Ajax bound away again after landing mid-tide.

After steaming for some 15 hours back to Newlyn from the fishing grounds off Ireland, the netter Ajax made her first landing just after lunchtime today and has now just left Newlyn on her way back out to the grounds again for the second half of the tide.

Tracking the Ajax with the AIS as she leaves Newlyn and heads away West passing the Scillies to the South - around four and a half hours.

How useful would this be?

The top Scottish and UK fish market at Peterhead in Scotland uses its web site to inform merchants and other interested parties which vessels are landing on the market with how much fish. Is this something that would help the second biggest fish auction in England inform local buyers, merchants, restaurants, hotels and all the other businesses interested in knowing what types and how much fish is on the market at Newlyn on any given day?


Skipper Peter Bruce aboard the Peterhead seiner Budding Rose thinks so,  "it has been a great benefit not only to the merchants but the fishermen as well."

This morning's landings on Peterhead market - including fish from the pair seine team Budding Rose and Lapwing.

Brixham market also offers a similar service on its web site:

There are two boats due to land at Brixham tomorrow.

Plymouth Fish Market, well aware of just how much fish is exported to European countries even provides their web site in four different languages.......

Newlyn's answer is this dilapidated blackboard at one end of the Fish Market! - although there is information available to CFPO members - but it is password protected and would therefore seem to defeat the purpose.

Ajax AH32 Newlyn bound.

Picked up by the AIS from VesselTracker, the hake netter Ajax makes her way across the traffic separation scheme on her way to Newlyn. Skipper Alan was predicting around 500 stone of hake for Thursday's market - landing ahead of the rest of the fleet should give him the chance for his fish making a good price.

More like summer this morning!

Flat calm, no wind, blue sky and hardly a boat left in the port........

apart from the visiting Brixham sailing fishing boat, a beam trawler, the Providence laying outside the Filadelfia back with probs.......

good night's work for the sardine boys again......

Big Daddy and a Joey mackerel, not many of those to the kilo.......

first signs of this season's squid putting in an apprearance......

good sized trubot for the AA.........

the reddest of red mullet.

Hake for supper.

Looks like good fishing with the Ajax according to the the tweets from skipper Alan, so while the hake netters are rolling around away west of the Scillies, it seems only fair in the warmth, comfort and stability of home to indulge in some Newlyn hake for the evening repast. In this case a simple recipe, a handful of black olives mashed spread on the flesh side of a hake fillet, shallow fried and turned for the last few minutes to finish off. Veg of choice to accompany the fish, in this case puy lentils with celery, leek and a sliced chilli to liven things up - and a baked potato.

Social Networking - a far cry from link calls and VHF!

In business terms they would be known as 'early adopters' - people who take up with a new product or service when it first appears on the market.  Fishing, despite being a a traditional industry, has plenty of early adopters when it comes to new products or services that improve fishing performance. So, with full access to the internet restricted to bigger boats that can afford the luxury of sat comms it's good to see a few of the smaller vessels make use of new technology, like social networking sites through using Inmarsat C and the mobile phone networks. Of course, fishermen for many years have made use of their VHF radios and 'big sets' at sea to create their own kind of fishermen's social network between vessels from different ports and even countries!

Budding Rose taken from her pair-seine partner Lapwing - the boats fish from Peterhead in Scotland.

Today, a handful of smaller boats have their own blogs, Newlyn's Crystal Sea II and Peterhead's Budding Rose are two examples. The Scottish boat is part of a pair-seine team, her partner-in-crime being the Lapwing. The boats work in the North Sea, off the Shetlands and over in the Norwegian sector on the Bergen Bank in the summer months. Sometimes, they target hake like the Newlyn netting fleet and there are photos of good hauls of hake on the blog.

More recently a few boats have begun to experiment with Twitter to chronicle their daily fishing activity. Yesterday, with Alan the Ajax's skipper now signed up to Twitter, we learnt that while fishing over 100 miles west of Newlyn deep off the coast of Ireland she had been towed by a big Spanish trawler - then late last night we heard the catch results when half way through hauling her gear on the first day - with 100stone (approx. 650Kg) of 2-4Kg hake - good fishing - but with the forecast giving SW 5-7, a very uncomfortable night in store!

Hopefully, more boats will be encouraged to get to grips with the technology and find the time to bring their fishing stories to a computer, tablet or smart phone screen near you!

Ajax encounters that same old problem with a Spanish trawler.

Neuvo Ria Aldan courtesy of TrawlerPhotos.co.uk

fishing terms: towed (v) when a trawler tows its trawl across nets, pots or lines fixed to the bottom


The latest tweet (see box on the right side of the blog) from Alan, skipper of the netter Ajax has identified the big 337 tonne Spanish trawler Neuvo Ria Aldan after she towed her trawl through the nets. If a trawler tows across a tier of nest sometimes the damage is restricted to a small section when the net might be dragged for a short distance or even cut through. In which case the netter has to steam to the other end of the tier and start hauling again untill the break is reached. If, however the trawler tows in the same direction as the gear is laying a whole set of nets can be lost. Let's hope that the Ajax can get in contact with the boat to pass over her readings for the rest of the gear.