Damaged - Belgian beam trawler hit by huge wave.

The Belgian beam trawler Z18 Soetkin makes her way to Milford Haven in south Wales after being hit by a huge wave while fishing in the Bristol Channel. The vessel's EPIRB (Emergency Position Indicating Beacon) was triggered into transmitting by the wave.

Swanland search by RNLI lifeboat from Porthdinllaen.

Porthdinlllaen lifeboat searches for the missing crewmen from the coaster Swanland that sank in the Irish Sea south west of Holyhead in the early hours of Sunday morning. The boat was hit by 'a huge wave'; two men were airlifted from the scene along with another who was later pronounced dead. Five more crew are still unaccounted for from the sunken boat.

VesselTracker AIS recording the last track of the Swanland - though the trace seems to stop short of her final position according to reports.

Last year she was brough into Falmouth  by the MCA's ETV Anglian Princess after breaking down a few miles off the Lizard, the Newlyn lifeboat Ivan Ellen attended at the time.

Video courtesy of Wales Online.

Cefas Endeavour on prawn ground!

With daily updates coming from the working decks of the research vessel Cefas Endeavour, individual scientists are being given a chance to explain their work in more detail.

Image courtesy of Cefas Endeavour.

Yesterday's post included some seabed photographs taken by the boats ROV - the shot of the poor cod includes numerous holes in the muddy sea floor - undoubtedly those made by langoustine (nephrops norvegicus) after they have turned in for the night - boats fishing for prawns generally only work daylight hours as langoustine react to the loss of daylight and hide way in their burrows as the light disappears from the sky. There is an excellent source of info on these and all other marine creatures to be found here at Marlin.ac.uk.

This research work over the MCZs will be of great interest to all those boats that fish in or near such areas. Until the Cefas web team get the comments activated on the blog, if there are any questions that fishermen might want asked of the team aboard the Endeavour, email them in and TtG will pass the over.

Seeing red.

 Good monk fishing should keep the markets happy this morning.......

 with the St Georges having a smattering of lemons........

 and a few boxes of huge line caught squid from the Ela-J........ 

 as landing of black gold grow in quantity.........

 red seemed to be the 'in' colour with red gurnards, red mullet......

 and a handful of redfish thrown in for good measure.........

 Mr Thomas keeps his measure of a box of small JDs........

high water at the back of the mission where Coombe River meets the sea.

Donal Turtle - Gone fishing Gone.

 The funeral for retired skipper and owner Donald Turtle will be held this Friday at St Peter's Church in Newlyn...........

 published in 2005, Donald's seagoing memoirs recounted a life at sea beginning in South Shields as a trainee merchant seamen during WW2 and the Atlantic convoys 

until the time he handed over the last of the family boats, the netter and liner Ben Loyal to his son John Turtle. Donald was a firm believer in conservation and fished with longlines for many years, even after most other boats in the fleet had long since ceased. Other boats in the family over the years were the Bonny Mary and the Mayflower - sadly, the Through the Gaps archive is missing photos of these.

Men at work.

 Just as well the tiny marine creatures responsible for this sort of damage, capable of munching their way through greenheart timber.......

 don't make their way ashore and start on any wooden content they find........

 the bow of the crabber is looking tidy these days........

 good to see oldest man of the port still willing to turn his hand to a spot of mending when called upon.........

 nothing a few blows with a hammer won't put right on the ice works conveyor........

 or the application of heat........

 the last thing pots see before they leave the crabber Intuition........

one not to be missed for any fans of Newlyn School artist, Walter Langley at the Centre, Newlyn next week on Wednesday 30th November.

Lady Maureen in dock.

Brixham beamer heads for Newlyn, offloads her gear at high water on the old Stone Quay and then heads over to penzance and into the Dry Dock.