The latest addition to Denmark’s pelagic fleet is the latest in the long series of pelagic vessels emerging from the Karstensen yard in Skagen. Three hundred people gathered at the Skagen quayside to celebrate the christening of the new Themis.
Every trawler crew knows the work that goes into spooling new warps onto the winch drums. Sometimes it can take days before the warps to sit comfortably under tension and there’s rarely a second chance to get things right. The addition of a warp tensioning machine to the Hampiðjan armoury means that these problems are eliminated.
The Scottish Government has announced that it will work with salvage specialists and the families of the Nancy Glen crewmen to support efforts to retrieve the bodies of the missing fishermen, after the boat was lost in Loch Fyne last month within sight of Tarbert, where the crew and their families lived.
Russian pelagic vessels have caught as much Barents Sea capelin this season as they had during the last season in 2015, as there was no fishery in 2016 and 2017, and the prospects are looking good for the continuing season.
The announcement yesterday by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) that the fisheries agreement concluded between the EU and Morocco is not applicable to Western Sahara and to its adjacent waters has come as a blow to European operators, as around 94% of the catches under the agreement take place in those waters, According to Europêche, this decision disregards the importance of the agreement for the fisheries sector.
The Norwegian fleet has finished one capelin season and another has started, as their quota in Icelandic waters has been fished and the Barents Sea capelin fishery is now in progress.
The Vostok-1 Fishing Collective Farm has taken delivery of a modernised fishing vessel to develop fishing for crab in deeper waters in the Sea of Japan. Vostok-1 was a pioneer of this fishery in the early 2000s when there was little interest in catching crabs, and has made a success of its tenacity in sticking with the crab fishery over the years.
An Argentinian Coast Guard vessel found itself surrounded by a group of Chinese fishing boats as they tried to prevent one of their number from being apprehended after being observed fishing illegally in Argentinian waters.
The Court of Justice of the European Union has ruled that ‘the Fisheries Agreement concluded between the EU and Morocco is valid in so far as it is not applicable to Western Sahara and to its adjacent waters.’ The ruling therefore excludes Western Sahara’s waters from the EU-Morocco deal on fisheries and aquaculture.
Switching the old system of weekly catch allowances for whole-year quotas has opened up a whole new world for Swedish fishermen, according to SFPO chairman Peter Olsson. He also commented that the trawler fleet is under assault from Sweden’s Greens, as green NGOs strive to out-do each other in demonstrating their green values in the run-up to elections later this year.