I Had a call from a student at Plymouth university, I was asked a series of questions on seals around the UK.
To my suprise I knew or was getting close to some of the statistics that she was putting to me, what is the size of the population? and the percentage of each breed of seal, common or grey made up around our coast?. Then she asked if I thought that the size of the population, which has increased by nearly 100,000 in the last 20years was a problem.

This is a tough question to be asked and I know is a very emotive issue,but in our method of fishing we do not loose fish to the seals, but there are many fisherman who use static nets that have huge losses of fish to the seals, and i am sure they would like to see something done about the problems they face.



One cheeky chap looking for a meal.




But i have to admit that in recent years we are seeing the seals further offshore and more regularly so they must be more plentiful.
The fishing for us has improved in recent years but we may target species that the seals do not, but how big should the population get and if its to large and is competing alongside man how many is too many?

So she asked me my opinion, my answer was that it had to be scientificaly led and if something had to be done, it has to be done humanely.









So I wish her well with her survey, she sure has picked a tough topic to raise, but good on her for raising with it, and for aproaching it with a balanced veiw and asking the right people of their veiws.

So enough of the polotics for know and back to the fishing, the boat landed this evening with a really big trip for 6days fishing, they ran out of boxes this time, but still had a bit of ice left  thankfully. There was a good run of whittens amongst the catch as well as some monks, lemons, cuttles, haddocks and even 20boxes of squid.





Plenty of fine evenings unusual for january.





The boat has been on the go for 10days now so we are stopping tomorrow to do a few repairs and hopefully we will sail early saturday. so lets hope the fishing keeps up and the weather for know.

The boat sailed on the monday 3rd of january for the first trip of the year, they headed off to the grounds to the south of lands end. The fishing was good, with a good run of monks, whittens, haddocks, and cuttles across the grounds.

With the weather turning poor on the thursday night and the prices remaining high after 3days they headed back into land. The weather was poor on the friday so we stopped in and had a few jobs to do aboard the boat. The weather eased in the early hours of saturday and Alec headed out again to try and grab a few days before the weather made poor again later in the week.



Heading back into Newlyn (picture courtesy of David Linkie)

They started off where they had good fishing the trip before and fell in on good fishing again, the fish were heading off to the south so they carried on working heading south to keep on the fish.

Then on sunday just as they were taking the first bag of the secound haul of the day, Alec said he heard a load of shouting, so he rushed out half especting to see someone injured due to all the noise. But to his suprise he found out what all the shouting was about, A Big Haul Of Bass!.

 








So after a minuet of jumping up and down with euphoria they thought that they'd better haul the other bag to see what was in that one. Sure enough more bass in that bag, so they shot back as quick as they could, to see if they could catch some more.


They got shot again and got on with handling the catch, the weight of bass for that haul was over 800kgs, which is a very good haul indeed. The fish were also a reaaly good run, with one bass weighing over 6kgs.



It's quite unusual for us to see that amount of bass as we use a bottom trawl which is not the way to target bass which usually swim higher in the water, but we do get the odd box or two most trips. We usually see the bass down the stocking just as we haul, we reckon that as we haul our nets we catch the odd one as we pull our nets to the surface.


So after 4hours towing they went to haul again hoping for something simalar, but this time there was only 30-40kgs, so it was back to business as usual and was just a lucky strike but it was very welcome.



They pushed on through til wednesday morning, and with the weather being poor(ssw6-8 moost of the time) the swell was building all the time and with the fishing being so good they actualy ran out of ice, so they headed off in.


They landed there catch onto thursdays market and the prices were still not bad, the bass being a good run fetched a really good price as well, so we were all delighted to get off to a good start for the first week of the year