It is Good #FishyFriday! - but this was what happened in Newlyn on Thursday!

Just the one netter trip this morning...

from the GaryM...

Ed and his skipper looked well impressed with the prices on a shortmarket...

this turbot made around £15 a kilo

and the monk was a good price to for the guys on the boat...

auctioneer Ryan in full flow...

keeping the market buzzing...

the boat is all set to head back out to sea again having made the quick landing to take advantage of what has always been one of the strongest market days of the year - harking back to the day when most of the population would eat fish on Good Friday......

down the quay the netter Silver Dawn is changing over her gear - a mammoth task...

with the help of a strange character lurking on the quayside...

Tristan and the crew have rigged a temporary chute to get the nets into the lorry trailer...

one step closer for the new ring net bin...

fine weather and most of the fleet are back out to sea...

Rowse's new crabber is straining at her mooring ropes itching to get back in amongst the crabs - beginning to show her new colours...

Wincat 4 back in Newlyn again...

a pair of Scilly boys...

and a few other new faces in the port - time to work out which ports these guys are registered with?...

and this one?...

the Chris Tacha sporting her new colours on her port side...

one of the first of the new Shannon type...

state of the art lifeboats, the £2.4 million Derrick Bullivant is headed for Donegal, the first of the new class of boats for Ireland...

just the starboard side to do guys,maybe a little R&R job to keep Mario busy...

early season yacht in a berth...

and another Scilly boat...

the sea-going home of @CoastalK91, the Girl Pamela...

innovative mackerel stripper...

and the all-important MLS - minimum landing size gauge form IFCA...

a days gear to be shot from an inshore boat when the weather breaks

its light's out on some of the fleet as the sardine season is now over

looking good...

and ready for the journey back to the islands as soon as the weather allows...

things are a little more crowded aboard the Scilly trawler Sowenna...

the storm damaged replacement handrails on Newlyn Green are rather more contemporary...

than the ones on the prom - looks like they are cast aluminium?...

thought it maybe be some time before the prom is open to the public.

Penlee RNLI help with safe evacuation of injured fisherman

A French fisherman suffering from accidental facial injuries caused at sea was safely evacuated from the stern trawler Azur and taken on board the all weather Ivan Ellen lifeboat just off Newlyn on Tuesday evening At 6:12pm on Tuesday 31 March the crew pagers were activated by HM Coastguard Falmouth, and the volunteer crew at RNLI Penlee were put on ‘stand by’.

At 8:30 pm the same evening, with Deputy Coxswain Kenny Downing at the helm, the all-weather lifeboat Ivan Ellen launched from Newlyn and met up with the 70 foot French stern trawler Azur a mile south east of Newlyn. In calm seas, with a strong northerly wind, the injured fisherman was safely transferred between the Azur and the Ivan Ellen lifeboat.

The lifeboat crew were accompanied by Andrew Munson, local French Consul and Penlee Lifeboat Operations Manager, who was able to help with communication, offering the injured fisherman reassurance and support in his own language on the short trip back to Newlyn Harbour. On arrival he was transferred to an awaiting ambulance and taken to West Cornwall Hospital, Penzance for immediate treatment. Andrew Munson accompanied the fisherman to the hospital, remained present during his treatment and assisted with translations. The injured man has since been released and awaits repatriation to his home country for further medical treatment.

Photos – credited to  RNLI/Penlee

ANNUAL quota tightening must end, argues Simon Collins.

At the end of every year, when European Union fisheries ministers meet the European Commission in Brussels to settle catch quotas for the following 12 months, environmental NGOs [non-governmental organisations] will sometimes send idealistic youngsters out into the cold and rain to wave banners about. It has become something of a tradition, and the messages are always the same. Stop overfishing! The seas are dead! Save the cod!

Pair trawlers like the Budding Rose and Lapwing have been at the forefront of introducing technical and other conservation measures and are now seeing the results - like huge cod hauls not seen for twenty years now becoming commonplace all over the North Sea.

Interestingly, the representatives of these same organisations – not the youngsters, of course, but the corporate-funded lobbyists that tell them what to do – will have spent many of the preceding months agreeing with the fishing industry in meetings with government and the EC that increased catches are scientifically warranted. They could hardly do otherwise, knowing as they do that the amount of cod in the North Sea (measured by what we call the “spawning stock biomass”) has more than tripled since 2006, that there is four times as much haddock out there than there was in the early 1990s, that the stock of plaice is larger than it has been for at least 50 years, and so on. And they will readily accept in private that none of Scotland’s key commercial stocks are remotely in danger of extinction.

Yes, you could have made a decent case for overfishing 20 years ago, when the Scottish fishing fleet was significantly bigger than it is now and many of the now-recovered stocks were in a poor state. The youngsters standing in the rain on a couple of December days each year were born a generation too late: they are fighting yesterday’s battles, and their banners belong in the same museums as those urging former US president Jimmy Carter to leave his cruise missiles at home.

So why the double-talk, not from the troops outside but from their bosses on the inside, the highly intelligent activists who know all too well that places like the North Sea are not devoid of fish but a tremendous success story? Why fuel the myth (at least in public) that overfishing is rife, and that fisheries-dependent communities like Shetland are on the brink of starvation? Do they really believe that record landings in Peterhead, Lerwick and Scalloway are pretend fish? If so, the buyers paying top prices for superb-quality product ought to be told.

In some ways, anti-fishing campaigners are the victims of their own success. Responding to legitimate concern in the 1980s and 1990s from the public and the fishing industry itself over the future of our fish stocks, they built up very large organisations, with staffing levels to match.

The problem is what they should do once action is taken and stocks recover, especially when that process has been as rapid as it has in Scottish waters.

Like any other business – and they are businesses, make no mistake – they have to cover their costs, and it is a lot easier to raise money for your cause by screaming impending catastrophe than by saying everything is actually working out pretty well, thank you.

Their predicament is only worsened by the fact that many have accepted large donations from multinational conglomerates, from oil companies to banks. Apart from undermining their own credibility, this has effectively reduced the number of targets they can pick on.

Hence the remarkable silence from environmentalists over the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, for example, or marine aggregate dredging. Neither damages the environment, apparently, or at least not enough to warrant diverting attention from putting Scottish fishing boats out of business.

The irony is not lost on the skippers and crews that have weathered the shake-out of the past decade or so and should now be benefiting from our robust and diverse fish stocks. It seems that the better the situation gets out there on the fishing grounds, the more the anti-fishing brigade claims “overfishing” and general meltdown.

But there is a certain inevitability about it, driven not by fact and fiction but by profit and loss back at corporate HQ, and perhaps we should not be surprised.

Denial of the patently obvious has its limits, however, and the foot soldiers out in the rain will need some other banners this December.

• Simon Collins is executive officer at the Shetland Fishermen’s Association www.shetlandfishermen.com

Full story courtesy of The Scotsman.

New discards laws drive one skipper to go green and modify his beam trawl gear.

With the new EU laws on discards kicking in this year one of the local beam trawlers has taken the initiative and developed a new kind of beam - replacing the traditional steel beam with wood and using huge lorry tyres to help kick up the sea bed instead of the chain mat ticklers used by most of the fleet. The skipper is hoping his idea will prove so successful all the South West fleet will adopt the new system to meet the new discards regulations.

Monday evening action

After landing the firts half of this tide's trip it's time to let go the ends on the Ajax...

while the Karen of Ladram...

has a few jobs that need sorting...

yet another Dutch beamer Z67 Rubens has landed her trip in Newlyn - expect more!...

like Z45 Stephanie making her way across the Bay at midday...

the gig girls get going...

in a heavy swell and head back home...

while the Crystal Sea II takes on another trawl...

shore ropes take the strain...

of the big two hundred ton beam trawlers with plenty of movement in the harbour owing to the heavy ground sea out in the Bay...

in passing.

Newlyn Mission sold!

Newlyn's iconic Fishermen’s Mission is set to be sold to a local businessman – but the Mission hopes to retain a presence in the building by leasing back office space and a memorial room

Newlyn Mission's memorial room

The Mission has accepted an offer from Barry Ashworth for the Institute, which was put on the market 12 months ago for £500,000 after two years of deliberations and consultations.

The sale is in line with the Mission’s programme of modernisation across the country that has seen a move away from static operations based in large centres, to an outreach approach that seeks to increase the number of fishermen and their families receiving assistance.

Fishermen’s Mission chief executive, Commodore David Dickens, said: “Over the last 18 months Superintendent Keith Dickson has shown how effective outreach in Cornwall can be in expanding the scope and effectiveness of our work.

“Building on the success of our response to the storms of the winter of 2013/14, we are now reaching far more people than previously, especially in the smaller, more remote ports and harbours in the area.”

Mr Ashworth is said to be keen to retain the building as an iconic part of Newlyn’s history and wants to maintain the connection between the Institute and the Fishermen’s Mission in Cornwall.

The Fishermen’s Mission intends to use funds raised through the sale to provide revenue income for their work in Cornwall.

Commodore Dickens was keen to underline the work of the Fishermen’s Mission to Cornwall and Newlyn in particular, for the long term.

“With 40-plus ports and harbours in Cornwall where commercial fishing takes place, the Fishermen’s Mission is completely committed to the fishermen of Cornwall and their families for the foreseeable future,” he added.

Read more: http://www.cornishman.co.uk/Buyer-Newlyn-s-Fishermen-s-Mission/story-26258998-detail/story.html#ixzz3Vxr2Cb5P 
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