Under Milk Wood inspired by Mousehole?

Hear the mesmeric voice of Richard Burton's original broadcast on radio.

"It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobbledstreets silent and the hunched courters'-and-rabbits' wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat-bobbing sea."

Was Mousehole the inspiration for much of Dylan Thomas' epic radio play, Under Milk Wood?

Quiet evening under a big moon.

The beam trawler Saphire II is up for her annual hull clean and anode check...

good to see the Intuition back in the fold...

there must be plenty of prawns about to go ashore form the big Scottish prawn freezers...

as one of them takes stores aboard for the next two week trip...

the visiting Brixham trawler, Angelina BM271...

the lunatics will be out in force tonight.

Hake in the North Sea, Skagerrak and Norwegian coastal waters.

"Hail the hake!" became the watchword for skpper Phil aboard the gillnetter, Govenek of Ladram in the Ch4 TV series, The Catch.  Forty, fifty, sixty years ago the mainstay of the fleet in Newlyn were the longliners, then came trawlers and beam trawlers, then came the netters, first fishing with multi and then mono-nets - mainly for hake. Hake was everywhere - a huge fleet of Spanish longliners and trawlers fished for hake all year round and all round the western waters - from south of the Lizard in Cornwall to the Porcupine Bank off the west coast of Ireland.  

Many visiting Scottish fishermen had never seen a hake until they fished aboard a Cornish boat - haddock yes, by the ton but hake? no, never!  Conversely, your average Cornish fishermen hardly ever saw a haddock - trawlermen often used to argue over who would take the handful of half decent haddock home for 'homers'. 

Wind the clock forward to today and the world has changed.  In just four weeks in January this year, Newlyn skipper Roger Nowell, with the 12m inshore trawler Imogen III reckons he dumped (because he has no quota) £20,000 worth of haddock back over the side - and that was without fishing overnight which is when haddock catches are at their best!  Now head north of the border up into the North Sea, home of the haddock and we found Scottish trawlers enjoying a bonanza of hake - where once they saw none.

These two fish highlight the impending disaster that is the Landing Obligation - which EU or no EU, CFP or no CFP we, as in the UK, will be subject fully subject to come 2018 - and with miniscule quoats odf both fish in their respective areas - because the fish were never there before - the issue of 'choke species' becomes a reality.

So it is timely to see that the Norwegian Institute for Marine Research has posted a little more in the way of research on the matter of North Sea hake today.

Here's the full article form the Norwegian Institute of Marine Research.

"The distribution of the European hake covers an area extending from Mauritania off the north-west coast of Africa northwards to Iceland and east over to Norway and the North Sea, as well as the Mediterranean Sea. The last couple of years have seen an increase in hake abundance especially in the North Sea, north of Scotland and west of Ireland. It is uncertain whether these observations are the result of good recruitment, influx from surrounding areas, or reduced fishing mortality. Landings from the North Sea have also increased the last 5 years, and as such reduced fishing mortality is unlikely to be the reason for the observed increase in abundance.

Hake is found close to the bottom at 50-600 meters depth during the day, but may migrate upwards into shallower depths at night to feed. The main preys include mackerel, herring, blue whiting and mesopelagic nekton (lanternfish, hatchetfish, shrimps, and krill). Stomach content analyses have also shown that hake prey on hake, but that the extent of cannibalism depends on fish size and location.

Hake that is distributed along the Spanish coast and in the Bay of Biscay spawns mainly between January and June, whilst specimens in Norwegian waters appear to spawn between July and October. Estimating the age of hake is difficult partly because of false annual rings associated with environmental changes and also because of unclear otolith cores. Recaptures from tagging studies done off the coast of France have shown that hake grow quicker than previously assumed. Based on the comparison of genetic material hake in the North Sea seems to be different to fish west of Scotland and in the Mediterranean Sea.

Hake with its firm white meat is a popular and sought after species especially in Europe. Spain is the largest consumer of hake, followed by Portugal, France and Italy."

Facts about hake

Latin name – Merluccius merluccius
Other name: Svartkjeft eller kolkjeft, Heek, Merluccius merluccius, Hake, Merlu, Seehecht, Merluza, Nasello
Family: Hake family (Merlucciidae)
Maxiumum size: 140 cm and > 13 kg
Lifespan: 12 years
Distribution: North East Atlantic, North Sea, Skagerrak / Kattegat, Norwegian fjords
Spawning areas: Bay of Biscay and west of Ireland / England along the 200 m isobaths, North Sea and Norwegian fjords
Spawning time: During summer / autumn in Norwegian fjords
Feed: Herring, mackerel, hake, mesopelagic fish, krill

Map of distribution

Status, advice and fishery
Hake in the North Sea and Skagerrak/Kattegat is managed as part of ICES ‘northern hake’ stock, which also covers the Bay of Biscay, Celtic Sea, and the area west of Ireland and Scotland. Hake north of 62° is not part of this management area.

Article courtesy of the Norwegian Institute of Marine Research.

Fishing from Newlyn video.

Falmouth University student Adam Pickup-Bowker has put together an insightful video on the fishing industry as he sees it in Newlyn.  Even more reassuring is the sight of a young skipper, James Roberts and his even younger crew, William - an inspiration if ever there was that fishing has a future - these guys believe it!

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Tuesday night Wednesday morning - not quiet Sillitoe

Wednesday evening - Moray Endeavour is up on the slip...

with the chain block in place to support the shaft and propeller...

after she pulled just a small section of trawl net into her prop...

polypropylene has a relatively low melting point, especially under pressure so it only takes a short time for the entangled mesh to melt around the shaft - and go solid...

scrap, several boat's worth of anodes lay on the slip...

Newlyn is by far the busiest fishing port in the UK...

looks like the big one is well in the lead a quarter of the way through the season...

another visiting trawler, the Angelina from Brixham...

one of the boys on the Shekinah contemplating the world form the bow...

Tuesday morning - all trawl fish this morning - and the invisible netter (Karen of Ladram) of course - still not clear why the netters don't figure on the landings board...

a few good ray...

a handful of handline mullet means summer is on the way...

big boats catch big cod...

while the inshore trawlers love their lemons...

and, to save space and ice in the fishroom, often 'wing' their rays - which is how these fish were dried years ago in the coves around Cornwall...

on the move...

the angler (monk) fish and his fishing 'rod', monkfish liver is popular as sashimi in Japan...

fish from the invisible netter, Karen of Ladram...

room with a view...

pressure washing the netter, Stelissa...

happy in his work...

greater black-back in search of breakfast...

a day's fishing for scrap on the harbour bottom produced this pile of old tyre fenders...

the latest in fresh water dispensing technology...

working on the gear aboard the Replenish...

#gooddesign no chance of this liferaft getting snagged in the event.

Landing Obligation - "You wouldn't expect M&S to close in February and stay shut for the rest of the year, would you?"

A minister has warned that a way must be found to implement the landing obligation that does not tie up fishing vessels as early as February, reports Tim Oliver.

Scottish fisheries minister Fergus Ewing said the most problematic area of the CFP was the way in which the landing obligation was being implemented.

He also told a Scottish parliamentary committee that he had not received any assurances from the Westminster government that Scotland’s fisheries would not be traded away in Brexit negotiations, and called for UK fisheries to be run by Scotland.

The minister also stressed the importance of the EU market for the Scottish seafood industry.

His comments came during a discussion in the Scottish Parliament Rural Economy and Connectivity Committee that was looking at the implications of Brexit for Scotland’s fisheries, agriculture and forestry.
On the landing obligation, Fergus Ewing told the committee: “The most problematic area of the CFP is the way in which the landing obligation is being implemented. The purpose is to prevent discards… which is a repellent practice that everybody agrees should come to an end.

“However, in order to deliver a practicable result, there has to be a system that does not result in fishing vessels having to be tied up in February. We would not expect Marks & Spencer to shut in February each year and remain shut for the rest of the year, would we?”

He said greater flexibility was needed, and the landing obligation was the ‘the subject of ongoing discussion’ in the European Commission. “We are up against a stumbling block of a regulation that was overly prescriptive, and which many fishermen would be happy to see go, or be changed into a more manageable one,” he said.

“The problem is not an easy one, but there has to be far more flexibility in finding a solution to it.”

He said the CFP had caused ‘enormous problems’ for Scottish fishermen. “We believe profoundly that Scotland’s not having had a direct voice in the EU has hindered our ability to prevent the worst excesses of the CFP over the decades.”

The minister said Scotland needed clarity that ‘all the powers over agriculture and fishing will come to this parliament’. He said a deal with Brussels on fishing and agriculture would take a long time to negotiate, and the UK government must set out ‘a serious transition plan’.

He said stocks must not be overfished, but there were different schools of thought and different strategies that could be pursued. And there were aspects of the CFP that it would be ‘sensible’ to keep, such as technical gear regulations and access to markets.

Answering questions on access, and the UK 200-mile EEZ, from Banffshire and Buchan Coast MSP Stewart Stevenson, Fergus Ewing said he had asked DEFRA ministers Andrea Leadsom and George Eustice on several occasions ‘for a guarantee that the UK government will not bargain away Scotland’s fishing interests in its Brexit negotiations. I have received no answer to that question’.

On enforcement in the Scottish 200-mile zone, Marine Scotland official Alan Gibb said the enforcement burden would increase. Scotland would be reliant on vessel-monitoring satellite (VMS) systems and electronic logbooks – ‘two additional elements of the CFP that we would probably look to keep’.

Markets ‘massively important’

Mr Ewing said the EU was ‘a massively important market’ for Scottish fish, and EU workers were also important in fish-processing factories. Scottish seafood exports were worth £601m and accounted for 78% of the UK’s seafood exports in 2016.

The EU had also supplied more than £77m to over 1,200 projects in the fishing, processing and aquaculture sectors, which had safeguarded about 8,000 jobs. “There is a question about what would replace that source of funding,” said the minister.

MSP John Mason (Glasgow SNP) said fishing groups were ‘not worried so much about a tariff of a few pence or pounds as they are about not getting fish across borders quickly. Delay in getting fish into France, Spain or wherever is the big worry for them’.

Doubts over days-at-sea

Marine Scotland official Alan Gibb said a days-at-sea system of fisheries management to replace quotas was ‘unlikely’ to be a suitable system for UK fisheries.

Peter Chapman, Conservative MSP for NE Scotland asked if it ‘would be worth considering changing from a quota system to a days-at-sea system to regulate the amount of fish taken, and going down a different route entirely?’.

Alan Gibb told the committee that a days-at-sea option was ‘quite popular in the press at the moment’ and that there were other options, such as credits for the type of fish and extra credits for catching cetaceans as by-catch.

“I emphasise that those options are very complicated. In the mixed fisheries of the North Sea, for example, you have to look at your weakest stock,” he told the committee.

“If you are going to follow your international responsibilities on sustainability, you cannot just go out and have unlimited fishing for a fixed number of days. You have to understand the mixture of your catch, and avoidance techniques.

“A days-at-sea-only solution is unlikely to fit the mixed fisheries that we have in the North Sea and the west of Scotland.”

Read more from Fishing News here.