Another popular weekend spot is Leigh-on-Sea, where cockle sheds that have been in the same families for generations serve up the local shellfish in polystyrene tubs with white sliced bread on the side (oldleigh.com/cocklesheds.html, from £2 for a small carton).
We pulled the shellfish up by the bucket load and cleaned and bearded them before steaming them in white wine, garlic and lemon juice in the launch's galley.
Now, after huge clean-up efforts, says Mr Mizutani, the shellfish are returning.At Sushi Mizutani, while some customers linger, most move in and out briskly.
I bet he whips round that coral reef giving the shellfish the thumbs up, waggling his horns at all the ladybait (this fish is a guy, obviously), and puckering his lips for all those inevitable selfies with deep sea divers.
A fisherman pushed himself out of his chair, strolled to the dock, hauled up two yellow nets full of the shellfish, and brought them into the kitchen.
Rodney's carries some surprisingly good and easy-drinking local wines that stand up to shellfish, like the light-bodied Cave Spring Chardonnay ($19.75).
By the sea loch on the intertidal area, by contrast, they were flying up with shellfish, such as mussels, and dropping them to the rocks below and then diving down for the contents.
At the same time, two other types of toxins rarely seen in combination are turning up in shellfish in Puget Sound and along the Washington coast, said Vera Trainer, manager of the Marine Microbes and Toxins programmes at the Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle.
The shellfish, she said, could have picked up sarcocystis neurona from the runoffs of heavy rains in February.
Not only this, but it will have been snapping about in its rockpool a few hours before, unaffected by hours travelling overseas or flash chilling which causes shellfish to seize up, the rigor mortis spoiling its texture.
