A helping hand

Sometime last year I saw an ad in on one of the fishing trade sites asking for skippers of under 10mt inshore fishing boats to take part in a survey for CEFAS (Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science - doesn't exactly trip of the tongue does it !! hence CEFAS) the best part of the survey is that a fee is paid - as they say every little helps ! It mainly involves listing where the boat was fishing what they caught etc  the returns are submitted to CEFAS and then paid a fixed sum per submission.  Occasionally members of the CEFAS staff like to come out on the boat with the fisherman. Below is Sam & her colleague Gary.

The fish is a common Ray, not allowed to land this species, it was alive so went back to swim free !

Now, own up, who out there when watching nature programmes featuring seals immediately goes "aaahhhh cute" ? yes me too, however the following picture shows the utter devastation they cause.

These are (were) monkfish, the seals get into the fishing nets and eat the monkfish tails leaving the unsaleable heads, as you can see there are 6 monks the tails of which can fetch up to £10/kg each and each tail is about 3kg - you can do the maths it makes one heck of a dent in the accounts! Once fed the seals swim off to rest before finding another net to feed on.

From SimonPW3 skipper of fishing boat Sparkling Line - another Cornish fishing boat via Twitter

"1trip alone we have lost 600 monkfish to seals” ouch, that's about £15k worth"

I usually get text messages when the boat is landing back in port to let me know all is safe, usually the text are just "landed" etc but sometimes it's "I've been Gweek'ed" which means the seals have won and the Gweek reference to the Seal Sanctuary at the nearby village of Gweek.


This weeks fishing has mainly been mackerel. Can you name the one that's not mackerel?

and do you know what is unusual about it? - answers at the bottom !

Typically the best mackerels were caught on Friday and there is no market now till Tuesday because of the Bank Holiday weekend - our friend Eric had a couple but mainly they will be used for baiting the lobster pots - there hasn't been much success in that line either so far - the sea is still far too cold - where the heck is this global warming when you need it ? !

This was a nice bonus it is a Brill also known as Poor Man's Turbot - very nice, I like this fish, and readers may like to be reassured that the hat and sweatshirt are now in the washing machine !

In case you were thinking that Skipper had gone all techy and managed to set the timer on the camera Jim a.k.a. Dolphin Man and Free Labour was on board on as well and he took the photo.


Back to that fish - it is a Garfish and what's unusual about it is that it has green bones - yes honestly GREEN ! not one that I'd eat.

"no more fish thanks I'm full"

Bye for now from me and the seals !