Through the Gaps! - Newlyn Fishing News Cornwall UK fish commercial fishing fish cooking and art

Thursday 11 September 2014

Fishing makes front page news in the Cornishman

Full story courtesy of the local paper, The Cornishman

After months of being starved of mackerel the market for the nations favourite oily omega-rich fish suffers as the boats catch too much for the market to bear!

On board the crab boat "Notre Dame de Kerizinen II"

Reportage photos and videos of the newspaper "the sailor" aboard the crab boat "Notre Dame de Kerizinen II" (co-owned by Hervé Salaun and Béganton group), the crab southwest of the island of Sein.

"NEW EU FISHING COMMISSIONER MUST HIT GROUND RUNNING" Ian Duncan MEP

This may well be the kind of sentiment every MEP and MP within a fishing constituency in the UK would express hearing the news of Maria Damanaki being replaced by Karmenu Vella qwho takes up office in November!

"Ian Duncan MEP has responded to the news that Malta’s Commissioner-designate, Karmenu Vella, has been allocated the Environment, Maritime Affairs and Fisheries portfolio by the President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker. Mr Vella will take up office subject to European Parliament approval on November 1st.

This is not the first time that Malta has held the Commission’s Fisheries portfolio and Mr Duncan will urge Mr Vella to make a visit to Scotland one of his key priorities. Mr Duncan will also be seeking an early meeting with Mr Vella to ensure that he is fully aware of the issues facing Scottish fishermen and fish processors.

‘The industry been hit in recent weeks by the Russian import ban, and fishermen are currently concerned about the landings obligations that form part of the upcoming discard ban. These are matters that I will be raising with Commissioner-elect Vella. Further, fishermen need to know that the Commissioner is part of the solution and not part of the problem. The best way to achieve this is for the Commissioner to sit down those who make their living from the sea, hear first-hand their problems and concerns, and seek to establish a strong collaborative approach to finding common solutions. I will therefore be calling on Mr Vella to make a visit to Scotland one of his early priorities.’ My experience of working with fishermen is that they are the people who know their industry best. I hope that Mr Vella agrees and recognises that we cannot continue to take a ‘one size fits all’ approach.

The future health of the industry depends upon letting fishermen do what they do best: fish'."

ENDS Ian Duncan is the Conservative MEP for Scotland and was formerly the Deputy Chief-Executive of the Scottish Fishermen's Federation. Press – iduncanpress@gmail.com

Wednesday 10 September 2014

It’s 'O-fish-ial' – Hospital food to get better! It’s 'O-fish-ial' – Hospital food to get better!

Great news from Seafish!

New standards for hospital food in England will now see fish on the menu twice a week. This is great news for patients and their families, knowing they are getting the food fuel they need to help them get the vital nutrition they need. In 2009, I spent 10 days in hospital when my asthma flared up and I just couldn’t control it on my own. While lots of people complain about hospital food, I was pleasantly surprised what I was served up every day at the Western General Hospital in Edinburgh.

Good news for patients in England is that new legally binding standards for the food served up in hospitals will now have fish on the menu twice a week for patients. I’m really pleased about this – it’s great news for our mission to encourage more people to eat fish! It’s even more important to eat a really healthy diet when you are ill so you can help your body to recover and get yourself back to feeling like normal. Seafood is an essential part of a healthy balanced diet which is typically lower in fat and calories than other proteins. What's more, seafood is packed full of essential vitamins and minerals including omega-3, vitamin D, iodine and selenium which our bodies need to thrive.

Our mission at Fish is the Dish, what I spend every hour of the day on – nights too – is designed to help people eat more seafood. We have a whole host of health information on this site to help people understand the benefits of eating seafood. With over 200 seafood recipes we also have lots of easy ideas for you to try too including these fab mackerel dishes which are an excellent source of omega-3 which our bodies cannot naturally produce by themselves. Another great way to get more seafood into your diet is to select it off the menu when you’re out at restaurant or bar. Swapping your normal lunchtime sandwich to a seafood option like tuna, prawn or salmon is another easy way to eat more seafood. When it comes to having a takeaway, again seafood is a healthier choice, fish and chips is lower in fat and calories (typically 800 calories per portion) in comparison to pizzas, curries, kebabs and burgers which are far higher.

If you have any questions about eating seafood simply tweet us at @fishisthedish Heather xx

Seeking views on proposals to give England’s under 10m fishing fleet the option to have an annual Fixed Quota Allocation (FQAs).

The inshore trawler Aurora

and Harvest Reaper are some of the growing number of Under 10m vessels as some skippers downsize their boats

From DEFRA:

We want to know what you think about plans to give England’s under 10m (U10m) fishing fleet the option to receive an annual Fixed Quota Allocation (FQAs). This informal consultation will help us develop these proposals and how they would work.

Read the consultation document here:

Read the PROPOSAL to allocate Fixed Quota Allocation (FQAs) units

This is to improve certainty in business planning and fishing opportunity available to fishermen with U10m vessels.

If the proposals go ahead, we envisage that the FQA entitlement of each licence will have been calculated from the beginning of 2015.

Ways to respond

Download and print the response form here:

and email your response to:

FisheriesReform@defra.gsi.gov.uk
or write to:
: Defra Domestic Fisheries Reform Team
Area 8A Millbank
17 Smith Square
London
SW1P 3JR

The terrifying true story of the garbage that could kill the whole human race - how well do you know your Gyres?

Read the story below and find out one possible explanation as to why you have 50% less sperm than men in the 1950s and your #penis is likely to be at least 2 cm #smaller than your grandfathers!

"The terrifying true story of the garbage that could kill the whole human race"

It might be a sensational title - but, like the harbingers of doom over climate change or the heroic efforts of Emily Pankhurst et al to give women equal rights 100 years ago - sometimes you just have to make a claim or do something pretty drastic to grab the attention or at least provoke a response - and for thinking people some motivation to ask the question - is this the truth coming from the pen of a journalist like Clive James or just Daily Mail paranoia?

“Become mentally prepared, factual and thoughtful, about principles of human rights and sustainability. Become a force of greater persuasion. Choose justice, choose your army, find your students, know your enemy, and then prepare yourself with clenched fists."

Marcus Erikson

The article, of course, begins at sea.....

"The ship plows on with groaning sails, with a heave and a shove, like a fat man shouldering through a crowd. The motion is surprisingly stop-and-go, without ever really stopping, or quite going. In the open cockpit we’ve just been holding on and talking about flotsam: things that find their way into the vastness of the seas, and float and float, and finally maybe wash ashore. Grimmest to be mentioned so far by my knowledgeable companion—trumping the foot in the boot—is the skeleton in the survival suit. Those are pearls that were his eyes! When we pause the conversation to climb up onto the pitching deck to launch the trawl, I’m keeping Mr. Bones in mind.

The Sea Dragon, a 72-foot round-the-world racing sloop, is all taut lines and cleats to trip on, and a fall overboard after dark would be a possible death sentence. You’d be a mote, a speck in the black night and wild seas.It’s the start of the graveyard watch—2 a.m. to 6—and most everyone’s asleep in their bunks, except the captain, who’s below in the green glow of the nav station plotting our course: a knight’s move, 1,200 miles east to the middle of the South Atlantic, then 800 miles north to Ascension Island. Above, out in the weather, it’s just Watch Team A: myself, young Emily from France, and the star of our show, Marcus Eriksen Ph.D.—“scientist, marine, explorer,” as his Weather Channel gig, “Commando Weather,” introduces him (“Hi! Dr. Marcus here!”).

In those TV bits,part Survivorman, partJackass, Eriksen performs stunts, like covering himself with prognosticating crickets or being buried by an avalanche. This job is only slightly more ludicrous: cleaning up the sea.For the past decade, 47-year-old Eriksen has been an eco-stuntman, drifting on rafts across seas and down rivers, as well as a serious scientist, commissioning vessels and plying his plankton trawls, collecting data, and speaking to groups—including thousands of school kids—about the threat of plastic pollution in the sea. Thanks to environmental gadflies like Eriksen, and emotionally affecting documentaries about wildlife deaths resulting from plastic ingestion and entanglement, this is a well-known phenomenon—if still under-studied and vastly underestimated.

Eriksen’s job is to keep poking a sharp elbow and saying, No, really, listen! This shit could kill us all!For the quantities in play now beggar the human imagination. Dumped or accidentally spilled from ships, blown from landfills, washed down every river in the world, plastic trash has been amassing since World War II in floating dumps, some of which exceed millions of square miles. Round and round the all-too-durable plastic goes, imponderable quantities caught up in the great oceanic gyres. These “garbage patches,” as they are called, are out of sight and out of mind, but not entirely inactive. Like all things the sea claims, plastic too suffers a sea change. And the ultimate harm our throw-away effluvia might yet do, to the health of the sea and the human future, nobody knows for sure.That’s why we’re out here getting thrashed by a squall, as the rest of the crew of 11 sleep fitfully in their hammocks. The South Atlantic in particular is aqua incognita for marine pollution researchers.

Though Marcus has voyaged to four of the world’s five major gyres (the North Pacific, South Pacific, North Atlantic, and Indian Ocean), studying their respective garbage patches, this is his first trip to the South Atlantic. In fact no one has ever sailed here specifically to study this antipodal gyre’s burden of plastic trash. We don’t know if we’ll find a Poe-story horror-whirlpool of algae-slickened detritus or just bits and jots."

now read on......

At least an awareness and a willingness to make a difference is being demonstrated actively here in UK North Atlantic waters where our fishermen are being pro-active in Fishing for Litter...