Storm ground sea swell in Newlyn.

Moving boats made all the more difficult as a heavy ground swell flows past the harbour lighthouse. After a refit lasting six months the Trevessa IV is ready to take ice and fuel for her maiden voyage with a new 900hp cCaterpillar main engine.

Seafarers' Charity safety film for fishing vessels.

 

The Seafarers’ Charity has funded a new information film to help fishers meet new MCA inspection standards.

In partnership with the National Federation of Fishermen's Organisations (NFFO) and supported by the Fishing Industry Safety Group (FISG) the film is aimed at helping all owners to prepare for their MCA inspection following changes to the regulations for fishing vessels under 15 metres.

The Seafarers’ Charity aims to make working at sea safer for all and ensuring fishers can work and return home safely from voyages without experiencing harm or an accident is a big part of that.

The Seafarers’ Charity has supported the production of the film which highlights the changes to the MCA’s inspections of under 15-metre vessels. It will help owners to get their vessels ready for survey as well as signposting resources to help prepare for a successful inspection.

Charles Blyth, Risk, Safety & Training Lead at the NFFO identified that many fishers were not aware of the changes to the MCA’s inspection regime and were therefore finding themselves tied up and prevented from fishing for longer periods because they did not meet the new requirements. Charles approached The Seafarers’ Charity with his idea for a short film to help share information on preparing for the new inspection requirements. As a previous Marine Surveyor with the MCA, Charles is well placed to help fishing vessel owners and the wider industry maintain high safety standards for their crews and their vessels.

'Recently, the under 15 metre fleet has seen some significant changes to the MCA inspection requirements including new stability tests and an out of water inspection, with some vessels struggling to meet all the requirements and therefore being tied up and unable to fish. We have made this information film to support all owners of under 15-metre vessels.' 

Charles Blyth, Risk, Safety & Training Lead at the NFFO

#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.