Spencer Deep
Ask us000 m · The surface
Oysters · Abalone · Kingfish · Southern bluefin
Take a breath. We’re going down.
Spencer Deep grows and gathers oysters, abalone, kingfish and southern bluefin on the Eyre Peninsula, and packs them cold in Port Lincoln for restaurants and for people who cook at home. This page goes down the way the water does, one species at a time.
Sunlight on sand, drawn live in your browser.Sunlight through clear water. The depths on the gauge belong to this page, not to the sea.
Sunlight on sand, drawn live in your browser.Sunlight through clear water. The depths on the gauge belong to this page, not to the sea.
1 m · The tideline Oysters, grown where the tide comes and goes
Pacific oysters, grown in the sheltered bays of the lower Eyre Peninsula, Coffin Bay among them. Small seed oysters go into mesh baskets hung from racks and lines. The tide covers and uncovers them twice a day, and they feed on what it brings.
They are graded by hand and moved into wider mesh as they grow, for well over a year.
- Species
- Pacific oyster
- Grown
- On racks and in baskets, between the tides
- Where
- The bays of the lower Eyre Peninsula
- Season
- All year; firmest in the cooler months
- Reaches you
- Live and closed, in the shell, packed cold
8 m · The reef Abalone, from tank and reef
Eight metres down, the light is already turning green, and the reds in the rock are the first thing to go quiet.
Greenlip are farmed on shore, in tanks fed with pumped seawater. Greenlip and blacklip also come from divers, who take them by hand from the granite reef.
Both are sold live in the shell, packed damp and cold.
- Species
- Greenlip · Haliotis laevigata; blacklip · Haliotis rubra
- Grown
- Farmed on shore in tanks, or dived by hand
- Where
- The Peninsula’s shore and its reefs
- Season
- Farmed greenlip all year; dived abalone as the divers bring them
- Reaches you
- Live, in the shell
20 m · The pens Kingfish, in the pens
Yellowtail kingfish, bred in a hatchery and grown in sea pens in Spencer Gulf. They are harvested all year, and sent whole on ice or as fillets.
Firm, pale flesh that holds a clean cut.
- Species
- Yellowtail kingfish · Seriola lalandi
- Grown
- Hatchery-bred, grown in sea pens
- Where
- Spencer Gulf
- Season
- All year
- Reaches you
- Whole on ice, or filleted
30 m · The thermocline Where the red goes
Water takes the colours out of sunlight one at a time. Most of the red is gone in the first ten metres, so a red fish down here looks brown, then black. Orange and yellow go next. The last light is blue.
Below this line we carry our own light.
This page loses its colour in the same order. From here down, the only red is ours, carried the way a diver carries a torch.
A thermocline is where warm surface water meets the colder water beneath it. On this page, it is where the ink turns over.
45 m · The open blue A school holding station
In open water, small fish hold together as one shape and give way as one. This is what the bluefin chase, and what they are fed on in the pens.
A school of 400 sardines, simulated in your browser. Move through it and it closes behind you.A school of sardines swims here when your browser can draw it.
- Species
- Australian sardine · Sardinops sagax
- Grown
- Wild, never farmed
- Where
- Open water, in schools
- Season
- All year
- Reaches you
- It doesn’t. It feeds the bluefin.
60 m · Southern bluefin Bluefin, caught young and grown out slowly
Southern bluefin are not bred in a hatchery. They are caught wild, and then they are given time.
Caught. In summer, young fish are found schooling in the Great Australian Bight and eased, alive, into floating pens.
Towed. The pens are brought back slowly to the water off Port Lincoln, at the pace the fish will swim. Slow is the point.
Grown out. Through the following months they are fed on sardines in sea pens and fill out along the back and belly. They come out from autumn into winter, are chilled at once, and reach you whole or in loins, on ice.
- Species
- Southern bluefin tuna · Thunnus maccoyii
- Grown
- Ranched: caught wild, grown out in sea pens
- Where
- The Bight, then off Port Lincoln
- Season
- Autumn into winter
- Reaches you
- Whole, or in loins, on ice
120 m · The year What the water is doing, season by season
Summer Bluefin are being caught in the Bight and towed in. Kingfish grow fastest in the warm water.
Autumn The first bluefin come out of the pens, and the oysters begin to firm.
Winter Bluefin through the cold months, and oysters at their firmest.
Spring Kingfish and abalone carry the season while the bluefin pens wait for summer.
Abalone and kingfish are with us all year. Ask, and we will tell you what the water has.
160 m · How it reaches you From the water to your bench, cold all the way
- For kitchens
- A standing order each week, whole or portioned the way you cook
- At home
- A box packed in Port Lincoln and collected in Adelaide
- Further away
- Packed for air freight; tell us where
Everything is chilled from the moment it leaves the water.
200 m · The dark Ask us, down here
Tell us what you cook and how often, and we will write back with what the water has.
200 m · The bottom Coming back up
Set in one typeface, Mona Sans, drawn wide and light at the surface and narrow and heavy below. The light and the 400 sardines are drawn live in your browser, and the depths belong to this page, not to the sea.The light and the sardines are drawn live in your browser when it can draw them, and the depths belong to this page, not to the sea.
Port Lincoln · Adelaide
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