It's Newlyn's first #CatchofTheDay

There's light in the sky at 6am these mornings...

as inshore boats like the Nazarene ready themselves for a day on the pots...

over 1000 boxes on the market this morning...

with just the one box of roes - it's a shame these hugely tasty treats don't make more money at this time of year...

Andy regales the Cornwall College chefs-to-be students with his favourite 'one that got away' yarn...

with hake prices at a low, some of the net boats like the Ajax have decoded to preserve what hake quota they have for  when the price makes it worth catching them in any quantity...

one mermaid's purse amongst the gurnards - but what fish produces it?...

two of the most common kinds of ray landed on the market...

on the move, the next auction has started...

just a few herring still coming ashore...

seems nobody on the Shiralee likes scallops - with such a small quantity these would never make it past the frypan on many boats!...

full of fish from end-to-end...

keep the buyers busy...

the big Belgian beam trawler Francine enjoyed a night ashore...

these days many of the smaller boats that work static gear like nets and pots are fitted with bow thrusters to keep the boat 'on the gear' when hauling...

Rowse's crabber Chris Tacha being one pof them...

looking ahead and bound...

out through the gaps...

looking for more @nowellsy15 tries next weekend...

seems the tide is out this morning in the old harbour...

all that's missing is the #CatchOfTheDay in Trelawney's wet fish shop in Newlyn...

plenty of yellow and pink to be seen in and around the town.

Belgian beam trawler Francine

Belgian beamer visitor and the Ajax landing - as busy Sunday.

In and landing...

the netter Ajax ...

puts ashore her latest haul of whitefish...

with forty nets still out at sea fishing away while boat steams to Newlyn, lands and steams back again...

the boxes come ashore as quick as possible to the waiting lorry...

the giant Spencer Carter N10 hauler inboard...

some of the two dozen 50Kg anchors fixed to each end of a tier of nets the crew have to haul around a heaving deck before and after shooting...

while down in the fishroom...

they take some pushing to get into position under the hatch...

then the boxes go up four at a time...

at the end of the quay, the huge Belgian registered beam trawler Francine...

has both beam trawls raised...

so that the six strong crew can repair the five ton chain mat...

and any of the trawl that is damaged...

the skipper, Christian wants to know where the photos will be on view!...

as he lowers the starboard gear a few feet...

and uses the bow thruster to push the boat away from the quayside... 

so that the crew can get access to the footrope and fishing line...

no surprises here...

as a gentleman takes her bow rope...

two of the biggest sardine boats in berth.

Barry Young talks fish on Brixham Fish Market

Touring the country with 100 constituencies in 100 days, BBC's Radio for Today show gets to speak to Nigel and Barry Young on Brixham fish market at 6am as they start the daily auction.

Not the kind of #MothersDay the children of #Vanatu will be celebrating

Vanatu disaster - intense low over Pacific islands sees wind speeds over 200+kph

Looks like the 60+ island communities known as #Vanatu could do with some serious international humanitarian aid after winds over 200 kph at the leading edge of the typhoon tear across the region...

the devastation is almost total in many places...

with almost no communication possible with the majority of communities outside of the capital the true extent will not be known for some time - in the meantime the population have to contend with having lost or seriously damaged accommodation and infrastructure.

Rachel Kyte, World Bank President told AFP:

"I don’t think I would say climate change caused [Cyclone] Pam, but I would say the fact is in the past three or four years we’ve seen category fives coming with a regularity we’ve never seen before.

And that has some relationship with climate change. It is indisputable that part of the Pacific Ocean is much warmer today than in previous years, so these storms are intensifying.

We may have helped communities become resilient to the kinds of storms we experienced in the past, but resilience to a storm with wind speed of up to 300km per hour – that’s a whole new intensity."

You can help UNICEF can help the mothers of children in Vanatu here

End? noggin? boat?

In South Shields they call the end of a loaf of bread a 'boat' - what about your part of the world?

Fisheries management in the public interest: a new model

Tools to model any activity take a good deal of research and ingenuity if you are to challenge established practice. Writing for the New Economics Foundation the UK's leading think tank promoting social, economic and environmental justice, Griffen Carpenter has created a new statistical model to help identify a way forwards and provide a starting poi t for discussion about a new way of managing the planet's finite assets.

"How should we manage our common resources? It’s not an easy question: what we want from a resource – whether it’s long-buried coal reserves or land for agriculture – can have a range of social, economic and environmental implications. We are particularly bad at balancing the needs of current and future generations, and Europe’s overfished waters are one clear example of this failure.The management of fisheries as a common resource is difficult in and of itself. Fisheries are plagued with patchy data and complicated interactions between fish stocks and fishing pressure.

For the past two years I have tackled this difficult question head on through the development of a bio-economic model of European fleets (BEMEF). Building on NEF’s success in demonstrating the economic benefits of sustainable fisheries, this model analyses the impact of reaching sustainable levels of fishing in a dynamic manner and estimates impacts to the fleet level. It is designed in a way so as to be accessible to the public and to present key assumptions to users in an effort to open up economic modelling to a wider audience.
Today we are launching the online version where you can play with the data or download the full excel-based model (warning: it’s quite large!). We have also released new research from BEMEF on the huge economic benefits of rebuilding fish stocks to sustainable levels and reallocating quota between fleets. 

This analysis of quota allocation between fleets is a new contribution to the fisheries debate. While the default assumption in the model is to allocate quota based on historic catch, as is current practice, this need not be the case. In managing our fisheries we could instead allocate fishing quota so as to achieve a particular aim, be that job creation, carbon reduction, profit maximisation, or otherwise – in fact the reformed EU Common Fisheries Policy requires us to consider socio-economic factors in quota allocation.