Sorenne and I will go shopping this morning because when I do, it’s last minute.

The annual 36-hour orgy has begun at the Sydney Fish Market and we’ll be getting our own seafood first thing in Brisbane.

 “I think it’s the vibe during Christmas, the busyness, the rush, the excitement of it all. Everyone is in a good mood, it’s a good time of the year,” says seafood buyer Paul Papacosta, from Penrith Seafoods at Wetherill Park, and Sydney Fresh Seafoods at Manly and Potts Point.

“But quality becomes a bigger issue because there is so much volume going through, you have to keep your eyes on everything, you can’t let anything slip through.”

Dimitri Hari has been running around the Sydney Fish Market since he was two.

“My old man works in the industry, mum was in it, my aunties. I was thrown in and they couldn’t get me out. God knows they tried but I wouldn’t get out of the place,” says Hari who works for de Costi, one of the biggest players in the market.

“Seafood has definitely become a (Christmas) tradition. As each year goes by, Christmas tends to get bigger — a lot more prawns, a lot more oysters.

“People like to indulge with lobsters, there is that. Even though people might be doing their traditional roast, there is definitely a big seafood influence there.

Not so much in the UK, where the Food Standards Agency cracked down on Ades Limited in London for handling and packaging dried fish products and whole frozen African land snails in an unapproved establishment (this establishment is different to the one mentioned on product labels), under unsatisfactory hygiene conditions with a lack of traceability. Its existing approval has been revoked because of these issues.

Despite investigations by the enforcement authorities, it has not been possible to obtain the full distribution details or product traceability records for these products.