EYRE PENINSULA

From kingfish to cockles, locals have enjoyed the bounty of South Australia's sparkling seas for decades. Now, a new generation is taking a sustainable approach to seafood — with mouth-watering results

- JUSTIN MENEGUZZI

Small waves fizz around David Doudle's ankles as he stands hunched over the clear water, hands searching the sandy sea floor for cockles. The sun has only just risen, yet here we are hunting in the surf for our next meal, the scent of tangy saltwater as invigorating as any morning coffee. It takes less than 10 minutes for us to gather around 100 of the tiny, smooth-shelled bivalves, and David has a hungry look on his face.

"Growing up, we could have cockles whenever we wanted," he says. "My kids now love eating them too. They'll gather a couple of handfuls, cook them over a fire and eat them straight from the shell." The former farmer has lived on South Australia's Eyre Peninsula all his life and now spends his days showing travellers his favorite foraging spots, as guide and owner of Australian Coastal Safaris. "Foraging is a way for me to relive my youth, but it's also a cheap source of food," he tells me. "It's so satisfying because you're living off the ocean. Anyone can do it."

To test his theory, David has taken me deep into Australia's seafood frontier -a jagged, a wild peninsula that looks like a shark's tooth biting into the Spencer Gulf. It's here that 'tuna cowboys' - many of them immigrants from Croatia, Italy, and Germany - made their fortunes during the 1950s boom, the mansions they built tucked into the hills overlooking Port Lincoln and the giant, ring-shaped tuna 'ranches' moored in the bay. We stop at one of David's secret fishing spots, and shortly after casting my line there's a salmon grappling with the end of my hook. The next beach over, David dons his wetsuit and disappears into the water, re-emer

ging with a heavy bag of green and blacklip abalone.