Our range follows the season and the sea. Below is what we buy in volume from Jaffna — and how we prepare it for wholesale and retail buyers.
Photographed on our own boxes, at our own landings — not a stock library. What you see here is what came through, and it is named in English, Sinhala and Tamil, because a fish is only ever ordered in the language the buyer actually uses.
Two things are worth knowing before you read the list. First, availability moves with the season and the weather — a species being on this page means we buy it regularly, not that it is in the box this morning. Second, the scientific names are given at genus level. That is deliberate: a mixed coastal catch is not a single species, and pretending otherwise is how a buyer ends up with something they did not order.
Sold live with the claws banded, graded by size band and by meat fill rather than weight alone.
Banded wild tigers off the northern coast — the premium prawn line, and the least predictable one.
Pale, clean-shelled and slightly smaller than the tigers. Steadier supply and a strong retail seller.
Pond raised and sized consistently, so a line keeps running through the months when the boats cannot go out. Never sold as wild.
Spiny lobster, seasonal and limited in volume. Worth asking early if you need a quantity.
Broad oval body with the cuttlebone showing through — a different animal, and a different price, to squid. Iced at the beach.
Long torpedo mantle with the fins at the tail. Sorted into size bands so your kitchen or line gets a consistent piece.
One of the steadiest lines off the northern coast, and a name wholesale buyers ask for directly.
A firm, meaty pelagic that holds condition well through transport.
A volume line for markets, processors and institutional kitchens. Landed in quantity and moved fast.
A large, heavy-bodied bottom fish landed in small numbers and weighed one at a time. Sold under the trade name Metaglobe’s buyers use for it.
Landed in quantity and moved fast. Tell us the size you need — tuna covers several fish at several prices.
A high-value reef fish, landed in smaller numbers and graded one at a time.
Landed daily along the northern reef, and one of the most recognisable fish on the beach.
A reliable reef line and a steady seller in the domestic retail trade.
Nothing in that category yet — try another filter.
Scientific names are given at genus level, which is how a mixed coastal catch is honestly described. Sizes, grades and pack formats vary by species and season — tell us what your line needs and we will tell you plainly whether we can hold to it. Prefer to talk it through? Send us the details.
Crab is the least forgiving thing we trade. A weak crab and a strong one look identical in a photograph and behave completely differently by the time they reach you — one arrives lively, the other arrives as a refund. The difference is meat fill, and you cannot read it off a scale.
So it is graded by hand, at the landing, by people who have done it for years: feel the weight against the shell, check the underside, check how it holds its claws. That takes longer than tipping a crate onto a balance. It is also the only way the grade means anything a week later, when you order again.
Cephalopods punish delay faster than almost anything else on the boat. The colour goes first, then the texture, then the price — usually in that order and usually within hours. A cuttlefish that spent the morning in a warm crate is still perfectly edible; it simply is not worth what it was worth at dawn.
Ours goes onto ice at the landing and stays there. It is also worth being precise about what you are ordering: cuttlefish and squid are different animals at different prices, and the two get muddled constantly in this trade. We keep them separate on this page for that reason.
We handle two wild prawns — banded tigers and the paler whites — plus a pond-raised line that keeps an order running through the months when the boats cannot go out. We trade all three, and we always tell you which one you are getting.
Above: farm-raised prawns, and lobster — a seasonal line we handle in limited volume.
The northern waters give a genuinely broad mix — reef species, bottom fish and pelagics all in the same week. What we can offer on any given day depends on the weather and the boats, so treat the list below as our regular range rather than a standing guarantee.
Red snapper, emperor, grouper-type reef fish, parrotfish and the mixed reef catch that the northern boats bring in daily.
Seer fish, trevally, tuna and queenfish — the higher-value lines that wholesale buyers and hotels ask for by name.
Sardine, mackerel, herring and similar species, moved in bulk for markets, processors and institutional kitchens.
Lagoon and near-shore species from the northern lagoon systems, popular in the domestic retail trade.
Handled seasonally alongside the main range, graded by count and iced on the same discipline as the cuttlefish.
If you need a species we haven’t named, tell us. We would rather source it properly than sell you something adjacent.
We supply both ends of the domestic market and the terms differ, so it is worth telling us up front which one you are.
Send us the species, the grade and the weekly volume. We will come back with an honest price and an honest lead time — including when we can’t supply.
