Mid-week market in Newlyn.

For the first time in many years the beam trawler, Sarah Shaun has moved up to a berth in front of the Stevensons office - she was one of four ex-sidewinders bought back in the late 70s and at one time skippered by Roger Nowell, the others were the Bervie Braes, ABS and the Karen - they were all built by John Lewis of Aberdeen as the Sputnik class of trawlers and commended by all who sailed on them for their seakeeping ability and comfort at sea...

should make life easier for Cod when he pops in to pay his annual berthing fees...

typical of an inshore tosher, everything lashed to the rail aft side of the wheelhouse...

fish from the big Scottish prawn trawler, Ocean Vision...

included big plaice...

and very unusual for Newlyn, a box of handy sized halibut...

along with a few good monk tails...

the fish from the inshore boats included these cracking turbot...

and the beam trawler, William Sampson Stevenson put ashore a shot of ray...

and a few cracking red mullet...

leaving the Kindred Spirit to land the megrims for the day...

trammel nets also catch big crab...

and even bigger ray...

while the smaller punts are happy to handline for a few bass...

while cuttlefish might have been thick on the ground this year squid have been noticeable by their absence...

and it is still early days yet before the inshore trawlers start to pick up good hauls of John Dory...

wheres they have been making good landings of lemons in recent weeks...

and maintaining keen interest from the buyers...

especially line caught pollack...

with a poor forecast and jumping spring tides there are plenty of boats in port...

none of which is holding up progress on phase two of the fish market development...

there's more weed here than on the Old Harbour quayside...

another ex-French trawler, this one built by Chantier Glehen in Guilvinec now named the Aquarius and fishing for langoustine on the very same grounds she did when Breton owned...

that, is one cloudy looking day in stall over the Mount this morning...

the deep-draughted Unity in a deepwater berth...

much to everyone's delight, thousands of baby lobster hatched out here over the weekend...

re-fueling time for two passing Border Patrol boats...

crabber Harriet Eve and her kid brother waiting for his name and numbers to be painted...

a closer look at a patrol boat...

Annie-May, the latest addition to the Newlyn netter fleet...

which is the replacement for Bo's old boat the Myghal seen here - now re-named and numbered and due a long steam for her new home port in the Shetlands - reminds me of the time Russ 'Oz' Parker brought his boat the Nerid from Skye and Russ being Russ sailed her down with nothing more than an AA road atlas!...

the Stevenson's latest workboat, Chickadee II...

the Annie-May, replacement for the Myghal, is the first catamaran netter for the port...

with her smaller NH-05 Spencer-Carter hauler...

sited aft of the wheelhouse...

the solid twin hull is reinforced below the waterline...

while under the aluminium shelterdeck..

huge net pounds were fitted out to carry trammel and wreck nets...

the net over-ender was carried out by Baumbachs of Hayle...

trammel nets are used to fish for mainly for monk, turbot, brill and ray...

and the odd shellfish...

in the overcast conditions the complementary colours blue and orange go so well together...

another successful shout for the Penlee boys...

close enough...

surprisingly, the day was not as bad weather-wise as might have been expected after the signs earlier in the day!

Big data and video evidence in the USA - will it help sort the LO here?

The Landing Obligation (LO) has consequences over and above that of protecting quota'd species - fishermen in the uSA are grappling wityh similar issues as explored in this story here:

McGuire thinks that the tuna industry is ripe for more of this sort of deck-to-dish traceability because of its high value. But he cautions that it may take a while to catch on. “Electronic monitoring is tough to explain in the three seconds it takes people to walk past the seafood case.”

A Future Without Human Observers?

Thus far, Muto says he’s fairly satisfied with how the cameras are working. Recently, he was rewarded when regulators granted greater flexibility to the fishermen using electronic monitoring. Now he can respond to what he sees on the water, and shift from fishing for groundfish to fishing for Atlantic Bluefin tuna without having to first return to port and notify regulators.

Alger says that sort of flexibility appeals to fishermen. “A lot of industry groups are starting to see electronic monitoring as a way to go back to the way it was: ‘I’m just going to go fishing.’ They’re seeing electronic monitoring as a way to be more opportunistic when they go fishing, and to provide more info about what’s occurring in the ocean.”

While today, only a fraction of New England dayboat fishermen are using cameras, McGuire is hopeful that the industry will reach a tipping point where use of the technology becomes the norm. “Fishermen talk a lot,” he says. “We just need one or two in every port. Others will find out.”

Full story from CivilEats here:

Fishing for Justice: England’s Inshore Fisheries’ Social Movements and Fixed Quota Allocation

Typical Under 10m fishing boat in which 78% of the UK workforce is employed.

English inshore fishers have long campaigned through the New Under 10m Fishermen’s Association to have a fair share of the UK’s fishing opportunities and to be involved in inshore fisheries management. They argue that their allocation of ~2% of the UK Share of Total Allowable Catch species is unjust, with the inshore fleet contributing 78% of the workforce. Their concern, beyond quota shares, is that Local Ecological Knowledge / real time information from fishing grounds does not feature as information in the determination of the Marine Management Organisation’s Fixed Quota Allocation pool. This is thought to be top down, inflexible and having limited potential for adaptive co-management. 

At the same time, this entails increased distrust for the Common Fisheries Policy, often through conflated ideas about who is to blame for the allocation of national quota within the UK. Once the overall Total Allowable Catch levels have been agreed on, every December at an EU wide level, fishing opportunities are given out by the member state. Many fishers and the wider public are surprised it is the member state’s responsibility to assign access between fleets. Indeed, it is the Fixed Quota Allocation system which has left only 2% of the UK share of TAC species with inshore fishers, a decision which would benefit from a public enquiry. 

Leasing enough UK, Fixed Quota allocation Units is a barrier to entry for young fishers, as lease costs are high and inshore fisheries are mixed. An ageing knowledge base, with few new recruits to continue practising it, means the inter-generational transmission of fisher LEK is more at risk. Alongside this, the associated cultural value created by fisheries communities is under threat as a result of the inequality in terms of access to fishing opportunities. 

The newly recognised Coastal Producer Organisation could manage the 2% of the UK share of Total Allowable Catch, alongside promised ‘uplifts’ and any increases which may occur as a result of leaving the ‘relative stability’ system of EU Total Allowable Catch share. 

The Coastal Producer Organisation will listen to fishers and manage quota adaptively without permanently gifting fishing rights. Catchapp can be a way for members to integrate their fisher LEK to form the basis for real time updates to changes on fishing grounds. This can support determination in a scientifically robust manner improving on the previous monthly pool allocations for the seasonal mixed inshore fishery. This is an urgent requirement to improve buy in, compliance, confidence in science and foster adaptive co-management.

Full story courtesy of Jeremy W. Anbleyth-Evans and Chris Williams

Key words: Fisheries, Quota, Knowledge Management, Ecosystems

#FishyFriday in Newlyn

At first light, Newlyn and its inhabitants seems not a million miles away from the fictitious port captured so vividly by Dylan Thomas in Under Milk Wood...

"To begin at the beginning:

It is a Spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobblestreets silent and the hunched, courters'-and- rabbits' wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat-bobbing sea. The houses are blind as moles (though moles see fine to-night in the snouting, velvet dingles) or blind as Captain Cat there in the muffled middle by the pump and the town clock, the shops in mourning, the Welfare Hall in widows' weeds. And all the people of the lulled and dumbfound town are sleeping now.

Hush, the babies are sleeping, the farmers, the fishers, the tradesmen and pensioners, cobbler, schoolteacher, postman and publican, the undertaker and the fancy woman, drunkard, dressmaker, preacher, policeman, the webfoot cocklewomen and the tidy wives. Young girls lie bedded soft or glide in their dreams, with rings and trousseaux, bridesmaided by glow-worms down the aisles of the organplaying wood. The boys are dreaming wicked or of the bucking ranches of the night and the jollyrogered sea. And the anthracite statues of the horses sleep in the fields, and the cows in the byres, and the dogs in the wet-nosed yards; and the cats nap in the slant corners or lope sly, streaking and needling, on the one cloud of the roofs.

You can hear the dew falling, and the hushed town breathing."

without trying too hard many could identify similar characters in the local community, as no doubt any small port the world over could...

for now the boxes are five...

or six high...

keeping the auctioneers and buyers on their toes...

as they place their bids on fish like these line caught pollack...

huge ray...

brilliant brill which may well be on a Jonathon Norris wet fish counter near you in Pimlico, Hackney or Tufnell Park - but you'll have to be early as this prime example of a Cornish flatfish will be snapped up quick enough...

along with a few witches...

the big beamer, St Georges landed a whack of rays...

there's two sides to every story...

taking it all in his stride, auctioneer Ryan holds forth...

selling three trips of net fish...

there's a big difference between red and grey gurnards...

ray have two slits cut in them to facilitate easy draining from the gut cavity while the fish are stored in the fishroom at sea...

specimen monk tails...

and hake from the Govenek...

for some buyers the lure of quality fish was just too great and they bought most of the boxes...

BBC TV programme maker Sam wowed by the quantity of quality fish on this morning's #FishyFriday market...

which included this stunning turbot...

and a box containing what few have ever see, even fewer could identify and even fewer can say they have ever eaten...

as opposed to the instantly recognisable but in very short supply mackerel...

the happy hake...

from the Ajax...

with three offshore netters, four beam trawlers and a handful of inshore boats landed overnight the market was end-to-end fish this morning...

 with trips stacked up to nine high to save market floor space...

with the cuttlefish season over for the beam trawlers they have now turned their attention to fishing the deeper waters for Dover and megrim sole, monk and other high value flats...

while the larger grades of whitefish are dragged off the market floor.