LOCAL trawlerman are being encouraged to enter a new competition that will see one individual be crowned the Prawn Tailing World Champion later this month.
Highly skilled fishing professionals, who must have knowledge of tailing prawns, will battle it out against one another at new seafood festival SeaFest Peterhead, preparing as many langoustine in record time.
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Taking place at the harbour quayside in Peterhead, the competition will kick off at 2pm and will last roughlyhalf an hour.
Applications to participate will open at 11am when the main festival commences, and those interested are urged to sign up early doors. Heats will then be made up with individuals in groups. The fastest two will then go head-to-head to win the title and a trophy.
Each heat will showcase individuals’ styles of how they tail prawns and once the box of langoustine is tailed, each trawlerman’s basket will be weighed and recorded.
Skills, speed and precision will be needed to secure the win.
Phil and Annette Buchan of the Favonius PD 17 vessel are sponsoring the event and will be providing langoustine and the trophy.
All of the prawns used for the event will be dealt with humanely before the tailing begins. No live langoustine will be used. The tails produced by the trawlermen will then be sold by the tray to any festivalgoers looking for fresh langoustine for their supper.
Phil, who is organising the competition, is looking forward to bringing something different to the new seafood-focused celebration.
He said: “We’re organising this championship as a bit of fun for SeaFest Peterhead. It is really to highlight the quality and amount of langoustine caught in our waters and landed in our port.
“Part of our catch each week is langoustine tails which the crew must sort through. The faster they can get the job done, the better for freshness to get them packed on ice. It’s always a bit of fun with the crew to go as fast as possible.
“Hopefully we will have contenders from all over Fraserburgh, Gardenstown, Banff and Macduff. It will be open to all crews, as everyone’s included in the community.”
A ‘Guesstimate’ competition will also be taking place at the Seafood Scotland Kitchen where festivalgoers will get the chance to win a “boiling” (a few kilos) of fresh prawns.
A jar filled with langoustine will be placed at the front of the chef demonstration kitchen where individuals of all ages can enter the competition for free. All they must do to win is guess the number of prawns in the jar correctly.
Entrants will have to leave their name, number and write their guess down to be in with the chance of winning the “boiling” of fresh prawns from a local vessel or frozen ones from Amity Fish Company.
The lucky winner, which will be the individual with the most accurate or nearest guess, will be announced at 4pm as the festival closes.
Phil added: “It really is just a bit of fun which we’ve all been missing these last few years.”
SeaFest Peterhead takes place at Seagate from 11am to 4pm and will boast a series of entertainment, a food and drink market, an RNLI live demonstrations and much more.
Five north-east chefs, who are still to be announced, will cook up a storm on the live demonstration kitchen, while student chefs will show off their skills in a second kitchen area.
The festival is organised by a group of volunteers.
