Welcome to Through the Gaps, the UK fishing industry's most comprehensive information and image resource. Newlyn is England's largest fish market and where over 50 species are regularly landed from handline, trawl, net, ring net and pot vessels including #MSC Certified #Hake, #Cornish Sardine, handlined bass, pollack and mackerel. Art work, graphics and digital fishing industry images available from stock or on commission.
Cornish fisherman Andy Giles gives up his state of the art trawler to travel to the coast of Sierra Leone, where the fishing is done from a dugout canoe.
Living in a small community of mud huts, Andy discovers a very different way of life where a bad day's fishing means a hungry family. Even this precarious lifestyle is now under threat from foreign trawlers that fish illegally in the villagers' waters, taking their fish, destroying their nets and sometimes even sinking their canoes, with tragic consequences.
Through the international language of the fisherman, Andy develops a lasting friendship with his hosts, in a film which highlights the plight of subsistence fishermen around the world.
A new WWF study shows for the first time the global expansion of fishing activity, from 1950 to the present, through an animated map. It clearly shows that European Union fishing fleets have expanded beyond European waters exploiting new fishing ground since 1980 and increasing the pressure on fish stocks.
The study for WWF has for the first time transposed data about the global expansion of fishing activity, from 1950 to the present, to an animated map. It shows that European vessels are now traveling to the furthest corners of the world to exploit fish stocks. Declining domestic catches and efforts to reduce the number of vessels fishing in European waters have resulted in much of the European tuna and other pelagic fleets concentrating their fishing efforts overseas.
According to the EU, in 2008 the EU external fleet comprised of 718 vessels, which represents 25% of the EU fleet in terms of gross tonnage.
The 718 vessels broken down by Member State:
Spain: 424 (59%)
France: 100 (14%)
Portugal: 73 (10%)
Italy: 52 (7%)
Greece: 18 (3%)
Lithuania: 12 (2%)
Estonia: 10 (1%)
UK: 9 (1%)
Others (Latvia, Germany, Poland, Malta, Denmark, Cyprus): 20 (3%)
UK vessels operating in non-EU waters: According to DEFRA, in 2011 the UK had vessels fishing or licenced to fish in third country/external waters as follows:
Indian Ocean (under Indian Ocean Tuna Commission): 4 vessels fishing under agreements with Mozambique and Madagascar.
Mauritania: 1 vessel under a Fisheries Partnership Agreement (FPA)
Falkland Islands: 1 vessel under private agreement
Morocco: 2 vessels (although only
In a report publicised by the prince speaking at Fishmonger's Hall last week there are reasons for optimism about the future of the world's fish stocks despite their currently dire state at the launch of a report from his green think-tank.
The report, Fisheries in Transition details 50 case studies of successful management in various parts of the world.
The prince said the issue was dogged by a "debilitating fatalism".
His International Sustainability Unit (ISU) is aiming to build constructive dialogue between industry and ecology.
The report is the first offering on fisheries from the ISU, which aims to continue the kind of work done by the Prince's Rainforest Project on a larger range of issues.
Speaking at Fishmongers' Hall in the City of London, the prince said it was "critically urgent" that countries find better ways of dealing with over-fishing and other marine issues.
Through research and interviews with people in the trade, it documents 50 examples from the shores of every continent illustrating how once unsustainable fisheries can be turned around.
The Peruvian anchovy fishery - the world's largest - set quotas for the first time only three years ago.
Catches have fallen, but profits and wages have risen. Fishermen choosing to leave the industry have been given free training for new trades.
"So here we are again, a mix of Cefas and JNCC staff ready for another busy couple of weeks onboard Cefas Endeavour. On this survey we will be visiting a few of the recommended Marine Conservation Zones (rMCZs) to collect data to verify the presence and extent of features of interest.
If you want to learn more about the process that led to the recommendation of these sites, visit the JNCC website for more information.
On the first two weeks of this survey we will be visiting rMCZ sites in the Irish Sea. To avoid a very long steam from Lowestoft, all staff travelled to Swansea to join the vessel. This means that within a couple of hours we will be at our first survey site where the work can begin.
Recently a new multibeam echosounder and a few other pieces of equipment were fitted to the vessel, so the first job will be a thorough test and calibration to make sure everything is working satisfactory. Once completed, we will start collecting seabed samples to tell us more about the physical and biological character of the sites.
Whilst we steam to our first site everyone is busy getting all our equipment ready to go, from computers to sample pots to sieving tables to connecting cables. So I'll leave it at this and go down to help the team.
Jump have created the titles for the new series of 'Toughest Place to be a....' on BBC2. The series consists of 3 programs - each with a different theme. This title is from 'Toughest Place to be a Fisherman'.
For centuries the fertile fishing grounds off Sierra Leone have provided a living for coastal villagers, but unwelcome intruders are now threatening their way of life. Has it become the toughest place to be a fisherman?
Each morning, Ishmael Kain and his cousin Kaba Kain push their canoe from the sandy beach of their tiny fishing village out towards the open sea.
Together they furiously paddle the canoe, called a kru, out through the fast-moving breakers - often rising up to four metres high - which form a daunting obstacle on the path to the best fishing grounds.
These coral blue waters are home to large catfish, barracuda and sea bream. In the past they yielded enough fish to feed the village of around 100 people and a small surplus to sell.
But not any more. Now the villagers' way of life hangs in the balance.
It is a chance for Ishmael and Kaba to prove what has been happening to Cornish fishing boat skipper Andy Giles who has travelled to Sierra Leone with a BBC film crew. Of course, these guys are not alone in haveing their livelihoods stolen by much bigger vessels working far from home in their waters - see this post on Through the Gaps from last year.
First in the new series, last night's opener featured London dustman Wilbur Ramirez as he worked alongside the local bin men in down-town Jakarta - a humbling experience for the Londoner used to a much higher level of comfort and protection from some of the nastier side of human waste.
