Busy start to the month of May in Newlyn and the first #FishyFriday of the month.

Big boats, big gear, big fishing...

plus the biggest crabbers working in the area...

off with the trawls, on with the dredges, its scallop season for some...

let the sparks fly...

the newest Twilight undergoing preparations for sea and a new career with the firm...

fine weather craft...

not so fine weather, taking all precautions when you fish places like the Porcupine Bank to the west of Ireland where the rogue waves are bigger then anything yuou see in the North ea...

but right now it's time to get the week's catch ashore...

heading for a berth...

Intuition on the slip...

just a few in port this evening...

including the Vision V...

homeward bound...

the Guardian at the end of a day's work...

adds her fish to an already busy market...

fish stacked to the doors...

just as well there are a few turbot and monk about...

as hake seem to have moved well offshore...

more turbot...

in addition to the prawn catch, the visiting boats land plenty of other fish John Dory....

and haddock...

and red mullet...

while the handliners are finding better marks of mackerel as the tide jumps...

there was the one big bass haul...

and a good few boxes of witches to add to the mix...

another batch in to land...

and fill the market...

and trade with spiders is the current trade for shellfish.

 

Imperative we don't repeat 'boom or bust!'

These articles in Fishing News bring to the for the current state of species management in the UK. Crawfish, up until a couple of years ago not seen on the fish markets of Cornwall since the late 1970s have made a comeback - it took 50 years from when they were totally overfished by the use of tangle nets.

As Dr Bannister says, progressives in the industry are wide awake to the fact that the cycle of boom and bust could happen all over again.

Hopefully, lessons form the past now have a chance to be learnt from and acted on for the long term benefit of all.

Your thoughts/ National Grid Subsea Cable Routes

National Grid are wanting to reach out to the fishing industry to help determine which subsea cable routes they choose for 3 offshore wind farms by gathering information on which areas would impact you the least and what mitigation could be used for particular methods of fishing. 

Please see the text from them below and then either reply to this email or contact them directly at box.offshorecoord@nationalgrideso.com if you would like to hear more or provide information.

 

On behalf of Great Britain’s Electricity System Operator. We are leading on the initial design phase for cable routes for floating offshore wind in the Celtic Sea and are interested in understanding how this could impact the local fishing industry.

 

The government is planning to build windmills in the Celtic Sea to create clean energy. These windmills will be big and will float on the water! To get the energy from the windmills to homes and businesses, they need to connect them to land with special cables that go under the sea.

They're still figuring out the best places to put these cables. They want to make sure they don't cause problems for people who fish in that area.

Right now, they have information about offshore fishing boats, but they need to know more about smaller and inshore ones too. They'd really appreciate any information you can share about where the smaller fishing boats work in the Celtic Sea. This will help them pick the best cable routes that won't get in the way of fishing.

If you have any information to share, they'd be happy to chat with you more about it!

 

ICES rectangles: 29E4, 30E4, 30E5, 31E3, 31E4, 31E5, 31E6, 32E4, 32E5, 32E6

 

 

 

As we ask more question over the next month we would like to present our findings and discuss our evaluations. If you would be interested in hearing more, we’d really like to hear from you. You can do this in two ways, either by replying to this email or contacting us directly at box.offshorecoord@nationalgrideso.com

Sunday into Monday in Newlyn.

A fleet of big Scottish prawn boats means the local fuel company is being kept busy supplying the boats on landing day with diesel...

and an eco-friendly alternative, HVO fuel - a 100% re-cycled vegetable alternative...

plenty more HGV action down the quay as the lorries wait to load frozen langoustine from the boats...

meanwhile, taking on a more sedentary position, master sign-writer Squirrel carefully fills in the words on skipper Shane's punt Ali-Cat  as her annual refit nears completion...

while most of the netting feet are at sea the prawn fleet take advantage of the quay space to land at high water as the harbour can only accommodate modern deep draughted vessels in a relatively small area of the quays...

Sunday saw the Tranquility...

Andromeda...

 Revival...

and Daystar landing

there's a little bit of name changing going on as the replacements for these 35 year old beamers are now in action, it's now just plain Blake having lost the Admiral status while the Gordon has taken on one of the Stevenson fleet names, Twilight...

did you hear the one about the Scotsman, Cornishman and Englishman...

Monday morning's market was full of fosh from all sectors of the industry, plenty of prawn boat congers...

new season spiders...

cracking inshore red mullet...

mighty head-on monk...

John Dory...

more and more of these tasty beasts...

and bass...

cuttles...

and signs a few more mackerel have found there way closer to the shore...

beam trawl red mullet...

quality from the prawnerss...

incluing more JDs...

Dovers...

and red mullet...

young Graham poised for action...

about to whisk away these quality megrim sole...

whiting...

and haddock were plentiful again this tide...

as were these reds...

and more megs the rewrads if fishing the grounds west of Lands End for prawns are great...
 

however, the normally unseen part of the job - the hours spent with knife and needle in hand, sometimes stretching into a second day or more, that never-ending cycle of mending smashed gear...

in this case, the guys from the Ocean Vision are busy sewing up selvedges...

 to replace a huge chunk of missing net from the trawl...

or in Tom's case, measuring and splicing in the 25 fathom marks in the trawl wire that tells the man on the winch how much warp is out - normally, boats work three times the depth they are towing in...

whitefish coming ashore for the Boy Enzo...

into the waiting transport...

now it's the turn of the largest local trawler...

Crystal Sea to put their fish ashore...

that's another fender ready to go into the water to place the old gribble-worm farm...

well, yesterday was just a wind-up, it's back to normal weather-wise it seems, more wind and rain on the way says the forecast this morning;

Plymouth 

WIND Southerly or southwesterly 4 to 6, occasionally 7 in north

SEA STATE Moderate or rough

WEATHER Rain or showers

VISIBILITY Good, occasionally poor