Much fish from Thursday to #FishyFriday in Newlyn.

A dull start to the day with 40mph. winds and heavy rain forecast later, so much for Flaming June!..

there's a bevvy of boats having maintenance or MCA work on the hard...

many of the visiting Scottish prawn boats land head-on monk...

along with plenty of haddock...

more monk...

and John Dory...

no telling which kind of boats these ray came from...

good to see the Katy B taking part in the pollack survey...

koi carp like red mullet...

and two types of bream...

a good selection of tagged bass...

and some hard-won mackerel...

the visiting boats keep coming, the BM registered, Elizabeth of Ladram

and scalloper...

Lass O'Doune

prawner Jacqueline Anne will sail on the tide...

a quiet time for the crabbers...

and a short break for the inshore trawl boats...

while it is landing time for the netter, Govenek of Ladram...

interesting set of doors for a local inshore boat...

through to Friday morning and, for the moment, the strong winds and grey skies have moved on...

there were nearly 40 tons of fish landed between the two days...

a few cracking seine-caught cod...

and red mullet from the seiner...

inshore red...

some of the prawners do land monk tails...

perfect plaice...

and scores of boxes of quality haddock...

the weather has kept many of the handline guys tied up so the fridge was well down on supliies of the very finest fish this morning...

with just a few boxes of mackerel...

no great numbers of these guys yet, which will be good news for the inshore lobstermen!...

she's a fine looking crabber...

below the waterline on the Serene Dawn...

and a view across the harbour from below the market.

"My week on board a West African trawler"" by Francisco Blaha

Ex-fisherman and Independent Fisheries Advisor Francisco Blaha has just venture wfar away from home and spent a trip aboard a West African trawler with an African crew. The sentiments evoked in his words about what it is to be a fisherman and why will resonate clearly with any fisherman who reads them.

"A friend and colleague questioned why, at this point in my career, nearly 60 years old and with a family, I would take the risk of boarding a 40-year-old trawler 75 miles out at sea in an open dinghy without a functioning radio and relying solely on my phone's GPS for navigation.

And to be honest, I don’t know why. I guess… Maybe I should think more about what could go wrong—I rarely do.

In any case, this aligns with my personal principles, as most capacity-building programs around compliance only take place in the authorities' offices. I am unaware of any individual who develops systems and provides training to those on the board of fishing boats responsible for compliance. Therefore, we should also be on board fishing boats if we work in offices and upscale hotel meeting rooms. I think that is just fair.

I'm back working in Guinea-Bissau and lucky to be known as a specialist on both sides of the EU compliance requirements: the sanitary certification and the IUU Catch certification. (I wrote a booklet explaining both over ten years ago. Let me know if anyone wants to pay me to update!). On top of that, there aren’t many Portuguese-speaking consultants around!

But then I’m also aware that I’m quite lucky to have been a fisherman before a scientist and then a consultant; hence, nothing on the technical side of what I’m doing is new to me.

Finally, I suppose I'm here because I've never done anything like this before. I have never gone fishing in these parts of the world, let alone on an exclusively African crewed boat. The crew of 27 is a mixture of Mauritanian, Senegalese, and Guinean-Bissauans.

Continue to read the full post from Francisco's blog here:

Mountains of fish this Monday morning in Newlyn!

Won't be long before this classic Dartmouth crabber is back hauling pots...

just in time to give the spider season a miss, young Tom Lambourn making the final landing ahead of his return to skipper the Cornish sardine boat, Lyonesse...

to Jeremy, boss man at We Shell Crab, purveyors of the finest hand-picked crab...

the auction halls were end-to-end with fish this morning most of it coming from the visiting prawn boats who are providing a welcome addition to the weekly landings at this time of year...

though there was plenty of the good stuff courtesy of the first landing by the Twilight under skipper Coutsubus, welcome back Roger!..

especially when you land these beauties...

the inshore boats took advantage of some fine weather over the weekend with line caught bass...

a few Mediterranean octopus...

and mackerel, though most of those were from St Ives Bay...

more high-end fish from the prawn boats...

to keep the restaurant trade happy...

as far as the eye can see...

which must be driving this guy mad as he waits patiently for someone to toss him some expensive morsels...

a handful of inshore trawlers wait for a better forecast......

the Stevenson fleet is looking very tidy these days...

fuel and transport at the ready for visiting boats...

the next ex-Admiral to join the local fleet

to go with Roger's command, all eyes will be on who is the skipper it seems.