Own some art

Mark Preston is showing at the Lighthouse Gallery in Penzance - this is 'Reflections in Newlyn Harbiur'.

Far from home!

Another waif and stray from Newlyn, this time located in a fish cellar in St Ives of all places - come on home box! Don't nobody care?!

The worm is turning on seafood sustainability

A timeley liece from acroos the pond by:

Roy P. Director at World Aquaculture Society Today

 "a breakthrough in USA regarding sustainability"

A Senate Commerce subcommittee hearing convened by Sen. Mark Begich significantly moved the ball on seafood sustainability certification issues. First, the GSA will remove all references to 3rd party certification for US government seafood purchases, and will rely on NOAA. Second, Wal-Mat and Sodexo both pledged to work with ASMI and the RFM certification, and publicly supported the Alaska salmon industry withdrawal from MSC.

Finally, NFI's John Connelly made the point that NOAA must dramatically beef up its communications about the success of US fisheries - so corporate buyers recognize how sustainable we are.

Now whilst this is not about Aquaculture it is about what has been driving the NGO stranglehold on sustainability

If you go to http://www.seafoodnews.com/ you will see up top on left the Daily Video from John Sackton -you should pass this on to Consumer NZ as Sackton clearly argues that we have three major messages backed by science and the experience of the past 20 years: 1) US (read NZ/Aust etc...) seafood is not overfished, 2) Seafood is the most ecologically healthy and sustainable protein, and 3) threats to future marine protein sustainability do not come from overfishing as much as other environmental sources - such as carbon pollution. We need corporate buyers to understand these points.
These are the compelling points I have been pushing for a while - time for Governments to step up to the plate and back their science and industry and for industry to continue their progress on improvements in every area

Seafood.com News - Daily Seafood News Service seafoodnews.com Foodmarket.com is your source for news and market information in the food industry. From farm and feedlot to fork, Foodmarket delivers the stories and ideas you need to grow your business and stay ahead of the curve.

Check out the coomments and feedback on the above article which include this:

Director at World Aquaculture SocietyGood comments Ed

There were issues, things needed to be done and now we are moving on. What is important is that we move on without the restrictions and costs associated with the current approaches.

Things are clearly not assisted when WWF and MSC put out videos like thishttp://www.adforum.com/top5/worldwide/356/34489995 - not for the first time I would add. 

That is why they need to move on - they clearly cannot control elements within their organisation and there is a sense of arrogance.
Mind you if I was in their position and earning great money I would not want to give up my job nd I would keep throwing in issues on why they should still be around - they will hang in there, making out they are important, adding costs and extra burden to the industry instead of doing the right thing and realising that their job is done, they 'done well' and its time to move on.

Supermarket chains are starting to realise this (WalMart and M

#FF #eatmorefish

Rays go under the camera lens...

full-length Cefas fish meauring device...

lighting up ling on the board...

colourful cod...

and a run of big mackerel to end the week...

maginficent megrims...

with boxes of megs outnumering lemon soles 2-1...

the Sapphire II had a big trip od these tasty fish...

as did the James RH...

mackerle made good money this morning...

all set for the next trip...

17 scallop dredges a side on the Jacoba...

and the Plymouth registered Admiral Gordon ia bck in town.

Newlyn birds go to sea!

Click on the image to see the slideshow.

"On the 20th August 2013 Gemma and I (Paris) had great opportunity to go out to sea on one of the Newlyn crab boats, the Emma-Louise. This is one of the newest crabbing fleet owned by Mark Rowse of Rowse fishing. I went to take photos of the crew working, whereas Gemma went along to do something that she has always wanted to do as it is in her blood. So i manned my camera and Gemma with her Handycam and phone, between us, we captured all the work, dedication and effort involved in catching quality local crab.

Our day had started at 4:00am. This is the time we left Newlyn. We arrived down on the quay approximately 3:50am and straight away us girls had to climb across 2 boats before being faced with climbing the St Pirans (the IFCA fisheries boat). So, not falling in, we found the easiest way to board the St Pirans trying not to look like idiots. From the St Pirans there was no easy way to climb onto the Emma-Louise, which was typically moored onto the end of a 3-boat tier. So, with no easy way to climb onto the Emma Louise from the St Pirans without looking stupid, we somehow managed to climb on board without the help of the crew, and without any help at all.

As we got aboard, skipper Mario took us through the emergency procedures, where we would meet if there was an emergency. By now the Emma-Louise crew was aboard and ready to sail, Newlyn Birds are off to sea!.

Still night time, pitch black dark was all we could see was the moon what shone lovely on the sea, the view was amazing!

I got my sea legs what didnt take five minuets to get as fishing runs in my blood as for Gemma it took a while to get her balance, she couldn't find her legs at all. Luckily Gemma and I wasn't sea sick! I would of been mad at myself if I was!

As dawn broke Mario the skipper went down for 40 minutes for the watch below (sleep). The boat was in two hands of the crew Livs Skrundenieks and another lad who i didn't manage to catch his name. They were both interested why we was aboard and we told them why. They told us stories about how other professional photographers and filmmakers who had not been so successful due to being sea sick and not finding their balance in the past. With that Gemma came flying from one side of the wheel house into me breaking her fall haha!

After the 2 hour steam we had finally arrived to the string of pots where Mario left from the last trip. With Mario back at the wheel, and in control of the winch, The crew was on deck and ready to work!. Nothing in view apart from sea and the Lighthouse called the "The Wolfe Rock" Somewhere off Land Ends.

By now, Gemma and I thought it was time to get this day in footage of the lads hauling the crab pots. It was pretty crazy how fast they do this! it's like they have been doing it for years! It's privilege to watch these guys do there job, It's a very dangerous job. As they were hauling we had got a message off Mario that the RNAS Culdrose helicopter would be coming to do practice exercises. That they would be sending one of the helicopters crew down onto the Emma-Louise.

It was within minuets of the helicopter appearing. The crew stopped work and headed to the bow of the boat with us to watch the exercise take place. As the helicopter approached the Emma-Louise's stern the helicopter got lower and lower and much closer, it was hovering no more than 10ft above us! The down-draft from the rotors caused us to get sprayed by sea, you could feel the pressure of the helicopter as they lowered down the RNAS crew member and like nothing they were aboard. Well, SHE was aboard! Once she was aboard safely, she came over and said hi and wished me luck in my photography and Gemma with her videos that we wanted/needed.

Meanwhile, the helicopter had flown off to get in position for the pick up. Yet again there was a huge amount of down-draft and spray from the rotors and sea, as they got ready to pick up their crew mate who had managed to get her hands on some freshly caught crab! They had flown off now, radioed through to Mario and said thanks for the crab and letting them come aboard. All of this was before lunch!.

Whilst not taking photos and vids, we tried to spot some of the marine wildlife. We saw a lot of seagulls believe me they were around on every haul! Thanks to Mario I saw alot of Sunfish. They are pretty amazing to see basking for the sun, no dolphins, sharks or whales, although Gemma thought she saw a whale when I thought'd it was a dolphin so we named it Dolphwhale!. Gemma saw a lot of jellyfish. We had an octopus aboard what climbed in to one of the pots. The crew started laughing and sticking it to each other. Which I have a pretty cool photo of it stuck on Livs oilies and a lot of crab :)

It must of been around 04:30 05:00pm when Mario wrapped the day up. As we headed home for Newlyn, the crew made sure all the crab was sorted, washed down the deck so it was all clean for the next day, I believe Ben Rowse cooked tea for the crew and Gemma. We spent the steam home looking through our photos and videos. As we got back to Newlyn and it was safe to get on to the quay we said our thank yous to Mario and the crew for letting us come aboard for the day.

I am pretty impressed with myself for having my dad's sea legs (I think it was for the wellies I was wearing thanks Tom for them bad boys!) and not being sick at all. And my photos at the most I couldn't be anymore happier with them. I'd Like to thank Emma and Mark Rowse for letting me go on the Emma-Louise as it's bad luck for girls to go aboard a boat. And most of all to Mario and the crew for putting up with me aha im sure i wasnt that bad was I?... I'd love to go again sometime *hint hint*

And most of all the best part of the was telling my Dad and brother about my day as they are both fishermen aboard the Filadelfia Pz542. My dad was so pleased with me not being sick or falling over and having my sea legs. He said to me that if his dad was alive today he would of been so proud of me. As for Scott, he was just so pleased for me and I believe he owes me some money now :)"



Blogger's note:

A big thank you to Paris for writing up this story to go with her excellent photographs and the infornative video that Gemma shot of their day aboard the port's biggest crabber.  Great to see such enthusiasm and interest from the youngsters - especially as they both come from well known Newlyn fishing families!

Gemma Thomas gave her own personalaccount of the trip on the blog the girls have set up for Rowse fishing - a must read!

Green NGOs cannot take big business cash and save planet

Following on yesterday's post covering the work of PEW and other American Blue Charity groups and tyheir involvement in the fishing industry, the Guardian ran a story yesterday worth reporting!

Naomi Klein is right to be concerned at the relationship between green groups and corporations, writes Genevieve LeBaron for The Conversation

When she wrote recently that “big green groups” are doing more harm than good when it comes to saving the planet, Naomi Klein was right to be concerned.

In recent years the environmental agenda has become heavily corporatised. Unimaginable a few decades back, partnerships between environmental NGOs and big-brand companies have become common. The Environmental Defense Fund led the way in 1990, partnering with McDonald’s to introduce more sustainable packaging. Today, the WWF receives funding from and works with Coca-Cola to “save” polar bears, and acts as “conservation partner” to IKEA.

Conservation International has partnerships with Starbucks and Walmart. The Nature Conservatory has partnered with Boeing, British Petroleum, Shell, Monsanto, and Walmart, among many others. Even Greenpeace, one of the more traditionally anti-corporate NGOs, is now cooperating with Unilever and Coca-Cola to promote “Greenfreeze” refrigeration technology (though unlike others, Greenpeace does not accept corporate funding).

Ties between environmental NGOs and the world’s largest oil and gas companies have also deepened. To name just a few examples, Time magazine reported in 2012 that “between 2007 and 2010 the Sierra Club, a US grassroots conservation network founded in the 19th century, accepted over US$25m in donations from the gas industry". The majority of these funds came from Chesapeake Energy, one of the world’s biggest gas drillers.

The Nature Conservancy has accepted millions of dollars from British Petroleum (BP) and is currently working with BP to “ensure their oil exploration efforts in the West are done sustainably”. And Antony Burgmans, a non-executive board member of BP, sits on the board of WWF International. While not completely new, such links between environmental NGOs and the biggest retail and energy corporations in the world are now commonplace, and growing in number.

As Peter Dauvergne and I argue in our forthcoming book Protest Inc., corporate-NGO partnerships do not represent a simple business takeover of activism. But they do demonstrate a significant shift in the strategy and ethos of many NGOs. They reflect the acceptance of corporations as allies rather than adversaries, and of the market as an efficient and acceptable tool through which to pursue environmental objectives. As many of the big environmental NGOs morph into global business-style institutions, they have come to value win-win moderate calls for “concrete and measurable progress” and impact over more radical disruptive demands to transform the system.

A consequence of environmental NGOs opting to co-operate with corporations has been that more effort has gone into market-friendly and consumer-driven activism – eco-certification and eco-labeling, for example, which helps legitimise rather than challenge business as usual.

For instance, the WWF/Coca-Cola campaign to “save” polar bears has driven sales of over one billion cans of Coke adorned with a white polar bear. The Sierra Club’s partnership with Clorox rents out the club’s century-old logo to help market a line of “green” cleaning products, in exchange for a percentage of sales. One can only imagine that John Muir, the Sierra Club’s first president and staunch advocate of ecological preservation, would hardly be impressed at the extent of his group’s compromises.

Efforts such as these may improve the ecological footprint of individual products and bring revenue to cash-strapped environmental organisations – but they are not fundamentally helping the planet, in fact they reinforce unsustainable patterns of production and consumption worldwide.

The great danger of corporatisation is that while environmental NGOs tinker at the edges with efforts to improve recycling and packaging (such as Greenpeace’s campaign to remove the illegal Indonesian paper fibre in Mattel’s Barbie boxes), overall consumption is rising exponentially. So too is the power and profit of the oil and retail corporations whose unsustainable business models drive climate change.

Grassroots environmental movements and groups continue to resist and challenge corporatisation. But this does not mean they are unaffected by it. Our research has found that at as global leaders praise corporate-NGO partnerships, politicians, police forces and court rooms in nations such as the UK, US and Canada treat street-level activists — particularly those involved in direct action — increasingly harshly. When credible alternatives are smeared by association, such actions only enhance the power that corporations have to weaken environmental activism.

• This article was first published by The Conversation

Blue hue

JMW Turner would have loved to capture the blue tones of the evening sky across the Bay to the Mount...

even the Wherry Town Plaza skate park was deserted...

and Tom barely able to see past the end of the harbour...

one trawl to mend...

Wind Southerly or southeasterly 4 or 5, increasing 6 at times. Sea State Moderate or rough. Weather Rain or thundery showers. Visibility Moderate or good, occasionally poor...

back to a berth...

the next few weeks will see only serious yellow wellies in the port.