Determined to make the most of the last few days of the sardine season, young Danny Downing is about to shoot his net away from the stern...
in port, Revival, in to land after a week on the prawns west of the Scillys...
its takes a big boat to bend 1" thick steel as badly as this...
and here she is, minus her damaged derricks...
Friday morning and the harbour sees most of the fleet back in port, including the Ocean Pride landing at the market, though there are a few netters still plugging away despite the near gale of SE wind blasting the Western Approaches...
there's plenty of fish in the auction to give some great footage for two keen MA Photojouralism students from UAL
their story centres around Seafish pushing the under-utilised species narrative - fish like dogfish where, in reality, the boats are restricted to a maximum size limit (100cm overall) and for the most part desperately want to avoid catching any as the damage done to the gear outweighs the return on the catch - especially as the larger fish they are not allowed to land make around £2.50-3.00 and the smaller fish, which they can land, make 90p - seems to make no sense, worse still, the boats are no longer collecting catch data after over ten years of doing so - skippers are wondering how Defra are going to make informed decisions in the future with much less data than they had in the past - after years of the boats being forced to dump every dog they caught, a small 1 ton per month quota was introduced a few years ago, that has now been increased to 20......
meanwhile, the ban on pollack for boats that targeted the fish continues - at the same time, those of the fleet in the CFPO are able to land a 300kg by-catch, those not, 100kg - not much of this makes sense to the guys......
meanwhile the netters, like the Ygraine, are filling their boots with quality hake, even more so now a few can no longer target pollack, which in turn means they have turned to target hake, this could be a case of history repeating itself - time will tell...
in the meantime, boats like the Ajax continue to fish on...
landing some cracking tubs too...
along with the Stelissa...
and Annie May
and adding to the colour this morning, these spotty plaice...
lovely lemons...
and meaty monk...
spider crab seem to be making their presence felt even at this time of year, a good sign for the forthcoming season...
undulate ray posses such striking patterns on their backs, and taste good too...
fruit-de-la-mer...
good to see the odd big ling still being landed...
name the fish - fresh blood = fresh fish...
and stacks of mackerel for the handful of punts that made it out...
time for the Ocean Pride...
to head back to tier...
for a weekend off...
the odd cuttle is still to be had...
no idea why these two are all smiles...
but it could have something to do with this being...
the last day they will be feeding the box-washer, a job that can take the best part of half a day after a busy market...
where the number of boxes covers the entire area...
dull enough start to the day...
the film guys, Charlie and David are now safely aboard young Tom McClure's Guardian and about to get a view of the current fishing climate and challenges skippers like Tom face...
witnessing a small but notable piece of history this morning, the lorry is at the end of the quay, ready and waiting to take fish away from the Crystal Sea, the first time the boat or its predecessors have landed in Newlyn for many a year, a move sure to put a smile on the local buyers faces as a wide range of top quality fish will be up for auction!
