Historical Background
Since 1555, when exports were first recorded, Cornish Sardines – historically known as Cornish pilchards have been salted whole in bulk, then pressed and packed into wooden barrels and boxes and sold throughout Europe. Before electricity was discovered salting was the main method of fish preservation and the Catholic countries of Europe provided a good market for fish products. Cornwall had a thriving Pilchard industry between 1750 & 1880 with hundreds of vessels catching Pilchards from ports all around Cornwall. Records state that in 1847, 40,883 hogsheads (around 8,000 tonnes) of pilchards were exported and during this period over 1,000 tonnes of Pilchard were caught in St Ives bay in a single night!
At the beginning of the twentieth century there were dozens of plants salting pilchards in Cornwall supplying the booming Italian, French and Spanish markets where they were sold from travelling carts in the remote rural regions. Although seine netting for Pilchards had been used successfully for hundreds of years during the 1890’s seine netting was being replaced by smaller drift net vessels During the 1920’s & 30’s the fishery from Cornwall oversupplied the market and by the 1960s, with alternatives of fresh and frozen fish, only one plant continued to pack salt pilchards in Cornwall.
The rise of the Cornish Sardine
During the 1970’s and 80’s very little fishing took place due to the reduced market opportunities for the drift net caught pilchards. In the early 90’s a skipper, Martin Ellis, from the Cornish cove of Cadgwith started to target sardine using ring nets these were smaller versions of nets used in Scotland to target Herring and Mackerel.
Although Pilchard stocks were healthy having not been fished to any great extent over the previous years market opportunities were still limited. This lack of demand had reduced the landings from Cornish boats to less than 7 tonnes per year. The traditional name for the fish, pilchards, summed up images of tins and tomato sauce. So in 1997, after some interesting market research by Nick Howell at the The Pilchard Works, the fish was re-branded as Cornish Sardines. New recipes were developed with Marks and Spencers, some boats were given new nets and a guaranteed minimum price for their catches and the Cornish Sardines were launched in store later that year.
Modern Sardine ring net vessel
Since then new ring net vessels have been built, suppling top quality Sardine to the market. Cornish landings have risen from the 7 tonnes seen in the mid 90’s to around 7,000 tonnes in 2018. Fishermen, processors and multiple retailers have been working together to further improve the demand domestically and abroad for Cornish Sardine and in 2010 the fishery was awarded MSC sustainable seafood certification.
