Naked fish and naked flesh - media stars strip off to lay bare the facts about deep-water trawling

All in a good cause - media stars including Ben Kingsley and Goldie were persuaded Brighon-based Moshimo restaurant's co-founder Greta Saachi, who helped put together this beguiling collection from French photographer of the moment Dennis Rouvre to help publicise the FishLove campaign against deep-water trawing...

Gillian Anderson is no stranger to alien creatures given her role in the X-Files, though she might have appreciated being draped with a conger that was not suffering quite so much under the heat of the studio lights!...

the eyes and skin being a little brighter on this shining example of Newlyn conger!

Invasion of the Goose Barnacles!

Washed up on the beach at Portreath, this goose barnacle covered log attracted the attention of beachcombers and walkers alike - though few will have realised that  they were missing out on a real piscatorial treat!

Video courtesy of Captain Kernow

George Eustice - on course to make waves in the choppy seas forecast for the coming stormy annual TAC regulations

New Fisheries Minister George Eustice faces "tricky" issues in securing a long-term future for the Westcountry fleet, industry leader Paul Trebilcock has said.

The Conservative MP for Camborne and Redruth was given a ministerial berth in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) in the October reshuffle.

​Mr Trebilcock, chief executive of the Newlyn-based Cornish Fish Producers Organisation and chairman of the National Federation of Fishermen's Organisations, said Mr Eustice had already "displayed an impressive grasp of the key issues and much of the detail, despite only being in his post a matter of weeks". "Fishing is big business in Cornwall," Mr Trebilcock said.

"In 2012 more than £13.5 million worth of fish was landed into Cornish ports, yet the industry is facing testing times with wholesale reform of the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) reforms, which are changing the face of regional fisheries. The new minister has an important part to play in ensuring the industry's future in the region.

"All the signs are that George Eustice will be a competent and hardworking fisheries minister. Time will tell if he will be an outstanding one."

Mr Trebilcock said although Mr Eustice's predecessor, Richard Benyon, had overseen CFP reform, "tricky fisheries issues" still remained.

They included the mackerel dispute with Iceland and crucial decisions on quotas and total allowable catch (TAC) which will be made later this month. "Given the date of his appointment, Mr Eustice will have little option but to focus immediately on the outcomes of the TACs and quotas regulation in December," Mr Trebilcock added. "The livelihoods of thousands of fishermen are directly linked to these decisions and even if the process has the appearance of a late night circus, it is nonetheless vitally important. "TAC decisions are always a trade-off between what it is safe to harvest now and avoiding jeopardising the future. "But given that most International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) advice is provided on a single-stock basis, ministers have a particular responsibility to balance mixed fishery issues and discard reduction with continued progress towards high yield fisheries."

He said that some implementation of measures agreed under the new CFP were likely to fall on "Mr Eustice's watch". And Mr Trebilcock warned: "Few within the industry can have much doubt that the impending landings obligation – aka the discard ban – has the potential to cause mayhem unless handled very carefully."

Read more:   @thisiscornwall on Twitter

Monbiot's moral? Fishermen must get scientists on board

A Telling Exchange

Last week, George Monbiot, renowned environmental journalist for the Guardian, launched a full frontal attack on @SeafishUK. +SeafishUK is more than capable of defending itself and did so.

However, in his blog George Monbiot suggested that because cod stocks in the North Sea were still below levels seen in the 1970s, the Marine Conservation Society were right to warn consumers not to eat North Sea cod and Seafish was wrong to criticise them for doing so.

The NFFO used Twitter to suggest that Mr Monbiot's comments in respect of North Sea cod were "scientifically illiterate." The 1970s saw what scientists call the "gadoid outburst", when, for reasons, possibly environmental, that are still poorly understood, most of the cod-type species saw a massive explosion in recruitment out of line with anything seen over the rest of the historical record. The point that we were making was that it was nonsense (if not deliberately misleading) to use this apparently freakish population explosion as the benchmark for safe levels of exploitation of North Sea cod now.

Twitter feed: GeorgeMonbiot ‏@GeorgeMonbiot 25 Nov @NFFO_UK @OCEAN2012UK far better for your campaign of bullshit that we look only at when the population is at rock bottom. 

The Tweet reached its destination because Mr Monbiot answered in person in angry terms referring to "our bullshit campaign." Leaving aside that there is no "campaign", the retort triggered a kind of guerrilla hit and run exchange on Twitter across the course of the afternoon in which Greenpeace and others joined in, with greater or lesser relevance.

The Federation, in hopefully calm and reasoned tones, pointed repeatedly to the ICES science which shows that the biomass for North Sea cod has increased for seven successive years, that there has been a dramatic reduction in fishing mortality (fishing pressure) and that in the catch forecasts provided by the scientists there are options that would allow the 2014 quota to be set at +20% and still achieve a +34% increase in biomass, whilst simultaneously cutting discards of mature, marketable fish. After the Federation had sent to George Monbiot a copy of a scientific paper of a paper indicating that even under the current conditions of low recruitment, North Sea cod will achieve (F) maximum sustainable yield by 2015, there was radio silence.

The lessons from this bad tempered exchange are important. Firstly it turns out that Mr Monbiot was not necessarily "scientifically illiterate", it's just that he didn't bother to look at the science before writing his blog. By asking, in the final tweets of the exchange for the link to ICES advice, he was confessing that he had gone for the jugular without paying the slightest attention to the evidence and the authoritative work of stock assessment scientists.

Leaving aside whether consumers pay any attention whatsoever to the kind of “advice” provided by the Marine Conservation Society, it has become clear over the last few years that the fishing industry needs fisheries scientists. Despite the tiffs we have had in the past and the fact that counting the number of fish in the sea is an inherently complex task, the fishing industry needs fisheries science for its rational, measured and evidence-based approach. To abandon science is to leave ourselves at the mercy of the sensationalist and alarmist media and to reduce ourselves to the same type of mudslinging.

It is difficult to know what effect this kind of exchange on social media has on public perceptions about fishing and fish stocks. However, it can be said that it at least allowed the Federation to make the point to our growing number of followers that anyone familiar with ICES science would find it difficult to credibly argue that our fisheries are on a downward trend. The contrary is true. Fish stocks are responding to the huge reduction in fishing pressure beginning around the year 2000 and right across all of the main species groups in the North East Atlantic. If only that message sinks in to the environmental journalists, our efforts will not have been wasted.

It's a Monday's magical morning in Mount's Bay's

Yet another magical morning daybreak in the Bay...

these congers are full of 'chittlings'...

Cefas in action on a busy market trading floor - prices not strong at the moment as the whole EU fleet is at sea during this fine period of weather.

Saturday sights and sounds

Followed in by a few gulls...

while the boat waits for ice the crew finish off some net mending...

on the breton trawler, Vierge d'Ocean a boats that works in the area on a regular basis...

she's not the only boat to get busy mending gear...

so is the Sapphire...

where it's all hands on deck, including the oldest man in the port still to set foot on the deck of a big boat...

to get the giant beam trawls ready for the next trip...

even the netters get in on the act...

Breton trawler heraldry, the langoustine give the game away...

it's that time of year again!

Can we make them #Number1? Let's give the Mission a massive Christmas present!

Spread the word! If every fishing family, and every friend of every fishing family bought the single then the Fishwives Choir would undoubtedly hit the number one spot for Christmas in the #charts - all for a much better cause then letting and X-Factors' winning act get there!