According to Lukin, most of the shrimp at the Christmas market were caught in the two months leading up to the holiday season.
Sea urchin roe tastes like a crazier version of the rock oyster. Credit:Brook Mitchell
The fish market was bustling with the first of an expected 100,000 customers on Friday morning, and at 6:30 a small line had formed outside Claudio’s seafood.
Market workers were shelling dozens of Sydney Rock Oysters and wheeling into boxes of glistening barramundi, and market guide Alex Stollznow was preparing to hypnotize an Eastern rock lobster. Lobsters fall into a “catatonic” state when stroked from front to back, he said.
“If you’re going to be handling a live animal, it pays to know how not to stress it out. Even just for your own self-preservation,” Stollznow said.
Lobsters may be harder to come by next Christmas as China relaxes the “shackles on our exports,” Dannoun said.
“We certainly saw a lot of lobster that would normally have left the country to stay in Australia for those export destinations.”
He said lobster retails for between $70 and $100 in the market’s stores and could become more expensive next year as Chinese buyers re-enter the market. Medium king prawns went for just $30 to $35 a kilo.
A staple of Christmas came under threat after QX disease wiped out 16 per cent of Sydney’s stock of oysters in NSW, but there is a prickly alternative that must be eaten.
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Sea urchins with long spines have become a pest moving south due to warmer seas, destruction of underwater forests. The yellow hedgehog roe fetch high prices in Asia — a small bowl of rice can cost $60 — but hedgehogs in Sydney can go for as little as $4, though the roe is a salty, nutty, acquired taste.
“Like tasting the ocean,” said one peddler, “but better.”
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