Extract* taken from Nata Além De Sabor, a cooking blog by Nata Cardoso. Posted 21/08/22

*Translated from Portuguese

One of the things I missed most during the COVID-19 lockdowns was being able to visit my grandparents. My avozinha was born in the Papagaios and she talked about the islands often. When my avô retired in the 2010s they upped sticks and bought a beachside cottage on Vulcão, avozinha’s home island. I last saw them in summer 2019, so visiting them this month has been a delight. Especially because it meant eating (and learning to cook) all my favourite dishes from childhood.

As islands, Papagaian cuisine involves a lot of seafood. Years ago I talked about the delightful salty-sweet sauces and desserts made from sea vine fruit – found only in the Papagaios - but my absolute favourite dish is made with Ponte mussels.

The Grande Ponte reef stretches between the islands of Vulcão and Milagres and is home to dozens of species of shellfish, many of which are delicacies. The prized species are hard to distinguish from their less-appetising kin, however, and many early accounts from the islands talk about the hit or miss nature of the seafood. It took an unlikely partnership for the islanders to learn where the best hauls could be found.

Enter the ostraguia.

It is an unassuming lizard when compared to the many impressive species of the islands’ past and present. Around the size of a house cat, it can be found on the beaches and rocks around the Grand Ponte reef where they bask in the early hours, warming themselves in the morning sun before they take to the water. They share this habit with marine iguanas, the only other marine lizards. Fortunately, the waters of the reef are warmer than those of the Galapagos allowing the lizards to spend more time in the water than their distant relatives. A zoologist friend tells me they are also able to flush blood to their limbs in times of stress allowing for rapid warming and bursts of speed, meaning they are not entirely dependent on the surrounding temperature to stay warm.

They are related to the rastejador de costa, known in English-speaking countries as coast-creepers or mock-rocks, an animal covered in thick armour and disguised as a rock to sneak up on and raid seabird nests.

Unlike their close kin, the ostraguia’s armour is less thick as they don’t pick fights with nursing birds. Indeed they are now only really armoured on the head and back. They are also mostly black, to aid in basking, with a red throat and chest. The webbing between their long fingers and toes is also red.

Now you are probably thinking at this point: “Nata, why the zoology lesson?” Don’t worry, as with all my rambling stories there is a culinary link.

As I mentioned earlier, earlier settlers in the Papagaios found it hard to gather consistently appetising mussels to the point that some refused to even bother fishing them anymore. Refusing shellfish on a remote island is not a recipe for success. (Note to self: ‘Recipe for Success’, title of a food and business blog.)

Eventually, fisherman noticed the funny lizards the scrambled out of the ocean onto the rocks often had mussels in their mouths. The fishermen watched closely and when the lizards dove beneath the surface, a few brave souls followed. They watched the lizards swim to the beds of mussels and, using a beak-like mouth, pried open shells to feast on the meat within. After a while the fishermen realised the lizards only harvested specific beds and on sampling the mussels there were overjoyed to note the lizards only ate the species that were also agreeable to humans.

This is how the lizards gained the name ostraguia – oyster guide. Yes, not mussel-guide, the fishermen weren’t concerned with taxonomy. For centuries, fishermen followed the lizards to find the best beds and so the Papagaian shellfish industry boomed.

I’ve actually scuba dived with ostraguia and they’re funny creatures. Marine iguana swim with a side-to-side motion using their long tails but ostraguia, like their coast creeper relatives, lack any real tail. Instead they swim with their legs. Their back legs are short and powerful with large, webbed feet, as you might expect of a swimming animal. Their front legs, however, remain proportionately long, like their ancestors’. Once at the seabed, ostraguia cease swimming and use their arms to pull themselves from rock to rock, meal to meal, in a manner I have never seen before.

I once followed an ostraguia as it swam and collected mussels in its wake. For today’s recipe, on the other hand, I went to the local fish market. You will need…