Wednesday fish on Newlyn auction.

Last evening, the netter Briatnnia V is just returning to her berth after putting ashore her hake catch...

and you can tell from the lighting down the quay...

that there was some heavy precipitation as the Met Office is wont to call rain...

this morning it looks as it there were no boats to be auctioned, but, keeping up the age old Newlyn tradition of not acknowledging boats that fish with nets (as opposed to trawls or beam trawls)... 

there were about 800 boxes of fish from four netters starting with the New Harmony...

who landed some cracking whiting...

and monk tails...

while the Britannia V put ashore one of the biggest landings of haddocks in memory...

along with pollack form the Karen of Ladram...

at this time of year the boats like to keep the best of the roes...

from big whitefish like pollack from the inshore netter, Girl Pamela...

which brought the buyers out of the fridge...

all keen to bid on the busy market...

with the price of hake for this morning's boats almost halving from Monday's very expensive start to the week due to the country being largely deprived of quality fish thanks to widespread North East Atlantic gales...

making the MSC Certified hake...

the stand-out fish of the morning auction...

the lights on the boats signs of an ealry muster for some of the crews.

Painting Party on the Quay - this Saturday 10am - 5pm

This Saturday there will be at least three historic luggers berthed inside the Old Harbour in Newly, recreating a scene reminiscent of the last few hundred years of fishing in the area.  It was scenes like this, and the workers involved in the fishing community that were to draw in a number of trail-blazing and innovative artists that were eventually to become known as the Newlyn School...

Harold Harvey's painting has luggers with their sails dropped...

while John Carrick's work has two luggers with their sails hoisted

another shows the harbour around 1887 when you can see the South Pier is under construction...

more recently local artist and ex-St Ives harbourmaster, Eric Ward captured the last lugger's Painting Day on the Pier with the Barnabas, Happy Return and Ripple  against the quay...

when some artists arrived very early...

 in the day to capture the scene...

like the sadly now departed, Bernard Evans...

before the crews go on with the job of painting the hull above...

 and anti-fouling below the waterline.  Everybody and anybody is welcome to come along from 10am but a special invite is there for all those with a brush, pencil, pen, crayon, pastel or anything else that will make a mark to come and capture the scene!

Open letter from the Association of Line Caught fishermen to LECLERC, System U and INTERMARCHE: the survival of the bar is in your hands!

This is a letter from handline bass fisherman, Gwen Pennarun in Brittany - who makes a living solely from catching bass using hook and line. He has written to the bosses of the big three French supermarkets asking them not to sell bass caught by trawlers or industrial fishing.

The Breton fishermen have their own website, Association des igneurs de la pointe de Bretagne website similar to our own Line Caught website that allows you to track individual fish back to the boat and fisherman who caught it!



So, to the letter:

President of the association des ligneurs

To the attention of :

Serge Papin, System U

Michel-Édouard Leclerc, E. Leclerc

Thierry Cotillard, Intermarché

Distributors, the survival of the bar is in your hands!

February 23, 2017


Gentlemen,

My name is Gwen Pennarun, I am a professional fisherman in Brittany, a bass handliner for more than thirty years. My activity rests entirely on this species, and with it, my family and my future. I am writing this letter to you as President of the Pointe de Bretagne Pointe Association and on behalf of all the fishermen who recognize themselves in the values ​​of a small-scale fishery.

Our job is to capture the bar at the line, exclusively . It is the most gentle and ecological fishing technique. It does not damage the funds. It makes it possible to specifically target the desired fish. It is also the only technique that allows to reject with water all fish too small, alive! We fish little but our fish is of exceptional quality, and it sells well. Our motto is not to make volume but to fish little to sell better .

The Pointe de Bretagne association has imposed a biological rest for its members for many years between February and March. In addition to reducing fishing pressure over the year, this rest allows fish to reproduce during the critical breeding season .

Unfortunately, it is during this period that the bar is particularly vulnerable because it regroups to spawn and is allowed to capture in astronomical quantities by large trawlers or gillnets . The latter literally ransacked the bar populations in the Channel, pushing the trollers out of the fishery or outright leaving the fishery. In addition to being an intolerable fishing practice, disrupting the spawning of fish, over-exploiting a fragile species, the fish they put on the market is disastrous and sold at a ridiculously low price, less than 40% Price that we get from it .

Further south, in the Bay of Biscay, we have seen for several years a very worrying decrease in bar resources. Our catches in 2016 have reached their lowest level in history, and we are very concerned that the bar resource in this area will collapse as it did in the English Channel.

As every year at the same time, we see the avalanche of promotions of your banners on this bar of poor quality, resulting from fishing techniques not respectful of the environment and the resource. By realizing this, you become complicit in the over-exploitation of this precious species, which made us live, and hence our own disappearance.

That is why we appeal to your responsibility and ask you to stop selling wild bar during this period.

Please accept our cordial greetings.

Gwen Pennarun

PS: For those who would like to support this request, you can sign the petition here:

Https://www.change.org/p/leclerc-system-supply-for-intermarchitecture-buy-of-bar-from-the-Of-reproduction?

Thank you!

Live! - George Eustace on the implications of Brexit for Fishing

Tune in on Wednesday to hear fisheries minister, George Eustice on the implications of Brexit for Fishing, Wednesday March 8th at 2pm.

Bookmark this link for live coverage of the debate.

The price of fish - fishing in 9s gusting 10s

Chart courtesy of WindyTV

Look out guys, this was the forecast chart at 6am this morning...

@BM_Matt aboard the Brixham beam trawler, Our Miranda posted this short video as she headed into the breeze on Sunday afternoon...

while 100 miles to the west Alan and the boys were hauling in even bigger seas on the @Ajax_Hake.  When the weather is this uncomfortable everything is a chore aboard the boat, the mug of tea has to be held all the time and getting to sleep is a fight to relax enough.

Must try and get these guys to shoot video on their phones in 'landscape' not 'portrait' format to prevent 'pillarboxing', the ugly black bars that result either side of the video!

Porthleven Baulk art now on show at the Old LifeBoat Gallery

Private viewing ceremony for @Porthleven_Art

Saturday night saw the Fishermen's Mission team say a big thank you to all those who have helped enable this superb exhibition of artwork individually crafted from the smashed timber baulks that normally protected the harbour from storms.

The soundtrack to the video slideshow is of the heavy sea running against the Old Lifeboat House Gallery that same evening.

The gallery is now open to the public from 10:30am to 4:30pm 5th - 8th March and 10:30am - 7:30pm 9th-10th March.

The auction will be held in a marquee on March 18th - and is available online courtesy of auction house, David Lay.

After the weekend gale, part trips on Monday's market make good money.

Five beam trawlers and a netter on the market this morning - but all with broken trips owing to the weekend's appalling weather...

so it was pretty much a line of boxes per boat...

though the netter, Ajax had a good shot of haddock...

despite the rather unattractive thorny name sometimes these fish dazzle...

plenty of small red mullet around with the boats, signs of a good season later in the year when they move closer inshore...

there were nearly more buyers than boxes this morning so prices were high...

even for fish like these cuttles...

braving the torrential rain, a group of students assemble by the iceworks as they continue their harbour tour...

despite the weather a handful of hardy handline fishermen braved the weather and found somewhere to work in the lee of the shore to pick away on a good run of mackerel...

while the bigger buyers fought over a few dozen boxes of hake...

beam trawl brill...

and two types of gurnard to identify...

by now the rain was lashing it down so the bedraggled students with Lionel leading the way...

headed for the haven of the market - a few years ago they would have enjoyed the hospitality of the Mission of course.