Through the Gaps! - Newlyn Fishing News Cornwall UK fish commercial fishing fish cooking and art

Sunday 22 April 2018

Porthleven Food Festival 2018

Now in its 10th year Porthleven Food Festival celebrates everything to do with local food and produce - from beer to bread to fish - there's something for all the family...

as can be seen from the website's menu...

but first you have to get there and like all successful events in Cornwall with its narrow and singular roads in and out of ports - that means get there early!..

the main marquee was full of fishy themes...

and during the day played host to the Chef's Theatre...

with top cheffing tips coming thick and fast from the likes of...

Naomi Devlin – nutritionalist and author of River Cottage showcasing all things gluten free and gut healthy...

followed by fish maestro, Ross Sloan from the kitchens of the Mount Haven in Marazion...

with not a cloud in the sky the place to take time out was looking out over the harbour in front of the giant free music marquee and bar...

or take in any of the dozens of food, craft and other stalls dotted all round the port...

as the afternoon wore on the place to be was the slip...

in front of the Harbour Inn...

or a stroll down the iconic breakwater...

or the Ship Inn...

even the local gulls seemed to be enjoying the day...

there were reminders of how we have become increasingly concerned for the well-being of our seas...

but above all the message, as ever, was simple - Love Food!

Saturday 21 April 2018

What was being caught and where back to 1950

Nils Stopes gives us yet another in-depth look at the fishing industry in his art of the world - across the big pond.

What is the status of commercial fishing in the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone, the waters from 3 to 200 miles off our coastline?

Generally speaking – something that the “bureaucrats in charge” have developed a great deal of facility in doing - it’s pretty good. Since the National Marine Fisheries Service started getting serious about tracking commercial landings (or at making those landings readily accessible) in 1950, the total weight of our domestic landings has increased from 4.9 billion to 9.8 billion pounds. The value of those landings, when corrected for inflation, has increased from $3.3 billion to $5.2 billion, almost as good.

Obviously this is welcome news for the fishing industry as a whole and for many people in or economically dependent upon the industry. But what does it mean to the individual fishermen, dock owners, wholesalers, retailers and restauranteurs, and the tens of thousands of people whose jobs depend on locally produced seafood?

The ups and downs in the weight and the value (in inflation corrected dollars) in the 491 commercial fisheries currently covered in the NOAA/NMFS Commercial Landings database (up from 484 species in 2015 and from 221 species in 2015) are among the primary determinants of the economic wellbeing of the participants in domestic fisheries and in fisheries-dependent businesses (others are the availability/cost of imported “substitutes” and the latest alarmist rantings from the anti-fishing activists).

It would be a really big job to track the annual landings’ weights and values of all of these species for over seventy years, and the final result would be a huge amount of data that at best would be cumbersome to use. What I’ve done instead is track the landings’ weights and inflation corrected values for every reported species for every fifth year starting in 1950 and made them available in a downloadable spreadsheet at http://www.fishnet-usa.com/Landings 5 yr.xlsx. (the weights in the year caught are from the NMFS Commercial Landings database at https://www.st.nmfs.noaa.gov/commercial-fisheries/commercial-landings/annual-landings/index* and the values were corrected for inflation using the U.S. Bureau of Statistics inflation calculator at https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm. There were 221species listed in 1950 and have increased from then on).

When you have the spreadsheet opened click on the first tab on the bottom of the page, which is labelled “All Fisheries_5 Year.” You will find listings of the recorded landings and their value at the dock when they were landed. I also calculated their value in 2015 dollars, to make them comparable for each year.

All species are listed alphabetically (by their most commonly accepted name, but be aware that that’s not necessarily the name you are most familiar with) to facilitate following particular species.

If you were interested in tracking summer flounder you would clicking scroll all the way to the left then down to “FLOUNDER, SUMMER” (which I have highlighted by using a yellow background). You would find that 5,124 metric tons (11,296,500 pounds) of summer flounder worth $1,897,140 in 1950 or $18,857,572 in 2015 dollars were landed by the commercial fishing industry in the U.S. In 1955 the corresponding figures were 7,160 metric tons, 15,785,000 pounds, $2,842,899, and $25,159,656.

For illustration, I have also highlighted Acadian redfish with a green background, Atlantic herring with red, menhaden with blue and Pacific sardines with grey.

You could then take the summer flounder (or whichever fishery you’ve chosen) data line by line for each fifth year, paste it into a new spreadsheet and chart the changes as I did on the “Summer Flounder” tab. In all three spreadsheets you get there by clicking on the Summer Flounder tab at the bottom of the screen in the spreadsheet.

On another tab (“Top 30 species”) again at 5 year intervals starting in 1950, I have listed the top 30 fisheries (by weight) along with their inflation corrected landed values. Also on that tab are the %s of maximum landings for four species (Menhaden, Pacific Sardines, Atlantic Herring and Acadian Redfish) to give you an idea of the variability of species abundance and/or market demand for different species.

As would be expected, the weight and value of some fisheries have increased, of some have decreased, and some have remained more or less constant. These can be roughly related to the passage and implementation of the Magnuson Act, the development of “new” fisheries in Alaska and the development of fisheries as alternatives to more traditional fisheries that have been judged to be overfished (long-time readers be familiar with some of the controversy that has arisen concerning the determination that some of them have been or are still being overfished).

This might seem a bit complicated, but it really isn’t, and it’s an effective way to see where fisheries have been, where they were in 2015 and where they’re going.

If you’re familiar with spreadsheets you should have no problems. If you aren’t, you should be because the NOAA/NMFS Commercial Landings database has a wealth of information about our fisheries that could well prove invaluable to your decision-making. There are all sorts of free tutorials available on the internet, and it should be fairly easy to find someone who can give you a hand.

If you run into any problems, give me a shout and I might be able to lend a hand.

*The linked database contains a wealth of information in an easy-to-use form. For the species listed you can retrieve domestic landings data – weight and value - by species, by (consecutive) years and by location (see below). The data is available as a table or ASCII file (PC or UNIX). As alluded to above, you might have to go thru an extra step or two to determine how specific fisheries are listed in the database (i.e. it’s “flounder, summer,” not “summer flounder” or “fluke”), and you can also retrieve either “ALL SPECIES COMBINED” or “ALL SPECIES INDIVIDUALLY” for each state, region, ocean or nationally.

Full story courtesy of Nils Stopes.

Friday 20 April 2018

Smart moves in Newlyn on #FishyFriday

The Tracey Clare is all set for a bottom scrub as the tide drops away this morning...

not quite a full set of white feathers just yet for one of the local cygnets...

many of the GRP boats over the years have been based on Cygnus hulls, not so the Nazerene...

inside the market the sale is underway...

and with floor space restricted the graders have taken to stacking boxes seven high...

so classic Cornsih fish like this red mullet...

scallops...

hake...

and black bream all look stunning on this #FishyFriday market...

which showcased the very best inshore boats' fish this morning like these cuttles form the trawler Spirited Lady...

and line caught pollack from the Storm petrel...

big John Dory...

and huge whiting...

and haddock...

even with the boxes stacked high..

floor space is at a premium with so many species on sale...

but that doesn't deter an experienced auctioneer...

like Ian from keeping the buyers busy bidding...

on their toes...

with some even looking for divine inspiration it seems...

with the new market interior now a bright and shining example of pristine plastic cladding market manager Lionel is suited and booted when talking to staff from the MMO in the white work-wear...

which has prompted a flurry of new workwear for some of the buyers and draggers...

some some of them are looking smarter than ever decked out in, "the most comfortable boots I've ever owned" said young Mr Smart sporting his Guy Cotton Thermo boots from Comfish Marine...

smart fish bought by Smarts in smart boots...

other brands like these Dunlop Thermo boots also come in yellow are available ......

Tracey Clare, waiting with the legs in place for the tide to fall...

stern view of the visiting twin-rigger, Diligent Jo...

as the sun comes up Cap'n Cod sallies forth on his electric trike sporting his yellow-welly crocs - he's the only fisherman in Newlyn who doesn't need Dunlop Prurofort Therma boots in the winter - though he says he could do with a good pair of insulated work-gloves though!..