Stormy Newlyn - Children's friend sunk

Work now needed to re-float the old lugger Children's Friend after she sank in her new berth.

At last - it's a fish-filled full-on #FishyFriday in Newlyn!

Many magnifique megrims...

with the fish market #openforbusiness...

and a big trip of mink from the Trevessa IV...

most fish have swim bladders which can be filled with air and deflated to allow them to regulate the depth they swim at comfortably - when they are caught by fishing gear and brought to the surface much more quickly than if happened naturally the air in the bladder expands to rapidly for it to be absorbed back into the bloodstream of the fish - that is why fishing boats cannot just return a large catch of unwanted fish back to the sea even though they are still alive...

big beautiful bass...

the pressure is on to clear the sale floor...

Gary M was one of the netters...

 to land a good mixed trip of whitefish...

which kept the buyers busy bidding...

while some fish were still being put through the grader...

and tallied up...

outside the forklifts are lifting...

under some pretty dramatic skies away to the north...

the biggest wind turbine service cat to visit the harbour yet...

not a good sign on the Sapphire II, her deck is still devoid of any fishing gear which means her winch is still out of action...

well not even a morning star actually but Venus...

plenty of work for the crabbing boats to put their fleets of pots back in working order...

no chance of 'ghost fishing' for these tightly rolled nets.

AIS shows just how many ships are at sea in the Western Approaches

Some extraordinary reception for AIS allowed us to get just a glimpse of just how busy the Western Approaches can be even at this time of year...

in this shot the big Irish pelagic trawler, Paula can be seen working some 170 miles west of :Land's End...

while up in the North Sea things are looking pretty busy, most of the purple targets are fishing vessels...

down south, the Newlyn beam trawler has been towing almost north and south off the bank..

an occasional visitor to Newlyn, Ora Labora took an interesting detour, probably when she hauled and lay to the wind before towing again...

there's a small fleet of beam trawlers form Newly working way down south this week away from the heavy swell in the Channel...

Cefas Endeavour is on a 2014 survey track off the French coast, though their blog is not being updated at present...

the Sea Spray has managed to get a trip in at last now that the weather has some semblance of normality...

its a straight steam home for the beam trawler.

From the BBC today - Storm-hit fishing fleets 'facing financial crisis'

Relentless storms have left many fishermen facing desperate financial crisis, with some unable to work since Christmas, a charity has said. Weeks of ferocious weather have forced many boats from the sea, particularly the inshore fleets in the South West. 

Superintendent Keith Dixon - Royal National Mission to deep Sea Fishermen, Newlyn

The Fishermen's Mission, which provides emergency grants, said it was giving out "thousands of pounds every day". The charity said the crisis was unprecedented and it has launched a new appeal to provide financial help.

Alison Godfrey, from the charity, said: "There is absolutely no comparison to this year. What we are doing is giving away thousands of pounds every day, especially in Cornwall. You can get a few days you miss, but now we're running on to seven weeks of no fishing”  "We are very moved by the desperation of some people. We are talking desperate times." 

Seafaring charities are throwing fishing communities a lifeline

Maritime charity Seafarers UK has donated £50,000 towards the appeal but the mission said it would "very soon have to be dipping into our reserves".

In the South West fishermen have been particularly badly hit, with many unable to get out to sea for several weeks. In Porthleven several boats sank after the harbour barriers were smashed by the storms. 

Hundreds of pots have been rolled into tight balls and wrecked

Newlyn fisherman Robert Broderick said replacing lost or damaged crab pots would cost him more than £25,000, while the Cornish Fish Producers Organisation warned soaring prices caused by dwindling fish market stocks could tempt skippers to take risks. In Devon, some Brixham boats have only been to sea for five days so far this year.

Adam Beckett, a local fisherman, said: "This is the worst winter for continuous weather I can remember. "It's been tough. You can get a few days you miss, but now we're running on to seven weeks of no fishing."

More from the BBC.

Penzance Harbour damage - So was Option A so bad after all?

At the time Option A to re-develop Penzance harbour was put forward a much heated debated ensued over the physical changes proposed to Penzance Harbour Wall and the area between the Jubilee Pool, Battery Rocks and Penzance Harbour wall. Those who were against this aspect of the scheme (forget the issues over whether or not the Scillonian link would move to Falmouth) might do well to reflect on the recent damage to the sea facing wall in Penzance Harbour - which the proposed armouring and some reclamation of the seabed directly in front of the harbour wall - would have protected.

Given that sections of the promenade which might once have looked impregnable...

are now lying in a heap on the beach and the harbour wall in Penzance has been breached...

perhaps it is time to take on board the fact that the times they are a-changing, sea levels are rising and winter storms are therefore inflicting more damage...

image courtesy of the BBC

as in the extreme case of Lamorna Cove's harbour wall - now lost to the elements.

So much to Sea - at the fishing in the Shetlands

How does the seafood industry affect Shetland? 

 The seafood industry has supported generation after generation of Shetlander, protecting our rural communities and remaining an integral part of our lives. It is currently worth £300 million a year to the islands and surpasses the value of the oil, gas, agriculture, tourism, and creative industries combined.

A Changing Climate in Fisheries Management - listen to the podcast

Listen to the podcast here:

However fast you think climate change is happening on land, it’s happening even faster in the ocean. Marine species are particularly mobile, and they’re quickly moving toward the poles in order to stay cool as things heat up. This poses a challenge to fisheries management because it has the potential to affect our estimates of fish populations. That’s because if the distribution of fish changes—if the fish are no longer where they used to be—then we might over- or undercount them in our surveys. Most types of distribution shift would not affect population estimates because they’d be picked up by the survey. But for those cases where it could be a problem, our scientists are working on a solution. 

 John Manderson is a NOAA Fisheries biologist, and he’s working on the stock assessment for butterfish. By studying the habitat ecology of this species, Manderson hopes to map shifts in butterfish habitat caused by changing ocean temperatures. Those maps can then be used to fine tune estimates of butterfish abundance. To do this, Manderson is working with physical oceanographers that model fine-scale changes in ocean temperatures. He’s also working with stock assessment scientists to find a way to incorporate his mathematical adjustment into their fish population models. 

 The ocean temperature models used in this research are created by MARACOOS Exit. Other contributors include NOAA’s Northeast Cooperative Research Program, the NOAA Fisheries Habitat Assessment Improvement Plan, and the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council Exit. Perhaps most importantly, Manderson is working with fishermen. "Because no one understands the habitat ecology of an animal better than it's predator," he said. Manderson and the scientists and fishermen he’s collaborating with aren’t the only ones working on this problem. All along our coasts, NOAA Fisheries scientists and their partners are developing ways to incorporate environmental data into stock assessments. The world is changing quickly, and this story is just one example among many of how our science is changing with it.