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.
Wednesday 14 April 2021
Ray Hilborn’s thoughts on Seaspiracy
Tuesday 13 April 2021
Fisheries and Seafood Scheme Funding.
The Fisheries and Seafood Scheme will provide financial support for projects in England that secure sustainable growth across the catching, processing and aquaculture sectors, and that protect and enhance the marine environment.
Aims of the Fisheries and Seafood Scheme The Fisheries and Seafood Scheme will provide financial assistance for projects that support sustainable growth in the catching, processing and aquaculture sectors, and enhance the marine environment. The scheme is available to applicants whose businesses and/or vessels are registered in England.
The scheme will provide funding for a range of projects that deliver the following seven strategic priorities:
- promoting a sustainable sector for future generations
- protecting the marine environment, by reducing the environmental impacts of the sector
- delivering world class science and innovation
- supporting coastal communities to promote economic growth and social inclusion supporting the reform of stock and quota management to ensure a balance between fishing opportunities and capacity
- enhancing the value chain through marketing and processing, opening the potential for English businesses home and abroad
- developing industry infrastructure which is essential to supporting sustainable growth across the whole sector.
Who can apply for funding? To be eligible for this scheme you must be one of the following:
- An individual or business engaged within commercial/recreational sea fishing, aquaculture or processing
- A public body/local authority in a local community that has a focus on fishing/aquaculture activities (including trust ports and local authority ports, and public bodies, using funds for environmental improvements/management of fisheries)
- A university or research institute
- A new entrant to the industry or unemployed individual that could benefit from knowledge/skills in fishing/aquaculture activities.
If you are a business, you will need to declare whether you fall into the category of micro-entities, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) or larger enterprises.
Who cannot apply for funding? You cannot apply for and receive funding if you have:
been convicted of fraud under any other fisheries scheme; been convicted of an offence that the MMO considers to be a ‘serious infringement ’ or fraud, in the 12 months before applying. Please read the Guidance on Inadmissibility and fraud here.
What activities the Fisheries and Seafood Scheme can support You must review the relevant guidance note for the project you are seeking funding for. These set out what you can and cannot apply for. The guidance notes cover:
Sunday 11 April 2021
Newlyn Harbour Advisory Board meeting - Thursday, April 15th at 13:30.
The next meeting of the Advisory Board will start at 1:30pm this coming Thursday.
Because of Covid the meeting will take place via Teams online.
Interested members of the public are welcome to join the public element of the meeting to voice their questions and show interest. Please be mindful that there is a busy agenda and board member have a limited amount of time to get through the day's business.
Meeting details:
Thu 15 Apr 2021 1:30pm – 4pm
Click here to Join theTeams meeting
Or join with Google Meet meet.google.com/btd-hyjd-tya
Meeting Agenda:
Troubled Waters in the past.
Multi-milion pound budgets don't always come with the facts needed to make a case for responsible fishing.
Friday 9 April 2021
Satellite technology to transform Scottish seafood.
Space Intelligence partners with Fisheries Innovation Scotland to explore how satellite technology can transform Scottish seafood
Fisheries Innovation Scotland announces a groundbreaking collaboration between space and sea, as it commissions tech company Space Intelligence to conduct ‘blue sky’ research into the potential for satellite technology to transform Scottish seafood. FIS, which brings together seafood experts, scientists and the Scottish Government to champion practical innovation in fishing, have recently commissioned a number of innovative projects - from the digitalisation of vessels, to quantifying the fleet’s carbon footprint - to bolster the sustainability and prosperity of the sector.
This latest project will see Space Intelligence conduct a pioneering review of the role that satellite technology could play in supporting Scottish fisheries - the first time a satellite technology company has supported the Scottish fishing sector in this way. Space Intelligence are specialists in Earth observation and transforming satellite data into ‘actionable information’, with a focus on supporting nature-based solutions to climate change - for example, by providing maps of changing carbon sinks and restoration opportunities.
As a company predominantly focused on forest conservation and land-based carbon stores, working in the marine sector will be a new venture for Space Intelligence too. CEO & Co-Founder Murray Collins PhD said,
“Technology obviously has a role to play in supporting the fisheries sector, as the sector looks to become more profitable, more sustainable and is improving people’s livelihoods. At the moment, there is a gap between what satellite technology currently does, and what the possibilities are. We will conduct blue-sky research, by reviewing what tech is out there and what could conceivably be developed to support the sector.”
FIS’ Executive Director, Kara Brydson described the unlikely partnership as signalling the “innovative, forward-thinking nature of a traditional sector often condemned as old fashioned ”. With Scotland being a global leader in seafood production, as well as a rising star in space exploration and satellite technology, the country is well positioned to foster novel collaborations between the two. Space Intelligence’s CEO, Murray Collins, explained that there are numerous ways in which satellites can drive transformational change in the fishing industry - from cutting edge ‘agile space’, whereby satellites are launched to perform bespoke research for specific challenges; to communication satellites that can track vessels, and land-mapping, which has so far mapped coral in tropical waters, but with potential applications to Scottish waters.
“The key,” Murray explains, “is that our research is driven by the challenges faced by the sector - rather than the technology itself. We want to explore the possibilities from systems that already exist, rather than reinvent the wheel.”
The challenge lies in communicating these high-tech, satellite solutions in a way that is useful and accessible to the fishing industry, so that fishermen and policy-makers can understand what these technologies mean in practice. The horizon-scanning conducted by Space Intelligence could then inform FIS’ - and the fisheries sector more generally - potential future work with satellite providers, from monitoring fish stocks to improve fisheries management, to improving safety at sea, and helping scientists understand the effects of climate change on the ocean.
Kara Brydson commented that “this project is the first of its kind. The Scottish seafood industry is modern and forward-looking and we’re excited to learn from Scotland’s satellite data analysts to support our future fisheries.”
The project will complete at the end of May 2021.
Thursday 8 April 2021
SEASPIRACY – FACT OR FANTASY?
I don’t think I’ve ever been asked so much what I thought about a documentary than I have with Seaspiracy. It’s fair to say that this type of film, including all the gory archive footage, makes for gripping viewing. Although the subject matter is hard to watch, it’s eye opening to those who haven’t spent time working on ocean issues. But that’s exactly why it needed to get the narrative and facts right.
Instead, the filmmaker puts forward simplistic and sensationalist claims from start to finish. Seaspiracy ignores the real complexity of almost every issue presented, draws spurious links between things and has questionable research and research ethics. At times, it presents a picture of a heroic ‘white saviour’ in a cast of ruthless, murderous fishers, corrupt governments and NGOs, and evil Chinese vessels with enslaved crew working hard to deplete the oceans as rapidly as possible, taking food out of the mouths of poor Africans.
It covers a lots of issues that really warrant a 90-minute film each but are instead blurred together at 100 miles an hour in an incoherent way. It includes dolphin killing in Tiaji, Japan; dolphin bycatching in Europe; the impacts of plastic pollution on our ocean; the finning of 100 million sharks a year; labour abuses from Ghana to Liberia, Thailand and the UK. The hard reality is all the things covered are happening.
I wasn’t surprised it would highlight the worst cases, the most shocking footage and worst practises going on. After all, it is a film that wants to highlight problems. That being said, it is riddled with inaccuracies with just nuggets of truth. Understandably, fishers, industry bodies and experts in the field feel misrepresented, attacked and portrayed as an evil industry.
The first and most important fallacy the film propagates is that there is no such thing as a sustainable fishery. This is wrong, sustainable fisheries are common. Well-managed fisheries can be sustainable economically, environmentally and socially and there are hundreds of sustainably managed fisheries around the world. From small-scale fisheries in Madagascar, to sustainable shellfish fisheries in the UK, to India, Australia, Senegal and the USA. Fish are a renewable resource, and the claims made in the film that we will ‘run out’ of fish by 2048 have been firmly rejected.
A key point raised by an interviewee in the film is about the industrialisation of fisheries and the impact this has had on fish stocks and the marine ecosystem. This I agree with, but the film fails to talk about scale and why it matters for the fishing capacity and effort, because all fishing is not the same. It ranges from super high-tech £10 million factory freezer trawlers over 300 feet long fishing the mid-Atlantic, to tiny dugout canoes a few feet from shore feeding coastal people who rely on fish to survive. In terms of the impact on stocks and marine habitats, jobs and supply chain jobs dependent on the fishery and the sustainable livelihoods it can generate – scale matters a great deal. The issues are hugely diverse in terms of vessel sizes, fishing capacity, the gears and species involved as well as the social, environmental, and economic drivers.
For me, these are the biggest weaknesses in the film – it doesn’t talk about scale, about why fish can be part of a healthy diet and how heavily dependent coastal people around the world are on seafood. According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), an estimated 59.5 million people were engaged in fisheries on a full-time, part-time or occasional basis in 2018, while 800 million people’s livelihoods were dependent on fisheries and aquaculture. The International Labour Organisation estimates that 15 million people work full-time on fishing vessels.
We are certainly having a major impact on the oceans through our consumption, global fish production reached 179 million tonnes in 2018 according to the FAO, with a first sale of US$401 billion. But the solution is not to stop eating fish and sustainable fishing is indeed possible.
As the UK charts a new course as an independent coastal state, we can ‘take back control’ of fishing to ensure it is done sustainably and fairly, setting a gold standard for labour in fishing. We can reduce the impact of fishing on the marine environment by defining, rewarding and incentivising low impact fishing, while respecting the rights of fishers and fishing communities.
The UK fishing industry was severely let down by the government, and needs support. We can move away from the industrial paradigm and fishing for commodity markets while keeping prices low through exploitation of people and planet, and instead try to create good jobs for the future of the industry. Management and enforcement of the law, making fishing safer, investing in the industry so that it can move away from a race to the bottom is the solution.
You could make this film about industrial farming, logging, energy, or a myriad of other things. Our industrial food system, rampant inequality and biodiversity loss are all massive, interlinked crises resulting from a broken economic system. The documentary assumes consumers choices are leading to unsustainable use of resource, when in fact the biggest driver is greed, profit and competition. Raising awareness for people who don’t know anything about the impacts of their own consumption is a good thing. But this needs to be done with accurate evidence, gathered ethically, and presented as much as possible from the points of view of those affected by the issues.
07 APRIL 2021
Monday 5 April 2021
Surveying the scene.
Local hydrographic survey company Ultrabeam were hard at work in the harbour today taking advantage of less than normal vessel movements...
with their latest survey vessel...
making her way around the inner harbour close to the Canner's Slip...
seen from three sides..
the multi-wheeled vehicle is able to traverse both land and water by virtue of its eight drive wheels...
there are some interesting developments underway in the harbour at the moment - if eating fish is your thing then this one is going to be something quite special - watch this space for more news on Argoe!!!...
meanwhile, despite the icy wind blowing through the harbour and freezing fingers the delicate art of sign-writing is in progress on the good ship Cormorant...
tools of the sign-writer's trade.