Saturday 12 November 2011
Britain in a day - down Newlyn way.
Cefas Endeavour starts blogging from sea!
Good news from our fishy friends over at Cefas aboard the Cefas Endeavour, they have started a live blog from the boat while she is at sea on her survey work.
The blog is an integral part of the larger Cefas web site and not easy to find navigating from the home page! Fishing survey work aboard the Endeavour is just one small aspect of the huge research programme that Cefas are involved with. A summary of their ongoing fisheries partnership programme can be accessed here:
The blog is an integral part of the larger Cefas web site and not easy to find navigating from the home page! Fishing survey work aboard the Endeavour is just one small aspect of the huge research programme that Cefas are involved with. A summary of their ongoing fisheries partnership programme can be accessed here:
- The English 3rd Quarter North Sea Groundfish Survey
- Irish Sea and Bristol Channel survey (September - October)
- Quarter 4 Westerly groundfish survey (November - December)
- The Eastern English Channel survey (August - September)
- Western English Channel beam trawl survey (September - October)
- North Sea young fish survey (August - September)
- Estimating spawning stock biomass using egg surveys
- Fisheries Science Partnership surveys
The blog is being compiled by the resident SIC (Scientist in Charge?) for each trip. During the current research voyage this job falls to Rob who is doing a good job chronicling both research and life aboard events at the end of each working day. the Cefas news team have promised to add a comments section to the blog which will enable followers to contact the research team at sea and put questions and thoughts directly to the scientists during the survey period.
This is a fantastic step forward for the scientific community in building a working relationship with the industry that it serves - so hats off to Cefas for this! The blog's home page is on the News section of the Cefas web site and includes an RSS feed. Through the Gaps has added a feed to Twitter so as soon as Rob on the ship blogs, Twitter will let you know!
This is a fantastic step forward for the scientific community in building a working relationship with the industry that it serves - so hats off to Cefas for this! The blog's home page is on the News section of the Cefas web site and includes an RSS feed. Through the Gaps has added a feed to Twitter so as soon as Rob on the ship blogs, Twitter will let you know!
Thursday 10 November 2011
Trawlers Dealing With Biggest Change In 50 Years
This article appeared on the Oregon Public Broadcast's web site - a look at how west coast fishermen in one US stae are now managing their fishing effort - via ITQs.
"Trawl fishing on the west coast is a very different business this year. That’s because trawlers need to follow new rules that set individual quotas for how many fish they can catch. The industry calls it the biggest change in 50 years. The goal is to reduce-over fishing, and to stop trawlers from throwing out fish they don’t want. The program is also designed to make the fishing business more predictable. But the so-called “catch share” system could also drive more trawlers out of business.
To see what has changed, Oregon Field Guide's Vince Patton spent a day with one fisherman on the high seas. The Cape Windy is a small boat as trawlers go -- 58 feet long. Paul Kujala's one of the small operators. He and the entire west coast trawl fleet have a whole new set of rules to follow this year. Kujala needs to obey them -- and stay in business. "Well I’m trying hard to stay in it, What gives me hope is we have, lower expenses than…than a lot of other trawlers. Because I take only one deckhand with me," Kujala said. "There’s relatively few fishermen left than there has been in the past. And so it is a pretty small world now," Kujala said. Kujala's is one of just 120 trawlers left on the West Coast. In the 1990's there were 500.
On this day, Kujala leaves port in Warrenton, crosses the Columbia Bar and finds a favorite fishing spot about 14 miles off the Oregon coast. He trawls the muddy ocean floor for ground fish. Every time he pulls in his nets, he's making a bet. A gamble that he'll catch the fish he wants - and avoid the kinds that have been overfished and could get him in trouble. Kujala pulls in a net full of flat, brown fish. It's just what he expected to find here. "The majority of what this tow has in it is Dover Sole. This is the Dover Sole here," he said. He drops the net again in the same spot. This time he brings up a stunning surprise. "I can't believe it," he laughed. "They’re Canary Rockfish. What are the odds? I've never had a tow like this in my life. This is what normally you’re trying to avoid," he said. It's hard to imagine a worse fish to catch. Canary rockfish are highly restricted. And he didn't just land a few. He's got a deck full of hundreds of the bright orange fish.
A year ago, these fish would have been illegal to bring back to dock. He'd just discard them. Throw them overboard. Now, he can bring them in and sell them. But every pound is tallied. Kujala is worried he just exceeded his annual canary rockfish quota in one tow. Until he knows for sure, all fishing stops. He pulls in his nets and spends the next 3 hours on pins and needles. He's got to return to port where he can compare his quota to what he's caught this year. "I’ve probably not caught more than five fish in one tow in my entire life," he explained. "And I’ve fished here a lot," he said laughing. "But that's the way it goes. That's fishing," he said.
The individual quota system is brand new this year. Under the old system all the trawl boats shared a quota. If one boat caught too much of a particularly threatened kind of fish, then every trawler on the west coast had to stop fishing. The new system divvies up the quotas boat by boat. Now if someone catches too much of one fish, only that boat gets shut down. Brad Pettinger heads the Oregon Trawl Commission. He says the trawl industry itself pushed for this radical overhaul. "This is probably the biggest changes in the fisheries probably the last fifty years," Pettinger said. So what we’ve asked for is basically, let’s have something that does this better. Let’s have something that reduces the waste, gives a certainty to the market. People can plan. Let’s treat it like a business," he said.
To make sure that each boat follows the rules, there's a built-in enforcer. Every boat must now carry a paid observer who weighs and counts each fish. The observer on Kujala's boat counts more than 600 pounds of canary rockfish. After nine hours at sea, the Cape Windy returns to the dock in Warrenton. Kujala heads to a computer to check the quota website. Sure enough, he's caught at least 48 pounds more canary rockfish than he’s allowed. Kujala still has one option: now he can try to bargain for part of another trawler’s Canary rock fish quota. "So we got to…we’ve got to be real nice to somebody else so we can get forty-eight pounds of Canary’s from them, to cover what we caught there that one tow. And, we won’t be able to go fishing until we do," he explained.
The new "catch share" program aims to protect threatened species by preventing over fishing. It gives a much more accurate picture of how many fish have been caught. And far fewer unwanted fish are being thrown overboard. The Trawl Commission's Brad Pettinger says that the discard rate has dropped from 25 percent a year ago to less then 5 percent this fall. "By and large, people are gonna fish cleaner. Because they know that whatever they do, they’re gonna have to account for it," he said. As for Kujala, he's still not sure what he thinks of the new system. "So far it’s the jury’s still out a little bit. There’s pluses and minuses. so the individual accountability was attractive to a lot of the fishermen, so that you couldn’t step on my toes, I couldn’t step on yours. Now, with the individual catch shares, individually we all have a certain amount of fish," Kuajala said. Kuajala spends the next day horse-trading. A fellow trawler agrees to a deal and gives him enough Canary Rockfish quota to cover his unwanted haul. The Cape Windy is back to fishing again."
Vince Patton / OPB Read the full story here courtesy of the OPB.
"Trawl fishing on the west coast is a very different business this year. That’s because trawlers need to follow new rules that set individual quotas for how many fish they can catch. The industry calls it the biggest change in 50 years. The goal is to reduce-over fishing, and to stop trawlers from throwing out fish they don’t want. The program is also designed to make the fishing business more predictable. But the so-called “catch share” system could also drive more trawlers out of business.
To see what has changed, Oregon Field Guide's Vince Patton spent a day with one fisherman on the high seas. The Cape Windy is a small boat as trawlers go -- 58 feet long. Paul Kujala's one of the small operators. He and the entire west coast trawl fleet have a whole new set of rules to follow this year. Kujala needs to obey them -- and stay in business. "Well I’m trying hard to stay in it, What gives me hope is we have, lower expenses than…than a lot of other trawlers. Because I take only one deckhand with me," Kujala said. "There’s relatively few fishermen left than there has been in the past. And so it is a pretty small world now," Kujala said. Kujala's is one of just 120 trawlers left on the West Coast. In the 1990's there were 500.
On this day, Kujala leaves port in Warrenton, crosses the Columbia Bar and finds a favorite fishing spot about 14 miles off the Oregon coast. He trawls the muddy ocean floor for ground fish. Every time he pulls in his nets, he's making a bet. A gamble that he'll catch the fish he wants - and avoid the kinds that have been overfished and could get him in trouble. Kujala pulls in a net full of flat, brown fish. It's just what he expected to find here. "The majority of what this tow has in it is Dover Sole. This is the Dover Sole here," he said. He drops the net again in the same spot. This time he brings up a stunning surprise. "I can't believe it," he laughed. "They’re Canary Rockfish. What are the odds? I've never had a tow like this in my life. This is what normally you’re trying to avoid," he said. It's hard to imagine a worse fish to catch. Canary rockfish are highly restricted. And he didn't just land a few. He's got a deck full of hundreds of the bright orange fish.
A year ago, these fish would have been illegal to bring back to dock. He'd just discard them. Throw them overboard. Now, he can bring them in and sell them. But every pound is tallied. Kujala is worried he just exceeded his annual canary rockfish quota in one tow. Until he knows for sure, all fishing stops. He pulls in his nets and spends the next 3 hours on pins and needles. He's got to return to port where he can compare his quota to what he's caught this year. "I’ve probably not caught more than five fish in one tow in my entire life," he explained. "And I’ve fished here a lot," he said laughing. "But that's the way it goes. That's fishing," he said.
The individual quota system is brand new this year. Under the old system all the trawl boats shared a quota. If one boat caught too much of a particularly threatened kind of fish, then every trawler on the west coast had to stop fishing. The new system divvies up the quotas boat by boat. Now if someone catches too much of one fish, only that boat gets shut down. Brad Pettinger heads the Oregon Trawl Commission. He says the trawl industry itself pushed for this radical overhaul. "This is probably the biggest changes in the fisheries probably the last fifty years," Pettinger said. So what we’ve asked for is basically, let’s have something that does this better. Let’s have something that reduces the waste, gives a certainty to the market. People can plan. Let’s treat it like a business," he said.
To make sure that each boat follows the rules, there's a built-in enforcer. Every boat must now carry a paid observer who weighs and counts each fish. The observer on Kujala's boat counts more than 600 pounds of canary rockfish. After nine hours at sea, the Cape Windy returns to the dock in Warrenton. Kujala heads to a computer to check the quota website. Sure enough, he's caught at least 48 pounds more canary rockfish than he’s allowed. Kujala still has one option: now he can try to bargain for part of another trawler’s Canary rock fish quota. "So we got to…we’ve got to be real nice to somebody else so we can get forty-eight pounds of Canary’s from them, to cover what we caught there that one tow. And, we won’t be able to go fishing until we do," he explained.
The new "catch share" program aims to protect threatened species by preventing over fishing. It gives a much more accurate picture of how many fish have been caught. And far fewer unwanted fish are being thrown overboard. The Trawl Commission's Brad Pettinger says that the discard rate has dropped from 25 percent a year ago to less then 5 percent this fall. "By and large, people are gonna fish cleaner. Because they know that whatever they do, they’re gonna have to account for it," he said. As for Kujala, he's still not sure what he thinks of the new system. "So far it’s the jury’s still out a little bit. There’s pluses and minuses. so the individual accountability was attractive to a lot of the fishermen, so that you couldn’t step on my toes, I couldn’t step on yours. Now, with the individual catch shares, individually we all have a certain amount of fish," Kuajala said. Kuajala spends the next day horse-trading. A fellow trawler agrees to a deal and gives him enough Canary Rockfish quota to cover his unwanted haul. The Cape Windy is back to fishing again."
Vince Patton / OPB Read the full story here courtesy of the OPB.
Back to school for some.
Wednesday 9 November 2011
Penzance Harbour - planning for the future.
To find out more about Transition Penwith at the Penzance Seafront Forum please see the website and consider signing up: http://penzanceseafront.com
The steering group has members from the diverse range of people and interested parties. The people who previously were "at war" over the Scilly Link plans, are working together within this Forum. This means that what were previously campaign pressure groups, are now central to the development work alongside the council. A truly powerful and exciting way to create the future within our community. It represents a "Transition" in terms both of the way things are done, and the way forward in terms of the actual developments, for example leisure/sports or supermarkets/carparks etc.
The Skate Park on the seafront has just now been granted funds for development. Whilst this was an entirely separate, and less contentious development, it has set an example for this new Harbour Development Consultation As the Seafront Forum, we have now set up in partnership with the Town Council, a new consultation exercise. This is to be launched publicly on 17th November: Harbour Development, the Penzance - Isles of Scilly Link
The Government has given funding for this consultation, through DfT and on down through the Town Council. European Convergence Funding is expected to match that and may go on towards further development of the Seafront. This Consultation is only for the Harbour Development, the Penzance-Scilly Link, and the brief is restricted to that. We need to consider the long term economic development of the harbour, as well as something that commands public support. Here is an urgent call out to identify the Harbour Link project, and design it around needs. The opportunity is there, between the Launch (17th November) and a week later, to offer up your own ideas (a sketch will do) to be considered.
This is an inclusive process and it's time for you or anyone else, to have their say. There is one week only to work in! There is a workshop planned for asap where you can check the brief, and either work out your own and/or work together to illustrate and perhaps make a model of a solution (to the Harbour Development) that is agreed on by consensus. There may be some Permaculture Principles and Ethics to work into the process. Start now and you'll have more time to work up any ideas ... the key is that they fit the Brief ... which you can see at:
http://www.transitionpenwith.org.uk/files/penzance-harbour-consultants-brief.pdf
"Save as" if you want to download it.
This should be a really interesting creative exercise. Go to http://www.pzharbourfutures.org through which you can submit suggestions (website goes live on 12/11/11) The Seafront Development Forum is still fairly embryonic and can do with more input, if anyone is interested and there is an urgent task list to do with the Harbour Consultation.
It is all happening very fast, there is a meeting on Thursday evening (10th November) to help move it forward.
http://www.transitionpenwith.org.uk/files/penzance-harbour-A5-electronic.pdf
All the files and links mentioned are also on the Transition Penwith homepage at: http://www.transitionpenwith.org.uk
The steering group has members from the diverse range of people and interested parties. The people who previously were "at war" over the Scilly Link plans, are working together within this Forum. This means that what were previously campaign pressure groups, are now central to the development work alongside the council. A truly powerful and exciting way to create the future within our community. It represents a "Transition" in terms both of the way things are done, and the way forward in terms of the actual developments, for example leisure/sports or supermarkets/carparks etc.
The Skate Park on the seafront has just now been granted funds for development. Whilst this was an entirely separate, and less contentious development, it has set an example for this new Harbour Development Consultation As the Seafront Forum, we have now set up in partnership with the Town Council, a new consultation exercise. This is to be launched publicly on 17th November: Harbour Development, the Penzance - Isles of Scilly Link
The Government has given funding for this consultation, through DfT and on down through the Town Council. European Convergence Funding is expected to match that and may go on towards further development of the Seafront. This Consultation is only for the Harbour Development, the Penzance-Scilly Link, and the brief is restricted to that. We need to consider the long term economic development of the harbour, as well as something that commands public support. Here is an urgent call out to identify the Harbour Link project, and design it around needs. The opportunity is there, between the Launch (17th November) and a week later, to offer up your own ideas (a sketch will do) to be considered.
This is an inclusive process and it's time for you or anyone else, to have their say. There is one week only to work in! There is a workshop planned for asap where you can check the brief, and either work out your own and/or work together to illustrate and perhaps make a model of a solution (to the Harbour Development) that is agreed on by consensus. There may be some Permaculture Principles and Ethics to work into the process. Start now and you'll have more time to work up any ideas ... the key is that they fit the Brief ... which you can see at:
http://www.transitionpenwith.org.uk/files/penzance-harbour-consultants-brief.pdf
"Save as" if you want to download it.
This should be a really interesting creative exercise. Go to http://www.pzharbourfutures.org through which you can submit suggestions (website goes live on 12/11/11) The Seafront Development Forum is still fairly embryonic and can do with more input, if anyone is interested and there is an urgent task list to do with the Harbour Consultation.
It is all happening very fast, there is a meeting on Thursday evening (10th November) to help move it forward.
http://www.transitionpenwith.org.uk/files/penzance-harbour-A5-electronic.pdf
All the files and links mentioned are also on the Transition Penwith homepage at: http://www.transitionpenwith.org.uk
Who's fishing where?
there's a new feature on the wheelhouse view of VesselTracker that allows the previous 24 hours track to be shown - here, three trawlers are highlighted.
US surfer Garrett McNamarra rides a monster wave in the heavy swells of the North Atlantic.
Big waves to surf are normally the preserve of the reefs off Hawaii, this one is a little closer to home down off the coast of Portugal - caught by US surfer Garrett McNamarra riding this 90ft (that's 27m) monster. Thought to be the highest wave ever surfed.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)