Seafood Cornwall Quality awards for 2007

News straight from Seafood Cornwall's press officer Sarah Henshall reads;

Newlyn’s Toughest Tribe Nets Vessel of the Year

The Skipper and Crew of the Newlyn beam trawler “Billy Rowney” PZ532, have netted the coveted Seafood Cornwall Vessel Quality of the Year Award for the second year running.

The Seafood Cornwall Quality Vessel scheme recognises those boats consistently landing top quality fish through improved gutting, washing and icing of the catch whilst at sea and on the market. The Billy Rowney achieved the highest average score of samples carried out throughout 2007.

Other categories included Best Beamer, Best Netter, Best Trawler and Best Under 10m vessel and the winners respectively were, the Newlyn vessels “Billy Rowney”, “Carol H” (Sk. Phil Mitchell), “Nantewas” (Sk. Roger Coutsoubos seen here chatting at the market berth) and the Cadgwith based “Scorpio” (Sk. Danny Philips).

Robert George, Seafood Cornwall Quality Adviser, commented on the success of the scheme,” The standard of the fish landed on Newlyn market has continued to improve from all sections of the whitefish fleet during 2007. The Billy Rowney has again consistently landed fish of excellent quality, no doubt partly due to their practice of immersing the fish in slush ice before stowing in the fishroom. The use of the insulated bins has seen a dramatic improvement in the quality of fish coming out of the smaller boats.”

Skipper Steve Moseley and the crew of the “Billy Rowney” featured in The World Toughest Tribes series on Discovery Channel last year. After receiving the award, Steve said, “We take great pride in landing consistently high quality fish, it’s good to get some extra recognition for all our work.”

“This is a real good news story – this whole scheme has been about recognising those skippers and crews that go the extra mile, often in very tough conditions, to make sure that the fish being landed in Cornwall really stands out as top quality”, said Nathan de Rozarieux, Project Director of Seafood Cornwall. “What has been great about these awards has been the level of competition between the boats and this has really helped raise fish quality across the board” he added.

Seafood Cornwall, an Objective One Fisheries Programme grant funded project, offers advice to industry on fish quality issues and is working to improve the marketing and promotion of fish and seafood.