Feeling the fine forecast for FishyFriday.

One small step for Jeremy...

Friday's market was busy enough with a big shot of fish including bass...

 from the UK flagged, Spanish built, ex-Thinganes now Njord Venture that sailed from Plymouth a week ago...

ray...

of all species were landed...

along with squid...

and conger...

the inshore guys managed a few boxes of mackerel...

and the sardine boats were kept busy overnight...

and this morning...

with the Serene Dawn filling every available space on board...

before brailing her fish ashore...

and here's how it's done, like clockwork...

in the early hours...

the beam trawler Trevessa IV also landed a trip of cuttles...

more harbour boxes speeding their way to a local merchant...

waiting to throw the bow rope ashore...

the St Georges moves in to the ice berth...

under the watchful eyes of the local gull population...

and a young, solitary seal, new visitor to the harbour.

 

Mid-week and where's the fish?

Always a tense time when your boat leaves its natural habitat and becomes grounded, Jeremy keeping an eye on things as the tide drops...

two to go please...

its a cracking morning in Newlyn...

the grader is looking spotless...

there's a Wincat on passage...

and a handful of punts...

are taking advantage of a lull in the wind...

to dip their lines...

as ever, Tom is keeping an eye...

on all four points of the compass...

as it's that time of the year again, just the cheese sandwich missing...

 Newlyn Gallery keeping it real...

just some of the boats heading out this morning.

How Breton fishermen set out to rescue their emblematic crawfishery.

As if to mirror the French - fifty years ago crawfish were all but wiped out in the waters off Cornwall. Since then, they have not been targeted at all and in the last few years crawfish have seemingly made a comeback. But, have we learnt anything from the past?

 

Crawfish are one of the most emblematic species of Brittany and yet it is also one of the least known. Before WWII, crawfish (known as red lobster in Brittany) lived, as in Cornwall, in abundance along their coasts. For years, it supported hundreds of families of fishermen, wholesalers and fishmongers. 

And then, as is often the case, the man's eyes were bigger than his stomach. From the pot he went to the net, much more effective! Fishing effort has increased…and the tonnages landed have soared. 50 years later, the stock was exhausted. 

In the last ten years fishermen and scientists have joined forces to save the crawfish, an emblematic crustacean of the Iroise Sea, the species finally seems to be returning to the Breton coasts. The result of management measures taken by the fishermen themselves: increasing the minimum size of the catch, prohibiting the fishing of females carrying eggs, closing fishing during the first three months of the year and, above all, establishing a cantonment area right in the middle of the Armen causeway, which has now become an open-air laboratory. 

The initiative is the work of Guillaume Normand, president of the local fisheries committee in Audierne, who was the first to ring the alarm bell about a species threatened with extinction by almost a century of overfishing. Nearly 850 tonnes of crawfish (caught in pots) were landed at Audierne in 1950, compared to only 15 tonnes in 2010. 

The collapse of the stock was due to three main factors: the quantity of traps placed per boat increased, the size of the boats also increased, and thirdly, the laying of nets in areas that were previously reserved for lobsters has completely destroyed the stock. Martial, a passionate historian, and Yvon, a former lobster fisherman, met to discuss this issue. Yvon explained that the lobster does not move at night, and that Martial, who did not have a watch and measured the sun with his fingers, must not have had this information. Martial knows that the locker is a fishing technique of the future for a profession that must reinvent itself while avoiding repeating the same mistakes of the past.

Monday morning and there's a mermaid in Newlyn.

The Mermaid is waiting for the tide to drop...

despite the weather there was plenty of net fish on the market this morning with hake...

pollack...

and dogs...

top quality inshore red gurnard...

and monk...

with more to follow tomorrow...

the Silver Dawn also put ashore some cracking tub gurnard...

while the inshore trawler Millennia found a few good ray...

and plaice...

the port's big boat landed a full trip that included lemons...

monk and other quality flats...

while a few hardy inshore boats came back with the best fish like these bass...

eight-leggers

and grey mullet...

the sardine boat Lyonesse doing its community service...

along with some inshore jigged squid all designed to keep those top end restauranteurs happy...

this morning's big fish prize went to the sardine boat Serene Dawn...

after landing this 130kg blue fin...

part of the Enterprise's trip was made up with a few tins of cuttles...

we know who bought it but which fish is it?..

keeping a beady eye...

gone are the days of red anti-fouling it seems...

the big tides are the reason most of these guys are still in port...

on a fine looking morning...

it takes two to tango and fill the Enterprise thirsty tanks...

all set of another week on the crab.