Welcome to Through the Gaps, the UK fishing industry's most comprehensive information and image resource. Newlyn is England's largest fish market and where over 50 species are regularly landed from handline, trawl, net, ring net and pot vessels including #MSC Certified #Hake, #Cornish Sardine, handlined bass, pollack and mackerel. Art work, graphics and digital fishing industry images available from stock or on commission.
Subject: Brexit: fisheries
Witness(es): Mr Thórdur Aegir Óskarsson, Ambassador of Iceland to the UK, Icelandic Embassy Mr Vidar Landmark, Director General, Norwegian Ministry of Trade, Industry and Fisheries Mr Geir Ervik, Senior Advisor, Norwegian Ministry of Trade, Industry and Fisheries
the kind of weather JMW Turner would have died for...
with a broken beamer trip and inshores...
filling one end of the market with superb quality fish...
like these monk from the New Harmony...
though there is still very little sign of autumnal squid...
there were some titanium white turbot...
meaty monk...
a solitary bass...
and young Nigel managed to bag a few JDs from ending up in the Imogen IIs cod end...
with their distinctive 'thumb print' market that gives rise to the fish's name Saint Pierre in France...
telling fish apart by their individual distinctive marks is in most cases easy enough but when it comes to these ray, which one is the blonde...
and which one is the spotted variety?...
"must have put them somewhere"...
Dunlop workboots, de rigeur in the fishing industry either ashore or afloat...
the lazy gulls patrol the market edge for scraps...
while their keener cousins take to the wing...
in search of breakfast...
looks like early retirement for yacht Taranga, one of the Normandy Channel yacht race - after calm conditions on leaving Plymouth the fleet encountered some more challenging Atlantic type conditions as they rounded the Lizard and headed for land's End during the night. Here's a sniuppet of a race report from Miranda Merron aboard the, Campagne de France:
"We had a very exciting time to negotiate the passage from the Lizard because of ugly clouds, enormous scales of wind and many grains. It is obvious that this kind of fun always happens at night! Then, approaching the southwest tip of Cornwall, the horizon is darkened, the wind suddenly shifted ... we had to roll up urgently the gennaker to pass through the small shortcut between Longship and Land's end, which is only a few hundred metres wide. It happens, as long as the GPS and maps are accurate. Now we await the depression, in absolute calm conditions! Generali is a few miles ahead, and Serenis not far behind ...all drift northward with the current ..."
the collective noun is, a bevvy of beamers...
the Gallilee now has the bulk of her topside work completed, well the woodwork at least! Roll on next year Jeremy ;-)
As compared to a box of matches, the largest grade of langoustine or 'crocodiles'
Laid out on the boat's 'sorting table' a small sample from the morning's first haul of (Noway Lobster / nephrops norvegicus / langoustine / Dublin Bay prawns) aboard the pioneering Newlyn trawler, Fern in 1982 - the first year Newlyn boats began fishing the Smalls grounds SW of Milford in the Celtic Deep - the table was simply constructed from a sheet of 8'x4' marine ply cut in half - with the addition of two short lengths of 2"x2" running either side of the board to contain the fish and two short strops (see the knot in the 2"x2") which held the table in place on the gunwale while a few fish boxes were stacked upside down inboard to support the other side...
A small haul of prawns contained in the deck pound
the following year when the Keriolet SS114 under skipper 'Traz' Treloar joined the fishery the same arrangement was used - one crew sorted through the haul on the deck...
Billy Bunn happy in his work - which often meant being in this position from the first haul around 8am until gone midnight after the last haul of the day - the boat laid-to at night.
while the two other crew stood either side of the sorting table grading the prawns - there were baskets for, tailed prawns, small, medium and large or 'crocodiles' as they were known...
the table and deck pound was taken down between hauls to allow for the taking of the four hour tows aboard...
which were sometimes sizeable...
shooting away on the Smalls after the first haul - the decks are clear of pound boards and the sorting table...
the Keriolet had a reputation for rolling - in the first photo the prawn table is not fastened to the gunwale - which resulted in it being lost overboard on the first trip!...
subsequently when the Keriolet returned to prawning a few years later a shelterdeck...
baskets laid out for each grade of prawn and white fish
and a more permanently mounted prawn table had been built port side...
so the old saying goes, "where there's muck there's brass" - prawns prefer muddy bottoms in order to construct their burrows - which, according to research, they show no particular ownership. These photos were all taken well before quotas of any sorts were introduced and talk of 'nil discards' and 'landing obligation' were unimaginable! Wind the clock forward to today an we find a very different story with the law of unintended consequences having a very negative effect - below is a video showing French langoustine fishermen desperate to show they have a better way to fish in the face of the blanket discards ban by using a sorting table on board their prawn trawlers - by using a 'sorting table', their research shows that at least 50% of the prawns they slide back over the side live to see another day! Looks like the Newlyn boats were on to a good thing all those years ago!
The French are campaigning to use this study to prevent a zero discard ban on their prawn fleet
Dutch fishermen are campaigning for their flatfish fishery to be allowed to return their unwanted fish back to see for the same reason - many of the juvenile fish caught in the shallow waters of the North Sea survive.
