The Fish Market

Fish is a massively popular thing here. Obviously that's with it being on the coast, but also the variety of stuff the fishermen can catch in the Gulf of Oman on a daily basis appears to be huge.

I arose at 7am on Thursday, damn early for the weekend (especially after being in the pub until late watching the Champions League) and made my way to Ali's house to pick him up. He's a colleague of mine who I use to work with in Dubai a couple of years ago. He was occasionally a social friend too in Dubai so I can see us becoming quite good friends now we're both in this much smaller town. His wife has just given birth the their first baby though so he's not exactly going to be able to play out all the time. There were two specific reasons for picking Ali up; 1. he knew exactly what to do at the fish market and 2. he was having a barbecue that night so he wanted some stuff himself.

My small old man with big grey beard along with his 'stall'

We parked up close by to the market (which is in a place called Mutrah) and walked up an old dodgy looking road which didn't look like it lead to anything. It did though of course and we were soon under a large metal canopy, full of Omani fisherman with all their catch of the morning laid out on a big tiled plinth in front of them. I was quite shocked that it didn't really smell, but I'm told fresh fish doesn't or shouldn't really have that fishy smell you'd expect. There was all sorts of wild and wonderful fish there that I'd never even seen before, but I did recognise the tuna and the easy things like prawns. Ali found a guy that had the type and size of fish he was looking for. He bought 4 hammour (a type of white fish like a grouper), 3 sherry fish and a kilo of tiger prawns from the guy next to him. I was wandering around on my own at this point, which is generally dangerous when I have money to spend in my pocket! I'd say I was like a kid in a sweet shop, but I think a kid would of had a much better idea of what he was doing. I had my sights set on a tuna; 1. because I knew what they looked like and 2. because I knew it would taste awesome on the barbie later. Most of them must have weighed more than me, but I eventually found a small old man with a big grey beard who had a few barbecue sized ones. He looked like he didn't quite have the strength to catch the larger ones these days. The tuna I chose was the smallest he had and it came to almost 3kg on the scales. I was now just stood waiting for him to tell me the highly inflated price and readying myself to bargain. I was shocked when he said '3 Riyals please'. I did a rough conversion in my head...... £5. For a 3kg tuna I thought I wouldn't argue with that and I just paid him. In reality this probably was inflated and a local would get things at a much cheaper price, but I left a happy man and I'm sure he did too. 

An Omani Fisherman about to butcher my tuna

I didn't know I had to do this next bit, but now it was time to take our fish to the far end of the market where there was a whole bunch of guys sat in little concrete bays, each armed with a huge knife and a blood soaked apron.  Their job of course was to chop all the guts out of your fish, clean it, then cut it as you liked. I asked the guy Ali had picked to do our business with if he could fillet my tuna. To my surprise he easily understood what I had asked and was done in about two minutes, all while nattering away in Arabic to his fellow fish choppers sat next to him. I was briefly splattered in the face by something while he was flinging my tuna around with all it's guts hanging out, but I just wiped it off while trying not to think about what it was. 

That night the barbecued tuna was the best I've ever tasted! Ali's prawns were immense too. I can see myself down the fish market quite often then, but for now, I've still got 1.5kg of tuna in my freezer to get through!!

Someone had bought a whopper!