Out in Poole harbour, Dorset Oysters balances tradition and modern regulation in a trade shaped by weather, demand and the need for constant resilience.
All images: Courtenay Hitchcock
By ten in the morning, the heat is already rising off the concrete on an industrial estate in Poole. Pete Miles’ phone has barely stopped ringing since the early hours. For Pete, hot weather means even more orders for Dorset Oysters. Inside his warehouse he moves between tanks, crates and chillers, talking to chefs, suppliers and drivers with the easy cheer of a man who seems to know half the county by first name. There is no hint of fluster. He has the relaxed competence of someone who has spent a lifetime around boats, food and Poole Harbour.
The business has two sides. The first is Othniel Oysters, the Poole Harbour farming operation run by long-time shellfish grower Gary Wordsworth. The second is Dorset Oysters, Pete’s side of the partnership, where shellfish are purified, packed and sent to restaurants across Dorset, the South West and London. The client list speaks for itself: Rick Stein’s eateries, as well as Mitch Tonks’ Rockfish group – ‘a big new one for Dorset Oysters,’ says Pete.
At the warehouse, rigour underpins everything. Oysters, clams and cockles rest in long tanks, purified in carefully controlled conditions for up to 42 hours. Heat pumps keep temperatures steady whatever the season throws at them. Every batch carries its ‘passport’: a record of where it came from, when it entered the tanks and when it was dispatched. That traceability gives chefs confidence and reflects Pete’s own exacting standards. The business has even worked with university researchers to develop new testing regimes, checking oyster flesh for any vestige of contamination before leaving the building.
‘I’ve been selling oysters for 15 years – at one time 20,000 a week,’ says Pete. ‘In all that time I’m pleased to say complaints are very rare. We don’t release anything unless we’re 100 per cent happy with it.’
The oysters he sells grow just a few miles away in Poole Harbour, one of England’s largest Pacific oyster (Crassostrea gigas) production areas. Its mix of salt water, nutrient-rich plankton and shelter creates ideal growing conditions.
Othniel’s system is aquaculture rather than wild dredging – oyster seed is nurtured while young, then laid on the seabed to grow. The business rents its 100 acres of underwater farmland from the Crown – ‘ground rent for mud,’ Pete jokes.
This season, a staggering three million oysters are on the ground – ‘a big investment to push the business on,’ says Pete. Last year, he admits, was tough. People love oysters in hot weather, but long, intense summers hamper growth.
To explain the other half of the business, Pete takes me out on the water. There, under a beautiful blue sky, two harvesting boats are in action. One, the old Sandbanks chain ferry, has found new life, converted into a floating harvesting platform and holding station.
Nearby is a lighter harvesting barge – Noah’s Ark. With whirring propellers, steaming pumps and parasols for shade, it looks like something Caractacus Potts might have invented. In fact, it was Gary’s own creation, cleverly designed to work with the contours of the ground. A gentle water jet loosens oysters from the seabed without tearing it up, while a conveyor lifts them aboard, rattling and agitating as it goes.
Pete describes this turning and tumbling as ‘rough love’. The agitation knocks back the frills on the shell and encourages the oyster to deepen its cup and build more meat. Shuck one fresh on deck and it looks less like a delicate garnish, more a proper mouthful – plump, briny and meaty.
Crabs, small fish and undersized shellfish are returned immediately to the sea. What remains is sorted, counted, graded and temporarily kept in hanging cages over the side – a kind of fridge in open water. It’s noisy, physical, wet work, done in aprons and wellies with the sun sparkling off the harbour one day and sleet needling faces the next.
To Pete it is also a kind of continuity – a direct link between harbour and plate. That sense of connection runs through his own story. Born in Poole, he grew up spending summers at Sandbanks, digging worms and fishing from a young age. At 16, he went to work on pilot boats as a coxswain, during the years when Poole port was commercially thriving.
‘It was a different world,’ he says. ‘Loads of ship movements, real characters on the quay.’ On days off, he would head out with fishermen, learning more about the water that had shaped his childhood.
While still working on the boats, Pete helped in local restaurants, assembling Fruits de Mer and stepping into the kitchen when needed. Later he ran his own restaurant on Poole Quay for more than two decades, followed by a fish tapas bar in Bournemouth, serving seafood in the same direct style he still champions. His son Jarrah has inherited that passion and now runs a successful mobile oyster bar for weddings and special events.
Pete has no time for fussiness. Fish, he says, doesn’t need to be expensive or dressed up beyond recognition; it should taste of what it is and where it comes from. Ask him the best way to eat oysters and he won’t suggest a cloud of foam and micro-herbs. More likely, it’s an oyster well chilled, with a squeeze of lemon and a glass of champagne; or, for something heartier, his ‘oyster schnitzels’ – fried in egg and breadcrumbs.
Resilience and adaptation
There is history behind that simplicity. Oysters in Britain have shifted over centuries from everyday staple to luxury item. The Romans prized British oysters and transported them across their empire. By the 18th and 19th centuries, beds around the Solent and Chichester Harbour were producing millions, a vast working trade. Oysters were once cheap enough to bulk out ordinary meals before overfishing, disease and changing tastes turned them into a delicacy. Even the shells had afterlives – burned for lime, used in mortar and still fed nowadays to poultry as a calcium supplement.
Modern oyster farming comes with modern pressures. Pete talks candidly about rising energy costs, struggling restaurants, unpredictable growing seasons and concerns over water quality. ‘Oyster farming demands resilience and constant adaptation to environmental and economic change,’ he says. ‘There’s also an ecological argument for what we do. Oysters are natural filter feeders, drawing excess nutrients from the water as they grow. The farmed ground becomes a living reef that supports other marine life.’
Pete is funny, outspoken and clearly well known around the harbour, greeting many fishermen as we head back to the quayside. A former Mayor of Poole – the 776th – and still a local councillor, he cares deeply about the town’s heritage and the working harbour that shaped him.
As the morning wears on, more orders are stacked, more calls answered, more shellfish checked and packed for restaurants with famous names. In a trade shaped by weather, water quality and demand, Dorset Oysters works to a simple principle: keep the quality high and repeat orders follow.
Find Dorset Oysters on Facebook here
By Tracie Beardsley
