Mid-week market in Newlyn

Tom treated to a stunning morning overlooking Mounts Bay...

as a few of the punts set to work just off the gaps...

the Lady H is getting ready for the summer...

yet more more trawl fish landings from the big Scottish prawners...

unusually, the Shekinah skin their monk tails...

boxes of JDs from the 23m prawner, Replenish...

and a few from local Dory chaser, young Roger Nowell...

the one beam trawler put ashore a good shot of monk, megrim and...

other flats like these plaice...

whole monk from the Replenish...

with a few boxes of these monsters of the deep...

auctioneer Ryan in full swing...

if you can't beat them, join them - the James RH scratched a handful of prawns from her trip...

thornbacks don't come much bigger...

nor do haddock...

gaping cod...

pristine turbot from the Govenek...

and a few hake...

sometimes the topside skin pigment appears on the belly of turbot...

not the happiest hake it seems...

time to get the fish off the market...

one of the top predators in western waters...

heading down the quay to sea...

as the Admiral Glanville heads for the end of the quay...

poser...

not exactly reflecting her former glory...

Sowenaa III packs a huge amount of boat in 26 feet of Buccaneer hull...

the tallship, Bessie Ellen provides classic sailing trips...

blue is the colour, fish is the game, Falfish wagon...

signs of summer, another visiting trawler, Radiance gets ready to take ice...

23 metres of registered length, modern stern trawlers and their big beams pack a huge amount of boat...

into a short length of boat...

checking the stern ropes...

tools of the trade for shelterdecked boats, the only way to get the better of all those deposits left behind by the gulls which chase the boats at sea every time they haul...

Fishing films at Newlyn Filmhouse in aid of the RNLI

Cornish Sardines and the Gillnetters of Newlyn

Two locally made historic amateur films Cornish Gold is a short film shot in 1960 following the pilchard from the sea to processing works.

The Gillnetters of Newlyn shot in 1990 follows PZ 41 The Ocean Spray on a five day, 160 mile fishing trip out of Newlyn. The usual distributors fee will be donated to the RNLI.

Book your tickets online - Newlyn Filmhouse offers excellent food and drinks available in what was Turner's Fish Factory!

The Little Rascal - Chris Tyler.

There's another side to the fishing industry to that of the many families born and bred to that way of life. Plato said, " There are three sorts of men, the living, the dead, and those that go down to the sea" - and a more extreme example of one of those attracted to go down to the sea for the adventure and rewards that fishing offered was a certain Chris Tyler.

At the time this was post the 60s Beatles, early 70s Beach Boys, Pink Floyd were always in the LP charts, Party 4s, Mateus Rosé and handful of illegal substances, the Vietnam War raged , 'discos' were the thing and a generation of teenagers was able to afford holidays far away from home.

Then, fishing provided a means to earn some money for anyone willing to take a chance, learn fast and graft.  As a young man barely out of an Essex technical college where he studied architecture, Chris found himself living in the far west of Cornwall financed partly through trips aboard local fishing boats as and when needed.  Practical, gregarious, willing, fun-loving and always on the look out for something different and new Chris fell in with a similar band of troubadours with one thing in common - surfing - at a time when you could count the number of good UK surfers on one hand.

In the wider world, the quietly and well spoken Chris is best known for creating the Uk's first surf club, Skewjack Surf Centre near Sennen in the early 1970s. Thousands of people all over the world no doubt fondly remember their time at Skewjack as the best ever - such was its reputation - though in the end, being featured on the BBC Holiday programme in '76 was its undoing as pure a Beach Boys, West Coast surf centre! However, for Chris there was much more to follow including recreating Skewjack as a holiday destination for disadvantaged kids and creating Penzance's own unique Chelsea style Arts Club in Chapel Street.

However, Newlyn will remember Chris as a fisherman or more accurately as a trawlerman, especially when he skippered his own boat, Le Petite Raleur (aptly translated as, The Little Rascal). Local surfers at the time like John Adams, Wog Wilson, Mike Cattran, Harvey Hall, Kevin Hanley and many others, some of whom, like Joe Crow, also fished - a heady mix of surfers, fishermen and many more frequented Newlyn's most notorious pub, the Swordfish - helping, in part, to develop its reputation as the pub for the hardest working and hardest partying punters in the west.

Today, in an age driven by due regard for Health & Safety and a myriad of legislative devices, fishing is not the unfettered bastion of the free spirited adventurer that it used to be - it is still one of the most rewarding and demanding of ways to make a living but not without the unfettered freedom that pervaded when Le Petite Raleur and her motley crew passed through the gaps - the world has moved on.

Chris died back in November last year with a passing touch of irony on Guy Fawkes day aged 77. Tomorrow, there is a memorial service at 1pm in Paul Church followed by a chance to toast the life of someone who was truly instrumental in giving the far west of Cornwall its own unique blend of creative, hard but fun-loving, work culture.  The Coastguard in Mousehole will play host to an after service session from 2.30pm.

Fishermen living in a police state - makes the Stazi and Big Brother look benign!

Brackan's Spirited Ladyy in Newlyn.

Here's an example of what has happened to the fishing industry and how closely monitored its operations have become - now, almost the entire fleet are policed remotely using a VMS (vessel Monitoring System) that tracks their every move. 

Fishermen have to pay for the privilege of being watched 24/7 and maintain the equipment directly from what comes out  out of the cod-end - which they are happy to do - but, if for any reason the system fails, they are immediately contacted by the MMO who insist that they report their position manually every 4 hours and return to port immediately to fix the problem - when they will be detained until they have done so!...

This is exactly what happened to the Spirited Lady III yesterday - 


"That's the boat tied up and not aloud to go to return to sea until our VMS is working properly. At the cost of owner, skipper and crew. Hopefully electrical engineer down in the morning to repair unit and we only lose 24 hours fishing. How many other boats have had this problem? And how much time lost?"😡😡😡😡


After posting on social media the skipper was inundated with responses of even more draconian treatment to other skippers in similar positions:

"Up in court for it next month over 18mth ago to. Boats 11.98m but there's is the only rule in the whole of shipping vms is overall so they got us. Total farce the whole lot there more concerned if we are fishing in one of there closed boxes rather than our position if we were lost says it all."

"We were the very same,our VMS stopped working and the only way we were allowed to return back ta sea was when the VMS engineer said he had no parts to repair and we needed a new unit"

"We had ta email every 4 hrs or lat en long
its a complete heap of rubbish that and all the mmo and marine scotland are doing is gold plating idiotic rules on vms"

"We are paying for the signal and repairs,we paying for a rope to hang ourselves,fishery office,immigration,use it to our disadvantage when we gonna learn"

"I had the same the other day- it's ok as long as you stop at sea- as soon as you come in you're buggered- I have a spare unit on the boat if you get stuck- ours was the aerial connection underneath the unit so just had to replace the aerial wire-"

"I had a conversation with a man from AST, as I had no signal in Fraserburgh harbour. He told me not to worry, as it's not 100% and there's a lot of areas you don't get a signal on VMS. I was amazed he said this, and even more amazed the fisheries are using something that's not 100% reliable. The whole things a joke"

"Up in court for it next month over 18mth ago to. Boats 11.98m but there's is the only rule in the whole of shipping VMS is overall so they got us. Total farce the whole lot there more concerned if we are fishing in one of there closed boxes rather than our position if we were lost says it all."

"Makes you wonder what would happen if it was over the weekend."

Remember, many of these boats are small inshore vessels, often skipper-owned with one or two crew - like the Spirited Lady III - they are not huge ocean-going factory ships or tuna purse seiners landing catches worth hundreds of thousands of £s! 

Foggy #FishyFriday in Poldark country.

Fish galore on a flooded F#FishyFriday fish market here in Newlyn with over 10 boats landing a superb range of inshore, line, trawl, beam trawl and netted fish...

including a brace of beautiful monk tails form the Helford boat, New Harmony...

probably the biggest landing of lemons in years from Brackan's Spirited Lady...

and a huge trip, sure to make young Roger Nowell drool, over John Dory from the Scottish prawn trawler who was working away west of the Scillys and a good sign that summer is on the way and the JDs will be moving eastwards to the shallower waters around the islands soon enough...

the beam trawler, AA landed some big turbot...

and with that much fish on the market the porters were having to pout their backs into it to keep up...

though one it seems took time out to do his very own Chaplin impersonation...

this time of year always sees good shots of ray from the trawl fleet...

with the odd, suitably named thornback sneaking into the cod end of the Shiralee...

along with a striking example of cod, that most big-headed of fish

the Govenek of Ladram came up trumps with box after box of gleaming turbot...

looking outside the morning was brightening up...

over some visceral monk tails...

and big hake...

from you know who...

all of which kept the big buyers busy bidding on these beautiful 'butt'...

name that silhouetted buyer...

blue skies over Newlyn...

while looking towards Marazion it appears that the St Michael's Mount has disappeared...

as a fog forms over the cold Marazion marshes...

and a heavy dew point picks out the nights work from the local spider population...

as the fog rolls seawards...

temporarily obscuring the Mount...

as time passes..

the Mount comes into view...

and it looks set to be a glorious day in the far west of the UK...

and maybe a chance for some lunch to appear in the webs.

A paper published this week shows a new understanding of how commercially fishing forage fish impacts forage fish predators like sea birds, marine mammals, and pelagic finfish. Forage fish are small, silvery, bottom-of-the-food-chain fish that eat plankton and small invertebrates. They are eaten buy seemingly everything in the ocean, providing “forage” for many other animals—you’ve probably heard of the two most common forage fish: sardines and anchovies. If asked their favorite marine species, not many people would choose a forage fish, but many would choose a forage fish predator: Penguins and puffins are endearing, dolphins and seals are adorable, and tuna and swordfish are delicious. Forage fish help sustain these populations, but are also favorite foods for many cultures. With a high oil and protein content, forage fish are also the perfect species for conversion to fishmeal and fish oil. The largest fishery in the world, Peruvian anchovy, is such a fishery. Fish oil provides essential fatty acids and is sold in drugstores as a nutritional supplement. Fishmeal is food for several of our favorite edible animals. It is especially important in farmed fish production (like most of the salmon eaten in the US), but is also fed to terrestrial livestock like cows and pigs. Essentially, forage fish fisheries take a renewable resource and turn them into protein that people eat. But how do these fisheries affect the marine predators that feed on forage fish? This is an important question that has only recently been investigated. A paper published in 2012 used mathematical models to estimate the impact of fishing forage fish populations on their predators and recommended that commercial reduction fishing be cut by 50-80% to ensure forage fish predators get enough food. However since then, several papers—including some by the authors of the original—have recognized that the models used in the 2012 research were not suitable for the questions asked, and further studies are needed. The latest, Hilborn et al. (2017) published this week (open access), shows that environmental variability, left out of the original models, is actually the most important factor affecting forage fish populations. Commercial fishing often has little effect on forage fish populations and their predators. Instead, ocean conditions and nutrient cycles (things humans have no control over) dictate how many forage fish survive each year. The new paper also suggests that the relationship between forage fish and their predators is complicated by several factors. Forage fish predators often rely on specific, high-density locations where the abundance may be largely unrelated to the total abundance of the population. Basically, instead of predators relying the total number of forage fish, they rely on forage fish appearing in certain locations, such as near breeding areas. Predators are also not singularly reliant on commercially harvest forage fish to survive—most consume a wide variety of prey. Indeed, Hilborn et al. (2017) found no link between larger forage fish populations and increases in predator populations. Forage fish provide a wonderful service to humans. They are tasty, nutritious, and their harvest provides food for animals that we enjoy and eat, both above and below the surface. Understanding their ecological role is important to ensure sustainability

A paper published this week shows a new understanding of how commercially fishing forage fish impacts forage fish predators like sea birds, marine mammals, and pelagic finfish.

Forage fish are small, silvery, bottom-of-the-food-chain fish that eat plankton and small invertebrates. They are eaten buy seemingly everything in the ocean, providing “forage” for many other animals—you’ve probably heard of the two most common forage fish: sardines and anchovies. If asked their favorite marine species, not many people would choose a forage fish, but many would choose a forage fish predator: Penguins and puffins are endearing, dolphins and seals are adorable, and tuna and swordfish are delicious. Forage fish help sustain these populations, but are also favorite foods for many cultures.

With a high oil and protein content, forage fish are also the perfect species for conversion to fishmeal and fish oil. The largest fishery in the world, Peruvian anchovy, is such a fishery. Fish oil provides essential fatty acids and is sold in drugstores as a nutritional supplement. Fishmeal is food for several of our favorite edible animals. It is especially important in farmed fish production (like most of the salmon eaten in the US), but is also fed to terrestrial livestock like cows and pigs. Essentially, forage fish fisheries take a renewable resource and turn them into protein that people eat.

But how do these fisheries affect the marine predators that feed on forage fish? This is an important question that has only recently been investigated. A paper published in 2012 used mathematical models to estimate the impact of fishing forage fish populations on their predators and recommended that commercial reduction fishing be cut by 50-80% to ensure forage fish predators get enough food. However since then, several papers—including some by the authors of the original—have recognized that the models used in the 2012 research were not suitable for the questions asked, and further studies are needed.

The latest, Hilborn et al. (2017) published this week (open access), shows that environmental variability, left out of the original models, is actually the most important factor affecting forage fish populations. Commercial fishing often has little effect on forage fish populations and their predators. Instead, ocean conditions and nutrient cycles (things humans have no control over) dictate how many forage fish survive each year.

The new paper also suggests that the relationship between forage fish and their predators is complicated by several factors. Forage fish predators often rely on specific, high-density locations where the abundance may be largely unrelated to the total abundance of the population. Basically, instead of predators relying the total number of forage fish, they rely on forage fish appearing in certain locations, such as near breeding areas. Predators are also not singularly reliant on commercially harvest forage fish to survive—most consume a wide variety of prey. Indeed, Hilborn et al. (2017) found no link between larger forage fish populations and increases in predator populations.

Forage fish provide a wonderful service to humans. They are tasty, nutritious, and their harvest provides food for animals that we enjoy and eat, both above and below the surface. Understanding their ecological role is important to ensure sustainability


Read the full article here:

Cultural diversity in Cornwall.

Cornwall is a decidedley Celtic country sic with a unique identity framed by its own parliament, read Our Future is History for the bigger picture...

so at this time of year Newlyn, like every other part of the county, opens its arms and welcomes a new flock of visitors, or trippers as they are sometimes referred to - 'emmets' is the local term for anyone who lives, but does not hail, from Cornwall - the first of today's visitors is the scalloper, Providing Star one of several 'foreign' boats in the harbour today...

along with the Plymouth based ex-French stern trawler, Nicola Anne...

seen here bow on...

and a closer look at her twin-rig trawl setup...

ahead of her is Equinox BM100  like several Newlyn boats, a member of the Waterdance fleet...

astern of her is the Bridlington registered prawn trawler, Asteria II...

landing her catch to waiting Scottish transport...

she too works a twin-rig trawl system for langoustine...

and boxes her catch fresh, some of the larger visiting Scots have the fishroom capacity to freeze their catch at sea - like most of the visiting Scottish boats, her crew are from much further far away than the land of Lochs and brochs...

all in a day's work, there's plenty of grit-blasting to do on the port's new arrival, Apollo before she can be painted...

up on the slip, the IFCA fisheries protection vessel, St Piran gets on with the business of cleaning and anti-fouling her hull..