Escaping the cod in the North Sea - Rockall update from the Reliance III

Update from Reliance III via satellite link:- now with her gear in the water south west of the Rock!

Twin rig trawls streaming away from the stern of the boat

"Well after steaming near 62 hours and covering 460 miles in some pretty crap weather that's finally gotten my fishing gear shot 50miles sw of Rockall.  In all that time steaming I pass 1 Scottish fishing boat and 16 foreign fishing boats. 
If anything its not the fish that's going extinct is fishermen. 
Anyway its a great day at Rockall flat calm and light winds and you dont get many days like this out here so we will enjoy our day fishing and heres hoping we nail some fish"........jc

You dinna get a lot of Cod out at Rockall but when you do there all this size,we call them Bull Cod..
Will get a couple Cod steaks out of him for our supper tonight.....jc

 You would think that catching a cod this size might just put a smile on the skipper's face - but look at the consequences!

• Robert James Scally Heeds 'ats fit we also called them used to love a haul of heeds now we all this leasing there is no enjoyment in seeing them

  Like · Reply · 1 · 58 minutes ago via mobile
• 

  Realfishfight SOFC ats something on the west coast and oot here y dinna have to worry about with cod..1.5% bycatch for cod so for every say 6of that big cod you have to have arun 100boxs of other fish to meet your legal bycatch,whiting the same 1.5% bycatch....jc

Down the Line - A short documentary set on the North sea - can you help fund this to a full feature length film?

Down the Line Trailer from James Ewen on Vimeo.

This is a trailer for my graduation film at Edinburgh College of Art. The story concerns itself with the past, present and future of the fishing industry in Shetland as seen from the point of view of a father and his son working side-by-side on a trawler, at the mercy of the North Sea.

Short Summary

Down the Line is a short documentary set in and around the Shetland Islands, Scotland. It follows the story of David and his son Ross on their fishing boat the Mizpah.

The film's story concerns itself with the past, present and future of the Scottish fishing industry as seen from the point of view of a father and a son working side by side on a trawler, at the mercy of the North Sea.

The Production took place over the course of a week in March 2013. Which saw cameraman, Duncan Cowles and director James Ewen, travel far North to the Shetland Islands. While there, they were given the opportunity to accompany the crew of commercial fishing boat the Mizpha, skippered by David Robertson, for a three day trip. This saw them sail off from Lerwick, on the east of the Islands, into the North Sea. Soon after leaving they were forced to change course in order to head round the South of the island and into the Atlantic, due to adverse weather conditions.

Collaborating with James on this film are award winning production team, Sara Forbes and Stuart Condy of Arpeggio Pictures.

To see James' journey first hand, have a sneak peak at the behind the scenes photos please visit his online journal at http://cargocollective.com/jamesewen/Down-the-Line. 

What We Need & What You Get

We are using this campaign to help get the film out there for the world to see. Our hopes are to extend this story from it's short 10 minute form into a feature length project. We need your help to fund distribution and future screenings of the film. Each donation can help us do the following:

• Print DVD covers, posters and other promotional materials.
• Burn DVD's and blu-ray copies for distribution
• Cover the cost of festival and screening submissions
• Help fund the growth of the film into a full length feature project with people who want to share our journey. 

We will be updating our progress as we go. Keep checking back here for weekly updates and for breaking news on how the campaign is progressing.

Other Ways You Can Help

If you can't contribute any monetary donations, please don't worry. You can help us by supporting future screenings of the film at your cinema or venue or maybe you know someone who would be able to help distribute the film.

If you can provide any of the above or just want to ask further questions, drop us a line atarpeggiopictures@gmail.co or visit our website at www.arpeggiopictures.com

A massive THANK YOU for visiting our page and for your continued support. 

Pressure mounts on Council over fisheries reform

The European Parliament’s team of negotiators in the fisheries reform claim that progress has been brought to a halt by the failure of the Council to compromise. The European Parliament’s negotiator, Ulrike Rodust, on Tuesday warned: “Collapse of the reform talks with the Council is a real danger.”

Representatives from the EU governments meet in the morning 2 May to discuss the fisheries reform negotiations between Council and Parliament. The Irish presidency seeks support for a mandate to compromise with the European Parliament. However, a large number of member states have shown reluctance to depart from the Council’s position as agreed in the general approach.

If Council and Parliament cannot reach a genuine compromise agreement, “the Parliament may have to press for a second reading. Better no deal now than a bad deal for the next ten years,” Ulrike Rodust said according to a press release.

The Irish presidency downplays the differences between the Parliament and the Council on crucial issues such as ending overfishing and ending discards.

However, a group of MEPs this week wrote an open letter to EU governments highlighting that there is a real difference between ending overfishing 2015 (Parliament position) and doing it only “where possible” without even defining what is meant by “possible” (Council position). While the Parliament majority has voted for a complete discard ban, the Council wants to reduce discards to nine percent of total catches. The MEPs urged governments to strive to find middle ground.

220 Spanish scientists, coming from more than 50 universities, research centers and scientific associations have addressed an open letter to the Spanish fisheries minister, Arias Cañete, asking for a change in Spain’s previous position on the European Common Fisheries Policy. The scientists “are in favor of establishing a fishing mortality based on the existing biomass and set temporary goals that are as accurate as possible for the recovery of the stocks, a position better reflected in the current proposal by the European Parliament.”

A coalition of environmental NGOs on Tuesday issued a statement expressing “concern about the threat of delays or the possible collapse of negotiations on EU fisheries reform.”

“A number of countries, including France, Spain, Poland, Lithuania, Greece and Romania, are resisting efforts to find common ground with the European Parliament on key issues such as fleet management and discards. Coveney must not give in to these short-sighted positions but instead re-double his efforts to win agreement with all fisheries ministers for an ambitious reform,” the NGOs wrote.

Story courtesy of CFP Reform Watch.

The UK fleet under and over 10m statistics as at April 2013

Over 10m Uk fleet statistics:

	Overall length	Registered tonnage	Engine power	Vessel capacity units	Year built
Average	18.7	140	399	306	1984
Minimum	10.01	2.74	35.81	49.79	1896
Maximum	113.97	5579	8000	5140.14	2012

Under 10m Uk fleet statistics:

	Overall length	Registered tonnage	Engine Power (kw)	Vessel Capacity Units	Year Built
Average	7.1	4	55	46	1989
Minimum	2.5	0.1	0.0	4	1880
Maximum	10.0	21	374	216	2012

Three boats and an auction in red

First light and the sun bathes Mount's Bay in an orange glow...

on Thursday's market there were fish from three inshore trawlers like the Harvest Reaper...

and one of the beam trawl fleet, the Filadelfia...

still proving elusive, these stripey mackerel are fetching premium prices for those lucky enough to catch a few...

there's one or two Dory moving in on the grounds...

along with these cracking red mullet...

and that still fashionable ugly sister of the bottom feeders, the tub gurnard...

all requiring the attention of the Otolith king...

like the thin red line of days gone by...

Ryan gets a chance to practise more of his daring dance floor moves atop the shelterdeck of the Gary M before they pull aboard a few tiers of hake gear with the turbot gear fishing away quietly over the next few days...

as Spike Milligan would have it, like policeman, beam trawls are numbered in case they get lost...

some cracking looking Gael Force pots represent fresh investment in the crabbing world...

it seems Charlie is still hell-bent on winning a place on Britain's Got Talent with his version of the Indian Rope Trick...

off in search of breakfast...

useful for a run ashore...

while Tom still keeping an eye on things along the seafront.

Forced to fish out at Rockall - while closer to home there's not a UK fishing boat in sight!

AIS from VesselTracker

This screen grab shows an entirely foreign fleet of big fishing boats working the same ground around 100 miles north west of the Orkneys. The boats are Russian, Icelandic and Norwegian - targeting blue whiting for the Asian market?

At the same time some of our boats are making the long steam out to fish at Rockall so that they can avoid catching cod and try to catch haddock, monk and squid.

Update courtesy of Channel 4 - Fishermen in court over battle for fairer quotas

Britain's big fishing bosses go to the high court to challenge an attempt by the government to take away some of their fishing quota and re-allocate it to smaller boats.

Hats off to Channel 4 news! - yet again provides excellent coverage of a complicated story in an valiant attempt to make clear the issues at stake. 

The government's effort is seen by small fishermen and campaigners as an important step towards making fishing more sustainable and economically rewarding for coastal communities. "In terms of numbers of vessels, 76 per cent of the British fishing fleet have just 4 per cent of the quota," said Hastings-based fisherman Paul Joy. He represents one of thousands of "under-10" fishermen who have registered fishing vessels smaller than 10 metres. 

 These smaller fishermen have long argued the national fishing quota allocated by the European Commission has been unfairly distributed among fewer, larger vessels, fishing mainly offshore. The majority of UK quota is currently held by a number of "producer organisations" representing groups of large vessels distributed around the British coast. 

 Last year the government proposed taking hundreds of tonnes of unused quota for fish such as cod, whiting, plaice and sole and hand it to "under-10" fishermen. Making 'better use' of quotas "I want to ensure that fishing quota is allocated effectively across all sectors of the industry, which is why I proposed reallocating consistently unused quota to those that could make better use of it," said Fisheries Minister Richard Benyon. 

 Campaigners argue that redistributing quota to smaller fishermen will help reinvigorate coastal communities as well as ensure fishermen are more mindful of threatened fish stocks that the quota system is designed to protect. They argue that fishing quota is a public good that producer organisations don't have ownership of. "It's a fight for the very soul of our seas," said Greenpeace fisheries campaigner Ariana Densham. "Industry heavyweights are effectively asking the court to rubber-stamp the largest privatisation by stealth of a public good in centuries." 

 Campaigners also say that reform of the quota system is needed to prevent what they see as the dubious practice of quota trading or use of quota as financial collateral. 'Always shared' quotas For their part, producer organisations argue they have always shared quota among smaller fishermen. 

They also argue Defra has used quota allocation in the past to force them to downsize their industry and has recognised the quota as a business asset. "This action is about the decision of Defra Minister Richard Benyon to step outside the UK fish quota distribution methodology that has been established, used and understood by the industry since 1999," said James Portus, Chairman of the UK Association of Fish Producer Organisations. 

The high court case will last three days, and the final judgement may be reserved for some weeks.