Hoisted by crane from the salty depths of Galicia’s cold, nutrient-rich Atlantic waters, a rope weighs heavy with clusters of mussels jangling like castanets. Eager to sample his latest harvest, Xindo Amado releases a handful of the jet-black shells and offers them to me. Crusted in salt crystals and strands of seaweed, they smell deliciously of the ocean.
Five hundred ropes are suspended from Xindo’s batea, a wooden grid-like platform floating in an estuary close to the Spanish mainland, collectively providing a nursery for the region’s prized shellfish which are harvested only once a year. There are around 3,000 of these structures floating in Galicia’s waters, all family-owned for several generations and guarded with pride.
