Sean Faulkner

At some point in your visit you will want to try one of Jersey’s splendid restaurants.

There’s a fair chance that the seafood on the menu will be supplied by Faulkner Fisheries, based at L’Étacq at the northern end of St Ouen’s Bay. Proprietor Sean Faulkner has seawater running through his veins. The ocean and its bounty have played a major role in his life for as long as he can remember.

Sean was brought up on this five-mile sandy bay on the west coast and recalls how his mother insisted that he went for a dip in the sea every day between May and September. Like many local people, he grew up gathering shellfish from the beach – it was not unusual for children to be told to go down to the beach to find their lunch! He spent seven years at sea on P&O cruise ships, returning in 1980 to start up a business on which he had been hooked since childhood.

He started selling fish aged seven when he sold a conger eel to a local restaurant, soon to be followed by lobsters and spider crabs. At 13 he discovered that, by snorkelling from the beach, he could catch the much larger spider crabs found further out. By this time, the teenage entrepreneur was also using a boat to catch lobsters already pre-ordered by restaurants.

As well as running the business, Sean also enjoys his leisure time at sea. He goes fishing for fun in his 13ft Orkney Spinner fishing boat, and is one of the many Jersey inhabitants addicted to the incoming swells of St Ouen’s Bay: ‘I love surfing – that bug bit me very young, too.’

But he loves nothing more than to take his second boat, a 36ft cruiser, out to the magical reefs of Les Ecrehous off the north-east coast with his wife Louise and their three children to see seals and dolphins and to collect shells. ‘These remote islets have gripped me since I was a child and now I’m introducing my children to that same feeling… they’re such a special place.’

www.faulknerfisheries.co.uk