Welcome to Through the Gaps, the UK fishing industry's most comprehensive information and image resource. Newlyn is England's largest fish market and where over 50 species are regularly landed from handline, trawl, net, ring net and pot vessels including #MSC Certified #Hake, #Cornish Sardine, handlined bass, pollack and mackerel. Art work, graphics and digital fishing industry images available from stock or on commission.
With Ophelia predicted to bring the strongest winds for 50 years and blast through the waters off Cornwall and southern Ireland the hake netting fleet are all safely tucked up in port and having to queue to land...
which means they will stagger their landings over the next few days...
so as not to flood the market with hake...
even so, with less than 50% of the market hall available now due to the refurbishment space is at a premium...
what looks like a sample core is in fact the concrete market floor that was bored out to allow the grader drainage system to function...
there's plenty of work for Cefas to do over night taking fish data from the landings...
which even included a shot of scad...
along with haddock...
and for the first time in a while a run of spur dogs from both the netters...
a handful of blackjacks...
and a good shot of monk from off the Lizard...
while the Ajax managed a few big ling...
and a couple of stone crabs...
and a few boxes of good bass from the aptly named punt, Storm Petrel...
bringing a good selection of onshore fish for the start of the week...
plenty of plaice form the one beamer to land...
along with several tons of cuttles...
while young Roger on the Imogen III ...
landed his biggest shot of ray in a while with four different varieties ...
the haker Charisma had an excellent shot of hake...
that together with the Ajax's fish
filled the market space wall-to-wall...
with a good run of fish size-wise...
all of which were pulled off the market floor at speed in the incredibly mild temperature this morning...
Ajax hake filled the boxes...
tope, known locally as 'pissers', were mixed up with dogs it seems or was it the other way round...
just the odd scallop from the Sapphire II on a bed of red gurnard...
and a few boxes of octopus thrown in for good measure...
the weather has pushed in a few boats never seen oin newlyn before including the ex-Scottish trawler, Arc Angell...
and the stern scalloper, Tjeerd Jacoba and in contrast to her crowded deck space...
a very neat and spacious wheelhouse arrangement...
Unusually for a trans-Atlantic low hurricane Ophelia, far from the static and one dimensional character she is often described as, has tracked much further south than normal...
and is already heading almost due north after halting her easterly trajectory a few hundred miles west of Portugal...
from where WindyTV predicts she will head north...
and hit the southern Irish coast in the early hours of Monday morning...
from then on her destructive power diminishes - according to the predicted path.
"You can hear the dew falling, and the hushed town breathing. Only your eyes are unclosed to see the black and folded town fast, and slow, asleep. And you alone can hear the invisible starfall..."
the words, written originally for the radio rather than the stage, capture the very blackness of a harbour town in the dead of night when the sky is...
"the darkest-beforedawn minutely dewgrazed stir of the black, dab-filled sea where the Arethusa, the Curlew and the Skylark, Zanzibar, Rhiannon, the Rover, the Cormorant, and the Star of Wales tilt and ride."
inside the fish market the buyers bid on black cuttle-filled containers...
young Mr Smart looks aghast as Mr Bick whispers sweet nothings in Buttons' ear...
big turbot, big mouth...
first of the netters to get fish ashore for buyers starved of hake for the week...
was the Karen of Ladram...
with the ability of cuttlefish ink to permanently stain, many of the boats now take black boxes to sea especially for them...
there are still plenty of plaice coming on to the market...
moving swiftly on...
name that flatfish...
those eyes don't miss much on the seabed...
it's a wrasse, but which one?..
how many buyers does it take to stack a pallet?..
aye-aye...
delicious Dory...
another bashful buyer...
pouts are plentiful this week...
as will hake be on Monday's market...
until then Roger keeps the market clear of boxes...
as there is only half the space available...
as the nights grow ever longer...
"Fishermen grumble to their nets. Nogood Boyo goes out in
the dinghy _Zanzibar_, ships the oars, drifts slowly in the
dab-filled bay, and, lying on his back in the unbaled water,
among crabs' legs and tangled lines, looks up at the
spring sky"
With thanks to Dylan Thomas, for the words from Under Milk Wood, who married his wife-to-be Caitlin in Penzance registry office before honeymooning in the Lobster Pot Hotel and drinking in the Ship Inn..
