In Cornwall (Brittany) , the octopus, a diversely appreciated invader

This article is a translation from the French newspaper, Le Télégramme - in France the region of Brittany translates as Cornwall - there are are strong ties between the two, especially with language - undoubtedly, in days gone by, Cornish and Breton fishermen could speak together in their own language and make themselves easily understood.

In the port of Loctudy, since January there have been 130 tonnes of octopus landed (186 tonnes in 2021). (File photo)

"For a year, octopus fishing, which proliferates on the Cornish coast and more particularly at the Glénan level, has intensified to the detriment of crustaceans or fish such as pollack, bass or sea bream. This is not without consequences for the local market. “The direct consequence is the radical change of activity. This does not really concern coastal fishing or langoustine fishing but the small boats that work in the coastal strip of 10-12 nautical miles. They started fishing for octopus permanently. It is extremely lucrative for them and we can understand them. The problem is that the species they were fishing until now, we no longer have them? regrets Emmanuel Garrec, fishmonger in Loctudy whose company Terre de Pêche delivers baskets of fish and shellfish to individuals. 

This concerns both pollack, sea bass, sea bream and flatfish, which are popular with local consumers. He cites the example of the sale at the auction of Concarneau, at the beginning of last week where there were 20 tonnes of goods including 16 tonnes of octopus. “It is revealing! he says. At the Loctudy auction, we have been unloaded since January at 130 tonnes. The total was 186 tonnes in 2021. br>
Here, people don't have the culture of eating octopus at all. We're not going to eat octopus salad three times a week. 

“Much less diversity for our customers”

“The problem is that we have nothing to offer. The few goods, apart from the octopus, are overpriced. We are out of step with other regions such as the Channel, Normandy or Boulogne, which have no octopus problem”, continues the fishmonger. “Here, people don't have the culture of eating octopus at all. It remains an occasional product. It is not a product that can be marketed. For one kilo of octopus tentacles to eat, you need 4 kg of octopus. When you pay it €8, you have to multiply it by four. People wouldn't understand the price,” says Emmanuel Garrec. “Some products are out of stock, such as cakes, spider crabs or lobsters, and this also has an impact on the price of fish. We wait. There is not much to do despite good fishing quotas,” 

An export market to Spain and Portugal

Carmen Desnos, in charge of exports within the fish trading company Furic tide in Guilvinec, seized this market and saw its sales explode. “Since September of last year, we have sold 650 tons of octopus. There is a deposit on the Glénans and, every morning, at the moment, we are at 13 or 14 tonnes landed under the Concarneau auction. There are a good two dozen boats to fish for pot and octopus pot. They learned everything by getting closer to what is done in Morocco or Spain. We, it's the same for purchases, packaging, we learned as we went along”, she describes “It goes mainly to Spain, Portugal. These are large factories that process the octopus to offer it vacuum-packed or frozen. The best way to tenderise it is freezing,” she adds. This proliferation of octopus on the Glénan site will again have an impact. “This year again, there will be no scallops. There is also a lack of fish because they do not put nets or lines,” admits Carmen Desnos."

Full story here.

Another Life: Will robots do better at counting the ‘prawns’?

 

Image courtesy of The Fish Site.

Michael Viney: Modern surveys of the small lobsters known as Dublin Bay prawns rely on underwater surveillance by video cameras

The Dublin Bay prawn is one of Europe’s key Atlantic and Mediterranean fisheries with landings of almost 60,000 tonnes, worth some €300 million a year

When the second World War finally ended, we could get to the sea again. Landmines were dug out carefully from the pebbles of Brighton’s beaches and the anti-tank spikes of girders hauled away. At our end of town, where the white cliffs began, the last barbed wire was unwound from access to the shore.

I was 12 years old and keen to fish for the prawns the family talked about. With hand nets baited with bits of crab, I waded the chalky pools below the cliffs. After years left in peace the prawns were abundant, some as long as your finger. Their spiky snouts could prick your finger, too.

All this to show that I know what prawns are and that Dublin Bay prawns are not in that family at all but skinny, brightly orange and rather elegant little lobsters, 18-20cm long. Linnaeus knew them first from Norway, hence Nephrops norvegicus or Norwegian lobster, nephrops being the kidney shape of their eyes.

The Dublin Bay label comes from their bycatch by fishermen who brought them ashore for private sale in the city. This was before the Irish Sea cod stocks collapsed and nephrops, with fewer fish predators, were left to become a mainstay of the nation’s trawler industry. The catch from muddy seabeds round the island is now worth some €60 million, or more than that from all whitefish combined.



The little lobster is, indeed, one of Europe’s key Atlantic and Mediterranean fisheries with landings of almost 60,000 tonnes, worth some €300 million a year. There are, inevitably, signs of decline, hastened by threats from climate change and plastic pollution.

The most urgent threat, from overfishing, has brought even greater need to know how many nephrops there are. Some 30 European scientists, including a couple from Ireland’s Marine Institute, have just produced a remarkable paper for the journal Frontiers in Marine Science that explores assessment of nephrops stocks, with new monitoring technologies. These include mobile seabed robots, telemetry, environmental DNA and artificial intelligence.

Learn more

Dublin Bay prawns live in individual burrows, some almost as complex as badger setts. In shallower depths at sunset they emerge to hunt shrimps and molluscs and seabed worms.

Since their holes in the muddy seabed are perfectly visible and nephrops will vigorously defend its home, traditional counting of holes had assumed that one burrow equalled one lobster. Occasional occupants perched at the entrance — “doorkeepers” as surveyors called them — encouraged that view.

Traditional estimates of nephrops numbers were often based on the catch in trawler hauls. But modern figures derive from hours of footage of the holes from underwater, sled-borne televisions, widely employed by the Maríne Institiute and other agencies.

These can suggest phenomenal populations. At the big nephrops ground on the Porcupine Bank, off Ireland’s southwest, a 2019 survey at 57 television sites estimated 1,010 million burrows across some 7,100 square kilometres. That was nearly 10 per cent fewer than in 2018, with trawl marks at many of the stations.

This left the problem of knowing how many burrows had hidden occupants. MI scientists Jennifer Doyle and Colm Lordan joined colleagues from Italy and New Zealand in a first mass observation of nephrops at times of maximum emergence. These can vary between day and night and important sunsets and dawns, according to the light at different depths of seabed.

Using MI research vessels, the team made 3,055 video transects at nephrops grounds around Ireland. These averaged only one visible animal per 10 tunnel systems.

But this may not fit all nephrops fisheries and the research team was expanded to 30 to study “new autonomous robotic technologies” for monitoring these valuable but vulnerable stocks.

Among many explorations of nephrops comings and goings, captured animals have been fitted with acoustic tags, hydrophones tracking their travels. The team propose fixed and mobile robots to count and track everything.

The review of possibilities is wide-ranging. But even far more accurate estimates of stocks seem unlikely to change the new and common practice of pair-trawling to scoop up the catch.

A less damaging way of fishing is with baited pots, a traditional mode still used in Strangford Lough and some lochs in western Scotland.

In 2007, when Northern Ireland trawlers were stopped from fishing out the last Irish Sea cod, a group of skippers, with EU encouragement, tried catching nephrops off the Co Down coast, setting 240 pots at a time.

They caught larger animals fetching higher restaurant prices, but the catches were poor. They decided that only the wider spread of 1,000 pots would be economic, and this could lead to too many rows between skippers as to whose pots were whose.

Full story courtesy of Michael Viney writing in the Irish Times.

Fishing Crews Today and Tomorrow - join in the debate live!

 

This APPG event will be hosted online via Zoom, and in-person at 1 Parliament Street, London. Wednesday, October 26, 2022 10:00 AM 11:30 AM

Labour availability for UK fishing crews is facing challenges, in the form of an ageing workforce, low recruitment, and sometimes limited potential for career progression. Efforts to address this problem include through improving education and exposure, building in opportunities for career development, and encouraging less traditional demographics. There are projects underway and opportunities to explore to build a more diverse and resilient workforce, and improve welfare, recruitment, and job security.

This event will discuss current and possible future workforce demographics in the fishing industry. We will hear from a range of speakers exploring recruitment, education, and transferable skills in the industry. Presentations will be followed by opportunities to ask questions and engage with speakers.

Please note that in-person places are very limited. Please only sign up for an in-person ticket if you can definitely attend.

Sign up to the event here.

In Lorient, the Drakkar, a new hunter for octopus hunting

The crew of the Drakkar, bought from an owner in Belle-Ile and still registered in the maritime district of Auray. On the left the boss Nicolas Coguen, Ilan Le Bouille, Maxime Valer and Corentin Didier,

The Drakkar is Nicolas Coguen's third boat. With his friend Tony Samséou, owner of the Capricious, he has just bought, in Lorient, this trap, to fish exclusively for octopus.

And three! After the Ikaria, the Ikaria 2, here is Le Drakkar, Nicolas Coguen's third boat. He has just bought it from a fisherman from Belle-Ile, with his friend Tony Samséou, owner of the Lorient gillnetter La Capricieuse. “We put in €200,000 each and I am the manager,” explains Nicolas Coguen. The potter will be armed for the same species as the Capricious: the octopus. An almost miraculous catch.

The guys are making a fortune right now, with octopus. They've been everywhere for a year. “Guys are making a fortune right now with octopus. They've been everywhere for a year. Last weekend, La Capricieuse landed 2.4 tonnes of octopus. Antony stopped doing conger eel in September 2021, to fish exclusively for octopus. Around Les Glénans, there are around fifteen boats, sometimes one on top of the other, from Concarneau or Lorient. At the moment, it is sold at auction between 6 and 8 € per kg. This winter, it was €10. And since they eat everything around, lobsters, shells, clams, obviously everyone goes there”.

At sea on Wednesday

Nicolas transforms the Drakkar into a potter. “Everything is removable. We can go back to the net, when we want. I have all the licenses, net, line, trap. I even have a small quota of sole. We'll see…” For the moment, from Wednesday, he will track down the cephalopod around Groix for daytime tides: 4am, return to quay at 4pm.

A new start for the Lorient boss, who could have baptized his new boat Resilience. Repeated health problems turned his life into hell. A dirty bacterium, a golden staphylococcus, contracted during an operation for phlebitis of the arm, at the Salpêtrière hospital in 2009. Months of suffering, therapeutic wandering, five successive operations, a cocktail of 18 antibiotics to swallow for three months, eventually come to terms with the episode. The Ikaria 2 will be its resurrection in 2011. The story could have ended there and life could have started again.

An unfailing mind

This was the case for a while. But in 2020, Nicolas had to undergo a new therapeutic wandering, for an inguinal hernia which, once again, made him suffer enormously. The diagnosis (late) made, an operation, benign, is scheduled for August 2020. “I decided to sell my boat at that time. I was in too much pain,” he recalls. And history repeats itself. Intense pain for weeks, misunderstood by the medical profession, before the pain centre of the Mutualist Clinic found the reason. And the remedy. A nerve was severed during the operation. A long and painful treatment will eventually eradicate the pain. “When I saw that I was getting better, I decided to go back to sea and buy the Drakkar with Antony”.

Nicolas tells all this while having fun. "I have a foolproof mind, he argues in front of the round eyes of his interlocutor, in front of this relentlessness to find the sea. I understood that feeling sorry for my fate would not make me move forward".

MCA propose a British Seamen's card for British fishermen.

 A consultation is underway on plans by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) to extend the use of the British Seaman’s Card (BSC) to fishermen.

The BSC proves the holder is a seafarer, meaning they can have shore leave, and access medical care ashore. It also assists with transit. Under current UK regulations, fishers are not eligible for BSCs.

The MCA says the importance of the card became more apparent during the Covid-19 pandemic, when some countries had restrictions that were not applicable to key workers, but UK fishermen found themselves unable to prove their key worker status.

The BSC is issued in conformity with ILO Convention No. 108 on seaman’s identity documents. The MCA is working towards implementation of ILO Convention No. 185, which provides for an updated and improved seafarer identity document, but that is a longer and more complex project requiring a new digital system and Home Office policy agreement.

Extending BSC eligibility is an interim measure to solve the immediate problem.

Katy Ware, director of UK Maritime Services, said: “We have said all along that seafarers are key workers, and this interim measure to help fishers who need this card and all its benefits is the right thing to do.”

The consultation can be accessed here and responses can be made until 28 November.

We are consulting on the proposal to amend the merchant shipping (seamen’s documents) regulations 1987 so that work on a fishing vessel makes the applicant eligible for issue of a British Seamen’s Card. The purpose of this measure is to secure the right of fishers, as bona fide seafarers, to free transit of third countries to join and leave ships and for the shore leave required for their well-being.

The British Seamen’s Card is widely accepted internationally as a seafarer identity document.

The amended regulations would apply to eligible British fishermen.

Please see the attached documents:

• consultation document 
• consultation de minimis assessment (DMA) 
• response form 

Responses are welcomed from 10 October 2022 until 28 November 2022 and emailed to workinfishing.convention@mcga.gov.uk

So you want to be an apprentice fisherman?

Great news for the industry at a time when it is getting some excellent exposure n TV in the form of Trawlermen: Hunting the Catch!

What strikes me though is this, looking at the job description and what is expected of a fisherman - how on earth was and is it classed as unskilled job?!! 

Read on!

 

This occupation is found in individually owned boats with small numbers of crew, up to company owned boats with large crews. They may operate inshore and offshore and use a range of catching methods. They use mobile and static gear, such as trawling, netting, potting and hand lining. Fishers work as part of a team. They may be at sea from a few hours at a time, up to a week. The type of boat, fishery and fishing method and gear being used will affect this.

Details of standard Occupation summary

Fishing is highly regulated and governed by complex fisheries management.

The broad purpose of the occupation is to sustainably harvest fish and shellfish.

• Fishing methods range from static gears such as shellfish pots through to modern, selective, high-tech trawl equipment. 
• Fishermen often work as part of a team, both onshore and at sea. 
• They are involved in the entire end-to-end process, through to transporting the catch to market to enable it to be sold. 
• They set up the fishing gear and fit it to a boat and watch-keep on a navigational passage to and from fishing grounds. 
• They deploy and retrieve gear. 
• They may use onboard hydraulics and powered machinery. 
• They catch, process, store and land the fish (or shellfish). 
• Fishermen also help look after the sea. 
• They collect data for policy makers. 
• This data informs plans for fishing, catch limits and quotas to ensure stocks remain sustainable.
• Fishermen adapt and improve processes to improve sustainability. 
• They adapt to seasonal changes and vary their approach to catch different types of fish. 
• They also adapt their approach in response to the sea, tides, and weather conditions.
• Fishermen are likely to be involved in maintaining the boat.

They can progress to roles such as: experienced deckhand mate, skipper of the boat, onboard marine engineer, onboard chef/ fisherman on larger boats, fisheries science/ observer, gear technologist, offshore survey and energy worker. There are also opportunities to become self-employed and a boat owner. This is a rewarding occupation. It involves working outdoors and can be physically demanding.

In their daily work, an employee in this occupation interacts with the skipper, boat owners and crew members and fisheries observers. They may include: Enforcement officers, Port and authorities, Scientists and Safety advisors. Onshore, they may have contact with logistics companies, harbour staff and fish market employees.

An employee in this occupation will be responsible for complying with maritime and safety Regulations. They must use personal protective equipment and check that it has been maintained. They are likely to report to a skipper or boat owner. They need to follow instructions and react quickly and positively to feedback. They will work as part of a team, logging details of the catch and reporting them to the skipper or boat owner. This may include the species caught along with estimates of size and weight. This will enable the skipper and boat to comply with regulations and submit live catch data. They will have to solve problems on a daily basis, taking into account changing weather and sea conditions. They will suggest improvements to working practices to increase efficiency, improve safety and ensure sustainability. Extra requirements may be to help new crew members or carry out navigation duties. Any food preparation should be carried out considering basic food hygiene and the cleanliness of the boat should be maintained at all times.

Entry requirements 

Employers will set their own entry requirements depending on boat size, fishery, fishing method and operation. Typically, employers may require the individual to have the correct attitude and ability to take on the typical practical and solve problems onboard a boat. They are likely to seek individuals that have a willingness to work onboard a boat, sometimes in confined spaces for extended periods of time. Individuals are likely to have a sense of adventure and keenness for the outdoors. The employer may require the apprentice to be flexible and able to work a range of shifts across different days and times of the week.

Visit the Institute for Apprenticeships website for a more detailed overview of what will be covered by the apprenticeship here.

In the meantime you can read the full assessment plan below:

Devon and Severn 6 years of wrongful pain and grief finally ended.

After a full day hearing on 3-4 October 2022, HHJ Linford sitting at Plymouth Crown Court made a court order which stayed all criminal proceedings brought by the Devon and Severn Inshore Fishing Conservation Authority (“D&S IFCA”) against 2 innocent men, the skipper (“MM”) and the owner (“Jack Baker”) of a Fishing Vessel “Stella Maris”. 

The effect of the stay is to acquit the men of all 16 charges each, expunge the £22000 each fines and costs orders of Plymouth Magistrates of November 2018 and to wipe the record clean in respect of the wrongful charges of fishing in a Marine Protected Area (MPA) located just outside Plymouth in Bigbury Bay in 2016.

This case involved uncorroborated or exclusively VMS evidence. VMS is the system by which a fishing boat automatically informs the D&S IFCA of its position, heading and speed.

This case mirrors the acquittal in July 2018 by a jury in Gloucester Crown Court of two other fishermen, Derek Meredith and David Bickerstaff, again wrongfully charged by D&S IFCA for fishing offences alleged to have occurred in 2016. That case was described by the D&S IFCA in 2018 as ‘The Test Case” for prosecuting cases on uncorroborated evidence of VMS.

The impact of these cases is to establish a worrying pattern of prosecution by D&S IFCA based on a false premise – that they only require the print outs of VMS before they prosecute and that they do not need eyewitness corroborating evidence of fishing in an MPA.

Jack Baker said: “This is a great relief for me, the skipper and our loved ones. We have all been made unwell physically and mentally by this. I had 2 suspected heart attacks with the stress. We were treated as guilty before we ever interviewed and all on the say so of their chief officer who simply “thought” we were fishing. Once we were charged, we had to then prove our innocence, which in their blinded eyes, we could never do. But I knew this whole thing was nonsense from start to finish, that the Stella Maris had never illegally fished with me as owner and that it was simply unfair to us. I had been one of the first to volunteer to have VMS before it was made compulsory. I believe in sustainable fishing stocks. 

Me and the skipper had greater experience of fishing in these waters than any one in or working with IFCA. We had together been fishing for a combined period of 50 years. Neither of us had any fishing problems let alone fishing convictions before this started. They ignored all that and treated us like criminals before we had even had a chance to speak. They never once told us of any problems but let the VMS unit of our Stella Maris send them information for a whole 4 months after they started the investigation. They carried on with the Magistrates trial even though they knew the skipper had a serious mental health problem and could not attend. 

They have blocked this case from proceeding for a year in the Magistrates claiming that they wanted to see what happened in the Gloucester Test case. They lost that on similar evidence to us and yet they ignored the result. They claimed in our case that they needed their own psychiatrist as they did not accept the word of the psychiatrist who saw the skipper, that he was too unfit to stand a trial but they failed to obey a Crown Court order to get their report done and wasted another year in producing an inadequate report the judge threw out. This was botched from the outset and when they realised they had done wrong they tried to stymie the Court from ever hearing the trial. They threw 4 new experts at the case which meant it would be a 6 day trial hoping we would abandon our case due to lack of money but the judge saw through that as that meant we would never get a court date. This has been 6 years of hell”.

Sarah Ready of NUTFA, who helped get a barrister to represent the pair in the Crown Court appeal said: “Justice has at last been done. The prosecution would usually begin with an eyewitness to actual fishing in an MPA. They never had one here and knew it before interviewing the appellants. VMS might be used to support a vessel entering and remaining and leaving an MPS but it could never be evidence to stand alone or to be corroborated unless there was an eyewitness. There never was one in this case. They have been shown now to have put the cart before the horse on this process and misunderstood completely what is and isn’t capable of being corroboration. 

Having an opinion isn’t corroboration to VMS. Having a log book of leaving port and returning to port cannot be corroboration to VMS. Having the record of the amount of total fish caught cannot be corroboration to VMS. Having the catch record of the type of fish caught would not be corroboration to VMS. The main MPA is within 1 kilometre of the Stoke Bay cliffs from where you can get a bird’s eye view. The D&S IFCA fast patrol vessels were logged for a whole month of alleged MPA fishing in the close vicinity but never went to see if there was any fishing going on. There were many hundreds of crabbing and lobster pots covering the sea bed of the MPA throughout the whole of the 4 months of alleged fishing by demersal trawling of the MPA and yet none of those were lifted by the Stella Maris or complained about. It is the lack of any of this type of direct evidence of actually fishing in an MPA which speaks volumes about the incompetent handling of this prosecution by a rogue elephant of an IFCA.”

She continued: “It is perfectly clear from Defra and the MMO and all other IFCAs that VMS evidence which cannot show to a criminal standard a proposition such as “fishing in an MPA” will be adequate to found a prosecution and it should not be sufficient alone for a properly conducted investigation. There has to be some direct evidence of fishing in the MPA at the times alleged.

She continued: “The judge actually gave the D&S IFCA six compelling reasons why he stopped this case from proceeding and why he made a defendant’s costs order for both the Magistrates Court and the Crown Court for both appellants.

Those 6 reasons were:

The skipper was so mentally unfit that he was unfit to plead and unfit to stand trial. The D&SIFCA offer no apology for choosing to continue to prosecute the skipper despite being in possession of evidence of this mental illness and on notice of such a problem from 2018.

The owner Mr. Baker, who was never on board the Stella Maris in the 4 months of the 2016 allegations, could not receive a fair trial when the skipper was too unfit to give evidence at any trial.

The offences were not ones of strict liability and so the owner Mr. Baker could not be tried fairly in the absence of the skipper when the prosecution had never alleged the owner had any knowledge of the movements of the Stella Maris until he was interviewed in 2017.

The case could not proceed to trial because it would not be heard in 2023 or even 2024. It was now so large, costly and complex a case on appeal with the prosecution introducing an additional 4 experts in the Crown Court (there had been 1 expert in the Magistrates and a half day hearing), that it would be at least a 6 day trial, and offend against the Rules to deal with cases expeditiously and efficiently.

The judge concluded that this was a case which mirrored that of the Gloucester Crown Court case and was based on VMS evidence which could never lead to a criminal conviction and would fail the test of the prosecution establishing a “case to answer”.

The judge said the public interest was to stay the case and not proceed to a 6 day trial when the outcome for both appellants would be no more than an absolute discharge. For the skipper, because there was no need for a medical order and for the owner because he was always less culpable than the skipper on the prosecution case.