellfish in a class of its own. Nick Hammond heads north to taste his way around some seafood hotspots

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LOOK at this!' exclaims Michael Tait, sweeping his yellow-wellied foot left and right across the jetty. 'Who'd have thought there were so many crabs down there!'

His boot is clearing hundreds of legs, pincers and carapaces from crabs caught in the indigo depths of the beautiful Vaila Sound in the southwest of Shetland. The remains are the work of sea otters that snooze, lunch and cavort only a few feet from Mr Tait's office door at Shetland Mussels. 'I see them all the time, they're not bothered by us,' he continues. 'And they don't eat the mussels.'

Eider ducks apparently do, however; shells and all. But then the killer whales eat the eider ducks—so Mr Tait isn't too worried. These are only some of the daily considerations woven into mussel farming in the vast depths of Shetland's voes or lochs. Sparsely populated, far flung and unpolluted, these waters make Scotland one of the world's great shellfish havens.

Plump, sweet mussels are grown on farms across the region on enormous ropes that stretch down 50ft or more. Mr Tait sets nearly 2,000 miles of rope across several sites on the island, each encrusted with mussels like bristles on a beard. They descend into the dizzying depths as we chug through a stiff breeze, past snoozing seals and raiding parties of opportunist eiders. The aforementioned orcas are often seen around Shetland ('A whale of a tale', July 30), indicating the purity of the water and the subsequent abundance of marine life. They've even been seen cruising between mussel ropes like oversized lane swimmers in a lido.

A raw mussel looks like the very Devil, but tastes divine: sweet, fresh and subtle. I slurp them straight from the briny waters, tossing the shells back overboard. As well as being low in calories, packed with easily digestible protein, vitamins, minerals and omega-3s, they also sieve plankton and clean the nutrient-rich currents. Plus, they sequester carbon by the bucketload in a quiet, unassuming way.