Busy mid-week market.

There's a connection between this boat, its previous owner and the greatest British naval captain...

sounds more like a Christmas song, four Scottish prawn trawlers, three Newlyn beam trawlers and a trio of inshore trawlers - and if you look very carefully in the big, black space below you can nearly make out the names of the four netters that also have fish on the market this morning...

here's big, quality turbot from one of them...

all the boats land haddock these days no mater where or with what gear they fish with...

but only the AA had such huge Dovers as these guys...

Cefas regular Gary heads up the data collecting team, given the size of the undertaking every morning - measuring and recording the measurement of each individual fish - there may well be a case for the introduction of something a little more technically advanced than a light pen to make the workload much more efficient and enable the team to record and store data cataloguing all the fish landed and not just a sample- given that your average mobile phone has apps that can recognise your fingerprint or iris, measure anything using the camera and store more data than the average home PC could a few years ago there has to be a better way - all the big fish on the market is guarded by machine - and the fish have to pass one at a time down the conveyor - it too could use the same technology as a part of the grading process - and the relevant data easily exported...

megrim soles stacked four boxes high, monk tails stacked two - that ratio of 2:1 is about right for the mix of fish, by weight, between the two species for beam trawlers landings...

there's plenty for fish for the guys to measure this morning...

so Spike must be well impressed he was down on the market this morning, am sure he would love a penny for every ray he has picked up over the years...

Cod, the fish that changed the history of the world (btw, a book well well worth reading - but, as it was published way back in 1998 the doom-mongering in the book could do well do with an update)...

they may look like megrim soles, but are they?..

a grey among reds...

just reds, fine red mullet form the beamer...

the big-eyed haddock and his unmistakable thumb print...

sport the ray...

some of the invisible netters fish (with different kinds of net - tangle as apposed to gill) for turbot and hake in a single trip...

while the Scottish prawn boats are all equipped to weight their fish at sea - as the fish are weighed the catch data is sent by Inmarsat C satellite to their respective processors keeping them informed in real time how the boats are fishing which enables them to plan ahead for processing capacity and to alert customers - most of the catches are sold before the boat begins the long steam back to port to land...