A long day and a late night landing for the inshore boats

 Quality catcher, Harvest Reaper comes alongside ready to land.......

 while aboard the Lamorna boxed fsh are already hitting the quayside......

 and getting the ice treatment.......

 one for Mr Eddy, you might just recognise the old boy tugging on the trolley.......

 looks like fish from the beam trawler Trevessa is ready for sorting.

Film Festival - Pecheurs du Monde, Lorient

If you happen to be in Lorient, France between the 22nd and 25th of March then make sure you visit Pecheurs du Monde, the only film festival in Europe devoted to fishing around the world!


The Festival is a special cultural event that offers new or very recent films dedicated to the sea people of the world. These films introduce the public to magnificient areas full of dreams and freedom where tragedy and hardship exist but also happiness and wonder. 


The Festival is a place of debates and exchanges. It not only invites us to discover images of the sea but also to debate on the main economic, social and environmental questions related to the fishing industry. Since its creation, more than one hundred movies dedicated to fishing and fishermen from all over the world were showcased. The Festival has also awarded and honored many French and foreign directors . The Festival is also a meeting place for all those who love the sea. Each edition gives the fishermen the possibily to speak about themselves. It enables the workers from the sea to introduce their world to the audience, to express their love for their jobs and to share their hopes and fears. After each film, debates are encouraged with the directors, fishing professionals, scientists and of course the public. 


The Festival wants to introduce the young generations to the fishing world. The active participation of young people is encouraged. The students from the Lorient highschools are welcomed at the Festival where their enthousiasm is always very appreciated. The future of Fisheries lies also in the ability to pass on existing know-how and capacities.

Comments on the Al Jazeera programme “Pirate Fishing“,

This video highlights just how easily it is for entirely illegal fish to arrive on our EU plates - we, the consumer, are being duped as a result of economics driving individuals, organisations and governments to wantonly ignore not only the law but also the ethics and common sense of fisheries regulation.  The quantity of fish found aboard the featured vessel, the Ocean Sea Queen/Ocean-3 and the difficulty facing the authorities makes the way in which we pursue tiny inshore vessels here look positively draconian and out of proportion by comparison. If every small handliner's catch for a year in Cornwall was stored together it would not begin to fill the refrigerated hold of this vessel!

Here's what Maria Damanki posted on her blog: "I watched with empathy, in the second episode of Al Jazeera programme “Pirate Fishing“, the adventures of the fisheries ministry inspector Victor Kargbo and the reporter Juliana Ruhfus, chasing the Sea Queen/Ocean-3, caught fishing illegally in Sierra Leonean waters. And I was thrilled when they succeeded! I am ever more convinced and committed that the EU has to play a leading role to stop illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing. 
A lot is already being done: we need to identify the vessels fishing illegally (and we are doing so), so that they can be pursued even if they change name and flag. We have to put pressure on those countries that are reluctant to cooperate, protecting under their flags those who pillage the natural resources of countries that cannot effectively protect them. We need to work with our international partners, as we started doing with the U.S. administration. We have to introduce a new framework for Fisheries Agreements, to assist third countries to build technical and institutional capacity, to work with us ensuring a level playing field. But all this risks to have a limited impact, if there is no common and shared commitment. This is why my aim is to set up an international catch certification system, which would close major markets to the product of illegal fish and bring to an end to its profit. Fighting effectively IUU fishing is to be one of the priorities that the EU pursues when it comes to define sustainable development goals, in Brazil, in June, at theRio+20 conference."

As reported in previous posts, the EU is in a difficult position here as it has licensed a number of very large and powerful vessels to fish off African waters - who are therefore considered to fish legally! Some would argue that they are just as culpable as the unlicensed and illegal vessels from non-EU states like the vessel arrested and prosecuted in the Al Jazeera programme.

Who said, I can see for miles? - in the fog!

 With the foggy weather comes unusual atmospherics - resulting in hugely increased reception for AIS - here the gas platform GSF Arctic-3 at Kinsale of the south coast of Ireland is surrounded by her standby and service vessels.......

further south, the cargo ship Pos Alendrift is picked up nearly 260 miles south west of Newlyn!

Penlee lifeboat takes off Injured seaman in thick fog off Land's End.

The volunteer crew of the Penlee RNLI all-weather lifeboat launched to an injured seaman onboard a 230 metre oil tanker in thick fog off Newlyn yesterday afternoon. 


The seaman had suffered a serious hand injury when a heavy hatch had fallen on it and needed immediate medical treatment. The volunteer crew at Penlee launched the all-weather lifeboat Ivan Ellen in thick fog conditions at 3.25pm to head to the oil tanker’s location 25 miles south of Newlyn, arriving alongside the tanker at 4.20pm. 


Patrick Harvey, Penlee RNLI Coxswain said ‘It was quite a tricky journey out to the tanker through the fog. The crew were watching closely for other vessels, which despite seeming to be some distance off, when you are travelling at such speeds, are quickly in your path and we had to change course a couple of times. "Once at the tanker, the casualty, helped by his fellow crew members, was lowered down on steps to the lifeboat. "Because the tanker was still moving at about six knots and rolling slightly, we had to be careful to get close enough to grab the casualty without damaging the lifeboat and this took a couple of attempts." 


The casualty was taken back to the lifeboat station at Newlyn where a road ambulance took him to Truro hospital.

Race for the hake!

Bound away steaming through the Traffic Separation Scheme off Land's End, the Newlyn netters Govenek of Ladram, Ajax, Sparkling Line and Gary M head for the grounds. This is not much of a fun journey when the visibility is almost nil in thick fog as reported this morning.

Dumped cod - what a waste! - a united UK front is needed say MPs

Dumped dead cod

The picture as it is today: 


Four dead cod float away from the boat. Each cod is around 5Kg.
Four times 5 = 20Kg.


That scene is repeated daily for the net boats and trawlers working in Area VIIg - see below......

Cod quota for ICES Area VIIg which is where the Ajax and other Newlyn boats will be fishing this tide is currently 300Kg per month per boat. 


20Kg is 20/300X100 = 6.6% of a month's quota caught and then dumped, dead, back into the sea - at least the crabs get a meal out of the waste.


And a timely article appeared on the BBC's web site today:



The whole of the UK needs to present a "united front" to the European Union to protect the future of fishing fleets, MPs have said. The Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee accused Brussels of "micro-management" in setting catch quotas. It said EU member states should decide them "as locally as possible". The MPs urged ministers in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland to work together to ensure UK views are heard when new EU rules are introduced. 


The European Commission says the existing system of fishing quotas - which often leads to tonnes of good fish being dumped at sea - will be changed over the next couple of years.


The major headache for the boats fishing in Area VII today is that the quota was introduced way back in 1983. At that time, the TAC (Total Allowable Catch) was set based on catch returns from the late 1970s. Unsurprisingly, the fishing fleet of Cornwall had changed significantly in that time. Most of the bigger boats in Newlyn caught very little cod - they were long lining for ling and skate at the time and there were very few trawlers working the grounds where cod habited. As a result, when the quotas were set the UK ended up with around 1200 tonnes and the French around 14000 tonnes - simply because they had a growing fleet of trawlers catching whitefish including cod. Even if the UK's quota was doubled today it would still not reflect the catching capacity of the fleet. Cod do not move far - a fact proved by tagging fish - not one cod tagged in Area VII has been recoverd in any other ICES area suggesting that the stock of cod is entirely located here in and around the Western approaches.


See the rest of the story here.