Through the Gaps! - Newlyn Fishing News Cornwall UK fish commercial fishing fish cooking and art

Saturday, 16 October 2010

Now where's that pot of gold?

A huge rainbow arched over Newlyn greeted early risers this morning...

with one end landing atop the Billy Rowney which no doubt will have all hands searching for the pot of gold aboard...

more colour is still being applied to the Jacoba......

while the crabbing fleet seem to be supplied with all mod cons...

can't argue with that...

there's signs of a new shop about to open by the bus stop - wouldn't it be nice if a specialist charcuterie and cheese emporium were to provide the missing ingredients to go with the best quality fish, Lovell's veg and Lentern's meat?..

brown crab are whisked ashore to a waiting Harvey's wagon.

Friday, 15 October 2010

Tankers form a queue.

Back in 2000 when Britain reeled under the shock of a fuel crisis, cars and lorries queued for hours at fuel stations short on supplies - today, off the coast of France seventy odd tankers queue patiently around Marseilles while France is gripped in the middle of industrial action - about pensions.

Almost every vessel shown at anchor is a tanker waiting to discharge oil of some sort into Marseilles.

Two articles to mull over over the weekend.

A number of recent scientific papers have identified fishing induced evolution as contributory factors in the decline of some fish stocks - the Grand Banks off Newfoundland being one fishery so affected. despite a complete moratorium on cod fishing on the Grand Banks the stocks there have failed to recover - at all.

One reason for that is a big change in the physiology of the remaining stock, research shows that the new stock mature at three years whereas before - when the stock was huge, fish did not become sexually mature until aged six years. Small fish are able to escape or avoid trawls, as a result, through natural selection, it is the smaller fish that survive in larger numbers and in turn produce smaller fish capable of reproducing at an earlier age scientists say.

According to a New Scientist article (Turbo-evolution shows cod speeding to extinction) - Fishing is causing cod to evolve faster than anyone had suspected it could, fisheries scientists in Iceland have discovered. This turbo-evolution may be why the world's biggest cod fishery, the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, crashed in 1992 and has yet to recover. A second article (Catching only big fish leads to small fry) provides evidence that targeting the most mature fish has a greater effect in depleting stock levels through adversely affecting fecundity and viability. On the North coast of Cornwall, lobstermen are thinking that large, mature female lobsters would be better returned to the water - berried or not - so as to best create the greatest chance for maintaining the fecundity and viability of the stock.

What has done more damage to the Western hake stock? - landing large catches of big mature females or landing of 'cigarillos' or pin hake?

Bass lines

The working deck of the crabber Intuition astern of the Sapphire taking ice......

last of the beamer trips to sell......

for its size, the John Dory has a huge mouth and reflects its voracious appetite......

not so big, and just enough to scrape the MLS and not likely to make the record books.......

unlike these bass being recorded by the CEFAS team......

who stress the need for fishermen to report every fish that comes aboard in order to protect and future quota allocation changes - this always provokes discussion between those who see the need to provide as much information as possible in order for the boats to build that all important track record for the future......

yet another big haul of Cornish Sardines for the Lyonesse.......

the Border Agency's Searcher graces the Stone Quay.

Serve succulent Sicillian sardines as the nights draw in.

With temperatures dropping the chances are that the BBQ won't be fired up any more this year so the glut of sardines coming ashore will need an alternative heat treatment to Big K charcoal......

instead, make use of seasonal local veg and dice a combination of some, or all, pumpkin, marrow, squash along with a pepper, courgette, red onion and a few finely sliced cloves of garlic - season, drizzle with olly oil and bake in a pre-heated oven at 180º......

in the meantime, scale two sardines for every mouth to feed, head and gut and then run each fish under a tap, gently rubbing a thumb from tail to the head to remove any remaining scales.......

dry and grill or griddle with more olly oil, salt n' pepper.......

untill the skin is crunchy......

serve with couscous prepared to your own taste preferences (use chicken stock instead of water along with a few fresh herbs like chives or coriander).