Spiders from MandRs!

It's that time of the year when the spider crabs get down to some serious assignation manouvres - which means they are caught in increasing numbers. This cracking looking crab collection are just about to be packed by MandR Crab and given a ride all the way to Chelsea SW1 (no doubt still in party mode) for tomorrow morning's slab.

Working together works!

“In an age when fisheries around the world are collapsing, fisheries experts have struggled to find the magic balance between livelihoods and conservation,” said Dr. Tim McClanahan, a co-author on the study and head of the Wildlife Conservation Society’s coral reef research and conservation program. “What we’ve found is that effective solutions require both top-down and bottom-up approaches with a foundation of community-based management.”

See the full story here 

Three different fishing boats

Three boats, three different methods of fishing, three fishing grounds.


The Louisa N is a beam trawler and has been working about 50 miles north of Newlyn at the southern end of the Celtic Deep. Fishing in that area, no doubt the boys will have been enjoying sandwiches filled with freshly boiled langoustine tails and mayonnaise.


The Silver Dawn is the port's biggest and newest steel gill netter, skipper Hosking has been working his nets north west of the Scillies for hake and other white fish like pollock, cod and ling.


From the regular pattern on the AIS the 'strings' of pots can be seen worked by the crabber Pen Glas working much closer to the shore, also north of the Scillies.

Cultural Olympiad - The Boat Project

Just some of the 12000 wood donations received from the public.

Outside the hull

The Boat Project is a living archive of people's stories and lives, a 30ft vessel made from donated wooden items. From February to July 2011 the public donated their wood to the project but not just any old wood. Pencil or piano – exotic as Zebrawood or as familiar as pine every piece had a story behind it. Donations arrived in their thousands, from the highly personal to pieces of national importance. All of these donations have been used to build a state-of-the-art seafaring yacht.

The boat, named Collective Spirit is currently on a round of publicity visits to ports and harbours around the South East, including a trip inland to Milton Keynes in July. The Boat Project is one of 12 creative concepts taking place throughout the UK as part of the Cultural Olympiad to celebrate London and 2012.

A timely reminder - safety at sea - MOB gear

With incidents involving the loss of life from three separate incidents involving fishing vessels this RNLI gives a timely reminder how best use can be made of the latest affordable, compact communications safety technology at sea.

Salt! at 2am.

With the little hand on the clock now two hours astern of midnight.......

there's a glow over the harbour and another emanating from outside Newlyn gallery as it hosts this year's Museum's at Night event, Salt!.........

 although there is much to see inside the gallery, like Katja Davar's "The stage, the plot" inspired by the tidal observatory at the end of the South pier in Newlyn........

 it's outside where there's salt being produced.........

 in a series of biscuit ware troughs - the same process is used the world over, a series of containers are heated (sometimes naturally) - as water evaporates off, brine from the first is added to the second container, which in turn is added to the third..........

 after six hours........

 and around 40 Kg of the finest Scottish peat.........

 the third trough is half full of almost solid salt ready to adorn any fish dish.........

 more peat and heat speeds the process.......... 

 with the occasional top up of water and stirring of brine.......there's a strong local connection with evidence of salt making over on the Lizard at St Keverne - the recently created Cornish Sea Salt Company follows in this tradition not many miles away in Porthkerris.........

the current gallery exhibition is open till the 16th of june.

Salt! at 8pm.

Newlyn Orion Gallery: Join Andrew Fielding in the gallery garden as he extracts salt from sea water, using the ancient method of heating saltwater in ceramic troughs over a peat fire. Andrew’s aim will be to see how much salt he can produce in the 12-hour period. We will also work throughout the night with Amanda Lorens to create an animation of tales in a salt landscape. To sustain our audience and participants there will be a variety of fruits from the sea, from the edible to the aural available, including a series of salty tales, told throughout the night. 

This video was shot at 8pm as Andrew lit the peat fires under the troughs. With a heady mix of sea water taken from Mount's Bay only a few feet away and peat from Peterhead in Scotland the atmosphere in the grounds of the Newlyn Orion Gallery began to take on an alchemy of their own.

 Early stages as the peat fires are lit......

first of the biscuit fired clay salting troughs are filled with sea water.......

 Newlyn is just one of many venues taking part in the Salt project.......

 topping up the steel salt tank........

 there's some well researched books on the history of salt and salt works........

 all these events are part of ECOSAL Atlantis.......

salt samples and plenty of reading matter for the visitor. Salt and the fishing industry are inextricably linked the world over - salted fish in one form or another has featured in the diet of many cultures pre-dating the use of refrigeration to preserve fish allowing for increased storage and transportation. The last salt fishing factory in the Uk only closed its doors a few years ago - see the Pilchard Works web site for more information. There's a site dedicated to salt in all forms here.