Local paper, The Cornishman ran a story this week on the successful re-branding of the humble pilchard as the Cornish Sardine and subsequent MSC status achieved by the Sardine Management Association - all much documented on the posts of this blog. The article goes on to describe how ring-netting was brought over from France a few years ago - which is not quite how the revival of ring-netting began - as can be seen from the following dramatic story that made the headlines in the December of 1999:
Skipper and owner, Martin Ellis had rigged his boat the Samantha Rose with a ring-net from the Mousehole boat, Renovelle in 1996 to target pilchards for salting for the Newlyn company, British Cured Pilchards. On the night in question, now fishing with the boat Penrose, he was so successful he filled the boat to the gunwale's! The weather then freshened making it difficult to maintain sufficient freeboard to keep her afloat - with the inevitable consequences - and she sank leaving three men safely aboard the life raft! A few years later, local filmmaker Jed Trewin captured the whole episode in a short documentary that won many accolades and was shortlisted for a prize in the Celtic Film Festival of that year. The fishery continued to grow when Newlyn skipper, Stefan Glinski launched the Highlander in 2000 fishing with his own gear rigged as ring nets. She was the first new boat built especially for Cornish Sardines.
There were a few false starts before Nutty Noah's escapades of course - the then Whitefish Industry Authority (Seafish's predecessor) sponsored trials with drift nets and some of the Mevagissey fleet and Newlyn, or more correctly, Mousehole's very own Edwin Madron used the Sarah M to chase the silver shoals in Mount's Bay.
As a side-note, little did he know at the time, but one of Martin's crew aboard the sinking boat was one Patch Harvey - later to become cox of the very lifeboat that rescued him that fateful night.
where did edwin with the Sarah M fit into this?
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