The Breton trawler, l'Estran, aground at the entrance to the port of Saint-Guénolé

Echouage de l'Estran à Pont-l'Abbé by OuestFranceFR 

A trawler ran aground at the entrance to the port of Saint-Guénolé Penmarc'h l'Estran, from the deep-sea trawler company La Houle grounded on Monday morning at the entrance to the port of Saint-Guénolé Penmarc'h. The five crew members were quickly evacuated. The boat is hard aground and has taken water with a heavy list.

It was around 10am on Monday morning when l'Estran  a deep-sea trawler trawler from the company La Houle in the port of Saint-Guénolé Penmarc'h. The boat was sailing for a two week trip off the south of Ireland. At the exit of the extremely narrow channel editor: even at high water when entering Saint Gue you can see the seaweed floating on the surface  - the channel is that narrow! the boat hit a rock. It seems that with successive storms the channel buoys have moved. The trawler would have made ​​a difference of a few metres which proved fatal. She finds herself stranded at the entrance to the port. The five crew members were unharmed, though had to be evacuated by firefighters.

Water seepage occurred during the grounding, the hull sustained damage and water infiltration. Consequence: it looks increasingly tide should not be enough to recover. Pumps were sent on board early afternoon to drain water. A boom has been put in place in case of a possible pollution. A lifeboat will be brought in during the afternoon and help keep other boats out of trouble.

Cornish hake gets the Spanish treatment as Jose Pizarro does tapas on Saturday Kitchen

A big thank you must go out to Nathan Outlaw for shouting it from the rooftops! - Cornish hake, from Newlyn is top table fish.  Spanish chef, Jose Pizarro shows how to creat a simple ta[pas dish using hake - which, as he tells James Martin, the most popular fish eaten in Spain.

Cod bounce back - Ben Fogle's Country Travels: 'North Sea fishermen are acutely aware of the changes taking place in the ocean'

Here's an update from Ben Fogle following his two, not ten day trip in the North Sea chasing cod. 

"That the North Sea cod population has faced a problem is undeniable, but we need to keep the subject on the table 

  I’m baffled. According to a report two years ago, there were just “100 cod left in the North Sea”. As late as November last year, the Marine Conservation Society announced that the latest International Council for the Exploration of the Sea statement said that cod stocks were only just above what is considered sustainable, and its advice was to seek “alternatives to North Sea cod”.

The future is bright for cod!

For many, cod has become a fish to be avoided at all costs, the “dodo” of the maritime world, eaten to death in fish fingers. But my experience aboard a Scottish trawler last week couldn't have portrayed a more different scenario, where ton upon ton of cod was hauled aboard the relatively small fishing vessel.

We were not one of the mighty pelagic ships that suck hundreds of tons of live fish aboard, but a seven-man trawler. Apart from the skipper’s instinct and basic fish-finding equipment on board, we couldn’t have known where to find a lone shoal. Yet half the hauls were brimming with mature Atlantic cod, many 30lb-plus. My experience seems to correlate with what Scottish fishermen, those on the front line, have been saying for more than a year.

The Scottish industry has been working hard to ensure sustainability. The crew on our trawler relies on healthy, sustainable stocks of cod more than the consumer does. It is insulting to assume that fishermen don’t care. As in any industry, there will be cowboys, but the majority, like farmers, are the custodians of the environment in which they work. They are acutely aware of the nuanced changes taking place on the ocean. That the North Sea cod population faced a problem is undeniable, but the government decommissioning programme has had a huge effect as the number of fishing boats has declined. Apart from the other trawler with which we were working, we didn’t see another fishing vessel during my time at sea.

I've been one of the many consumers who have avoided cod over the past decade. While it’s hard to dispute scientific research, my recent experience on the front line does provoke the question of whether we should start eating North Sea cod again. Rather than yo-yoing between species, we should look at eating a greater variety. Pollock’s delicious, by the way.

Footnote:

It's a shame his glib comment about the big pelagic boats 'hoovering' up fish is there -  while the scale of operations and the quantities fished by the big pelagic boats can't be denied - they do operate within acceptable stock limits the fishery for mackerel and other pelagic fish is well managed and well policed these days.

More on Monday

Stacked three boxes high...

plenty of good whitefish on the market floor this morning...

some showing off the kind of quality you would expect from Newlyn - bright red gills are a sure sign of freshness...

there was a good selection of decent sized bass up for auction...

to keep the quality supplies going...

from our Padstow cousins...

the Britannia V waded in with a good run of pollack...

fishy quiz of the day - name this fish

despite the season there were just a few boxes of mackerel...

plenty of haddock though...

with heir familiar thumb print type marking behind the gill on either side of the body...

just the three beam trawlers on the board...

as boats like this one are still landing their fish to the market at Plymouth...

the Kaol Pastel has her decks fully loaded with some of her 1000+ pots...

as the crew fleet them ashore...

and pile them high!

It's a swell time to sail

It's never a good time to be on the slip, and the weather at the moment doesn't help...

the Trevsssa IV rides over a swell as the drops her derricks and makes her way out to sea...

as does the good ship Bess with cap'n Kevin aboard, pulling gear will be hard work today for the single-handers...

Friday night produced a bumper harvest of Cornish sardines...

meanwhile work continues to lay in the new power and water supplies for the new ice works, due for completion early April...

a slight exaggeration perhaps...

looks like the new broom is sweeping clean in the harbour...

though this is one piece of scrap iron on the quay that is not likely to be shifted in a hurry, maybe the harbour could run a 'guess the weight of the old anchor' competition...

two of the blues...

blue tubs of sardines bound for FalFish...

take off...

any offers?

a bargain and probably one of the most successful inshore fishing boats ever - designed and built here in Cornwall...

#stormdamage a sure sign big, heavy ground seas have ripped huge quantities of ficus seaweed form the rocks...

no doubt there will be rich picking this weekend for the beach cleaners - gone are the days when Penwith could afford such luxuries as a beach cleaner for Mount's Bay...

the worst of the storm damage has ripped half a dozen huge granite coins from the prom.

Pots going ashore

Recent press extracts from the French press on the Bugaled Breizh

Ten years after the loss of the Bugaled Breizh off the Lizard on 15th January 2004, the case is still in the news in France with the port of Loctudy in Southern Brittany commemorating the disaster next Saturday. Ten years of legal proceedings, accusations against the British Navy, the French military and the US, but still no resoltion with the courts preparing to close the case. However, the regional Breton newspaper Le Télégramme opens the debate again today with a series of articles analysing what went on on that fateful day 10 years ago.

For a former French intelligence officer, Joseph Le Gall, the presence of an American submarine needs to be focused on. He gave the newspaper details of the operation carried out by this submarine, in spite of the Courts rejecting these claims a few months ago. It is known that a military exercice was being carried out in the Channel Approaches at the time of the incident with the Royal Navy preparing for “Thursday War.” However, the US Navy submarine is said to have been in the zone for a very different reason.

A few days later a ship was to leave the nuclear reprocessing plant at La Hague near Cherbourg for Japan with plutonium for military use. The US would be transporting plutonium to the same reprocessing plant a few months later and the submarine was in the zone off the Lizard to observe how the operation was carried out. The Intelligence Officer explains that this was just two years after the Al Qaeda 9/11 attack and that the US authorities were extremely worried about the loss of any nuclear material. Indeed eight kilos of plutonium would have been enough to manufacture a nuclear bomb and the cargo was to contain 140 kg. Under the orders of George W Bush, the US authorities set up an operation to ensure the safe transport of plutonium across the Atlantic with the involvement of the CIA, NSA and the US Navy.

Intelligence reports suggested that al Qaeda had access to 15 vessels that were capable of an attack on the cargo ship and the US officers were working in particular on the idea that a ship could launch a distress call in the English Channel forcing the cargo ship to intervene before being taken over by the crew. The problem with this version provided by the French Intelligence Officer is that the Courts believed it sounded too much like a James Bond story and refused to delve any deeper into these secrets...

#bugaledbreizh