We landed on thursday and that was the last trip of the year for us, we have had a busy run up to xmas, so with plenty of jobs to catch up with we called that it early so we can get the  jobs done.



(plenty of snow at sea recently, this is the closest we get to scenes from deadliest catch)


We have had a good year on the whole, the fishing has improved for most fisherman across the country and I am glad to say for us as well, quantery to what you often hear in the media about dwindling stocks, the fact is that most stocks are recovering and some are recovering well.

 The management of fisheries is far better these days, probibly due to the fact that fisherman have a greater say in fisheries managemnet, and the industry has come a long way in technical gear improvements and has more involvement in producing the scientific data. We can still improve further for that I am sure, but we are at the point where the politicions have to trust the fisherman and the scientists to take the industry forward and build on what we have already acheived, but as is often the case the politicions and the bureaucrats don't like to loosen the shackles as it often means job losses for them.

I have had the camera aboard the boat the last few weeks and hadn't got round to uploading the pictures so not many pictures of late but I have had time to do it know and here are some of the things we have been up to recently.








It never sticks obviously



a few weeks ago the 110meter factory ship the Athena had a serious fire in her box storage room and had to evacuate the crew over 200miles from falmouth. This is a picture of her passing us up by 1/2 a mile a couple of days later. She was under her own power but the tug escorted her to falmouth, then the local firecrew came down to exstinguish the fire.











We were towing about 20miles south of the lizzard one very fine night recently when we came accross a chemical tanker laying close to where we were working. With it being so calm we passed it by very close only 100feet from her bow, the tanker was nearly 100,000 tons and looked huge that close.







This was the bow shot and below a picture of her side on.

















This was the secound to last trip, we quite often trawl up rubbish in our nets which we always bring in and put in the fishing for litter bags and skip provided, but this tyre was in good nick so a farmer friend of ours was very happy to have a new tyre for his tractor.




Girts, janis and Alec lashing the tyre to the rail.





Girts is 6feet tall so as you can see thats a big tyre!

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merry christmas and a hapy new year to you all, from the Crystal Sea