MemoryFish Project

Memory Fish Community Day in Newlyn, Saturday 22nd August

Don't forget, you can also see the Memory Fish Project and talk with the curator Tom Goskar at the Fish Festival on Monday!

The Efficient full to the gunnel with mackerel - circa 1977: Photo courtesy of Billy Stevenson

Watercolour sketches of the Excellent LH

Excellent as she is today - the last big wooden trawler left in the Stevenson fleet - up for sale to a good home.

We will be taking our MemoryFish archive and photographic exhibition to the Seafood Cornwall Training Hub on the Strand in Newlyn on Saturday. The photographs have been collected as part of the MemoryFish Project, an MMO funded and FLAG supported project. The exhibition includes early images from well-known collections including The Morrab Library and photographs dating from the 1970’s and 80’s taken by Glyn Richards and Billy Stevenson. Radio Cornwall veteran, Ted Gundry, will also be present to share his interviews with fishermen recorded over many decades to the present day.

Project Officer, Tom Goskar is delighted that the collections are being shared with the public “these photographs are an invaluable window on our fishing heritage and reveal some of the changes that have taken place in the fishing industry and Newlyn over time”. Tom hopes that members of the public will help him to identify the people, boats and activities on show and perhaps bring in their own photographs. ‘Families are often the keepers of our heritage and I would be delighted if people shared their memories with us and their photographs of any aspect of the fishing industry from sea to plate.”

The MemoryFish Project recognises the importance of fishing heritage to the future of the industry and to schools, communities and businesses. All the photographs in the exhibition will be made available in perpetuity through the free online archive – cornishmemory.com.

Newlyn Raft race is next Sunday!

Get down to the beach at Newlyn Green next Sunday and cheer on the rafts! A great way to warm up for Newlyn Fish Festival the next day - the Raft ace is a major fundraising day for the Nelwyn Christmas Lights.

Larche en peche

The big Breton stern trawler Larche was well known on the fishing grounds off Cornwall, especially north of the Scillys. She was one of the boats who gained some notoriety back in the 80s when she, along with the other 'music' boats from Concarneau (Harmony & Rhapsody), were involved in trawling over the gear of some local netters - to great cost as they wiped out almost all of of the boats' gear!

The skippers were pretty gritty and gruff characters - but subsequently, if you spoke to them in French they were pretty amenable - it just shows how it is always better to talk!

A mizzly, misty, foggy #FishyFriday

Spot the new recruit for Cefas...

did he really pay that much for those bass...

you can't keep an old dog down...

name that fishy tail...

boxes of blondes...

boxes of bass...

not so many of these elusive chaps...

on a western end of the market devoid of net fish today...

Rome might not have been built in a day, but probably more quickly than this doorway...

the new recruit gets the lowdown on megs...

all set for another day on the pots for the Harriet-Eve...

while the flagship of the fleet gets her annual bottoms scrub out of the way...

and a full day's work ahead for the boys on the St Georges...

there's nearly as much rigging on a beam trawler...

as on the sailing ketch Irene...

proper fish handling gear...

it's not only Tom on watch this #FishyFriday morning...

in these weally wet westerly winds.

Fastnet Yacht Race heading for home

Day four of the Rolex Fastnet yacht race sees a big bunch of boats heading east south of the Scillys and the Lizard making slow progress on their way to the finish line at Plymouth..

all the competitors in this classic race can be followed individually by visiting the tracking page of the race website...

which shows just how busy the shipping lanes were - though as can be seen from this image all of the competitors (apart from a couple who ignored the TSS off Land's End completely) heeded the race instructions and kept well clear of the TSS, traffic separation schemes that exist off Land's End and the Scillys.

'Tiz a muggy, mizzly day indeed.

The Sea Spray...

tightens her bow line when she comes comes alongside...

the fish market to land...

her line caught pollack, held in insulated tubs with slush ice...

just a couple of beam trawlers this morning with some prime fish like this turbot...

and the Imogen II that push ashore another dollop of John Dory...

someone very kindly removed the poisinous dorsal fin form this greater weaver, the bain of the beachwalker...

Lionel not to be beaten by the weather battles his way from the office to the market...

another inshore scalloper on the way to land...

bound for a wind farm near you...

transhipping a mornings work at sea, not a good sign!...

bound for a berth on the pontoons...

as the Britannia V makes her way to the market with 5,000kg of hake and 130kg of haddock and 70kg of cod...

filler her up...

after last winter's highly destructive storms the historic Jubilee Pool is being repaired...

with piles being driven through the floor of the pool to attach it to the rocks below...

all the existing paintwork is being shotblasted off.

It's all at your local Co-op now!

Hake, haddock, sardines and crab - Penzance Co-op has just started selling fresh LOCAL fish supplied by local fish merchant Matthew Stevens.  Can't get any less air miles and a smaller carbon footprint than that methinks!