Whilst fishing 35miles southwest of the scillies last week, Alec and the crew came across a very unusual catch.


They had no idea what this fish was, but they new it must have been a deep water fish, because its eyes were very large and dark, as is the norm for deep water species. It also had very diferent skin from anything we have caught before, as the skin was like a Cactus with little spikes all over it.


So they carried on their trip and put him down on the ice, so we could identify him or her when we got in.






After finishing their trip to the southwest of the scillies they headed back in with a good catch aboard and the creature from the deep.


We landed the catch as usual in the lorry at Newlyn, then we sent our catch  up to Plymouth Trawler agents for sale.


The guys at Plymouth also had no idea what type of fish this was, but luckily they new some of the scientists at the National Marine Aquarium next door to the market, so they took it over to be examined.


The scientists identified the creature as an Oil Fish, these fish usualy swim between 100-800 meters and are mainly caught in the deep waters of the mediteranian sea and the Mid and southern Atlantic ocean.


Their name come from the texture of their flesh, they are edible but the flesh contains an oil which if to much is eaten, the oil acts as a laxitive, which results in the obvious consequences.


There was a spot of bother apparently in Hong Kong not long back, when a quantity of these fish were sold as cod, as the taste is apparently not to different, and there was quite a few complaints, to say the least.

We think it is quite a rare catch for the southwest and maybe the UK we are trying to find out, but it was certainly quite a suprise, and very intresting to find out what it actualy was.











So many thanks to the scientists and the Plymouth marine labs.


We landed another catch this monday after a 6 day trip to the southwest, the fishing was pretty good once again with a good mix for the week. However we have been stuck in port since monday with a hydrolic problem.

We had a job to haul our nets using the net drums last week, we thought it was either a valve or a pump on the way out but we were unsure what it could be.

So we gave John from Fowey fluid power a call and he came down to have a look at our system, it didn't take John long to see it was the pump that was causing the problems, so we striiped the pump down and took the part numbers and orderd the new part from Mac Duff shipyards.


They took the part to the post office for an overnight deliverly, unfortunatly the scanner at Aberdeen airport thought it to be a security risk and it was refused a trip on the airoplane, so it has had to come by road, which has turned out to be a 2 day deliverely.


So we are still in waiting for the part that should have been here tuesday evening, we are hoping that it will arrive tomorrow (thursday) morning, and hopefully we shall sail after we have fitted it.