Monday morning's final-end-of-an-era fish auction.

One hundred years ago the fish market moved from the plinth in front of the harbour offices to a covered market and auction building...

by the 1980s things had hardly changed with boats landing straight into the market building when they could get alongside at high water...

the market was fully exposed to the elements and walking on boxes was de rigueur behaviour for the buyers before a major rebuild of the market in the early 1980s saw an access road added to the harbourside and fully enclosed..

large fish caught in bulk like cod, ling, ray, skate, pollack, coley and dogfish were landed in aluminium 10 stone (62Kg) 'kits'...

sometimes there was so much fish boats landed their fish straight on to the piers...

in 2019 another major refurbishment saw the entire market divided into four temperature controlled chill rooms but still selling fish in a traditional shout auction...

today was the last day fish was sold by 'shout' auction,..

a practice that had been going on for over 100 years, captured in this most famous of Newlyn School artist Stanhope Forbes' work, "Fish sale on a beach'...

capturing fish sales on canvas has had a long tradition carried on to this present day, as can be seen here with local artist Henrietta Graham's fish auction, one of six works depicting the local fishing industry commissioned by the harbour and currently for sale...

Ryan Ladd, the last auctioneer to sell fish by shout auction was joined by all the usual buyers in person for the last time = as of tomorrow, the fish selling process will move to an entirely online auction where buyers will bid from the comfort of their office or anywhere they can be connected via the internet...

it seems only fitting to let the pictures do the talking today - it will be the last time fish tallies with buyers names will appear in this way on boxes of fish...

and of course Covid meant that all hands were taking the usual precautions...

as fish from the netters Ocean Pride and Ygraine...

and beam trawlers James Rh Stevensons and Cornishman came up for sale...

as Monday dawned the auction as we have known it for as long as anyone alive can remember came to an end...
 

Enjoy the sound of buyers' banter and bidding battles of the final shout auction.

and the lights went out on Newlyn's longstanding 'shout' auction, forever.