#FishyFriday in Newlyn.

 

Late Thursday evening saw the Ajax back in town after her refit - looking very spruce indeed!..

Rowse's latest crabber to join the fleet, Francesca...

a juvenile black backed, it will be interesting to see just how many birds there are in the harbour next year after bird-flu ravaged the local gull population...

first light at high water and the fleet is ablaze...

most of this morning's fish came from two beam trawl landings...

along with a good run of mackerel from the smallest boats from around the area that supply Newlyn with handline caught fish...

the top team on the case this morning...

it was fish from the Cornishman...

and St Georges that supplied the bulk of the auction with fish like these Dover sole...

megrim...

lemons...

ray...

cracking tub gurnard...

a pair of greater weavers...

beautiful turbot...

and bass...

anyone would think there wasn't a market out there for monk cheeks and livers, untouched monk heads all going for pot bait...

a fine Mediterranean octopus...

red mullet...

and john Dory topped off the quality end of things...

while this meaty conger...

and cod provide the flavour for some...

the doleful eyed ray...

there was also a good supply of prime brill...

and a few boxes of the chippy's favourite, whiting...

and this beauty, one of the largest plaice ever landed on the market for many years...

down the quay, the working deck of a crabber...

after a month long refit it's time to put all the hake nets back aboard the Ajax...

and after a six months major refit including a new Caterpillar engine skipper Mike is chomping at the bit to get away and get the first haul in...

but before then it's a case of slipping out from inside the Karen N...

under the watchful eye of Stevenson's fleet manger Abby...

it's a tight squeeze when air is in short supply...

but with assistant harbourmaster Roger supervising what can go wrong...

heading back in, the Karen N...

heading back out, the crabber Emma Louise...

time to take ice and fuel for her first post-refit trip....

a timelapse of the early morning action.

Recommendations for advancing the Joint Fisheries Statement

Associate, Dr Bryce Stewart (York) contributed to this list of 8 recommendations for improving the draft Joint Fisheries Statement, which has been developed by the four UK administrations. The final JFS is expected in November 2022.

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