Jump to content

Fishermen Not Happy With The BBC


Elton

Recommended Posts

Clive, the Humber ports and the methods historically used by their fleets were irrelevant by 1980, never mind 1999, yet as you say thats where people were sent to be trained. How crazy was that?

 

All the actual fishing was being done by the Scots "inshore"fleet, with Seine net the top method for the top boats actually catching in the early eighties, yet the enforcement guys are sent to learn ancient trawl history on the Humber? . I doubt any of the Seine net skippers thought :D

I think you may be mistaken with your dates. Jens Bojen pioneeered pair trawling out of Grimsby and we had around 15 pair teams fishing from the port until the mid to late 1990s. I worked very closely with Pete McKillop of Cosalt who took the first pair trawls to Peterhead in the mid 80s, I also worked with Arthur Buchan who went on to further develop high lift pair trawls for targeting haddock in scotland. I originally worked for Cosalt and after leaving them to join the College and later the university of Humberside I worked as a gear development consultant for Cosalt making all their models for flume tank trials at SFIA in Hull. Hull may well have stayed with its deep water industry but Grimsby adapted to pair trawling and Gill netting, and still had a fleet of fine ground trawlers, seiners and a few ships that worked off Mablethorpe. Developments did not take off in a big way until the mid 80's in scotland, and admittedly they have continued to develop and survive as both Hull and Grimsby went into total decline at the end of the 90s.

Regarding enforcement Scotland has its own independant agency that looks after Scottish affairs.

 

If we come back to net technology, it is based on trigonometry a failly aincient form of mathematics, and any tricks or techniques that can be used to keep a mesh closed or open are governed by this and do not change because the Scottish are dominating the playing field. The basic skills that I was taught by some old Iceland skippers gave me a very good apprenticeship which I spent 30 odd years building upon.

 

If you go to Peterhead today, very few of the crew can mend properly and you wont find many that could splice a warp on the deck. When the gear gets smashed it goes back to the factory to be fixed. There are very few crewmembers today that have the practical skills of the Hull and Grimsby Trawlermen.

 

As a trawl designer and netmaker who has worked and sold gear all over the world I will hold my own with any scot on trawl or seine gear

 

Cheers

 

Clive

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 136
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

I think you may be mistaken with your dates. Jens Bojen pioneeered pair trawling out of Grimsby and we had around 15 pair teams fishing from the port until the mid to late 1990s. I worked very closely with Pete McKillop of Cosalt who took the first pair trawls to Peterhead in the mid 80s, I also worked with Arthur Buchan who went on to further develop high lift pair trawls for targeting haddock in scotland. I originally worked for Cosalt and after leaving them to join the College and later the university of Humberside I worked as a gear development consultant for Cosalt making all their models for flume tank trials at SFIA in Hull. Hull may well have stayed with its deep water industry but Grimsby adapted to pair trawling and Gill netting, and still had a fleet of fine ground trawlers, seiners and a few ships that worked off Mablethorpe. Developments did not take off in a big way until the mid 80's in scotland, and admittedly they have continued to develop and survive as both Hull and Grimsby went into total decline at the end of the 90s.

Regarding enforcement Scotland has its own independant agency that looks after Scottish affairs.

 

If we come back to net technology, it is based on trigonometry a failly aincient form of mathematics, and any tricks or techniques that can be used to keep a mesh closed or open are governed by this and do not change because the Scottish are dominating the playing field. The basic skills that I was taught by some old Iceland skippers gave me a very good apprenticeship which I spent 30 odd years building upon.

 

If you go to Peterhead today, very few of the crew can mend properly and you wont find many that could splice a warp on the deck. When the gear gets smashed it goes back to the factory to be fixed. There are very few crewmembers today that have the practical skills of the Hull and Grimsby Trawlermen.

 

As a trawl designer and netmaker who has worked and sold gear all over the world I will hold my own with any scot on trawl or seine gear

 

Cheers

 

Clive

 

If the first pair trawls were taken to Scotland, by this lovely Humber synergy, in the mid eighties then i was obviously just hallucinating about all the pairs that landed at Aberdeen in the early eighties :rolleyes: Happily I dutifully wrote down all the catches and methods so they should be available for anyone to look at ;) Suggest you look at your dates again :P:)

Edited by Jaffa

Help predict climate change!

http://climateprediction.net

Link to comment
Share on other sites

[quote name='cleeclive' date='Feb 18 2010, 10:47 PM' post='3107494'

If you go to Peterhead today, very few of the crew can mend properly and you wont find many that could splice a warp on the deck. When the gear gets smashed it goes back to the factory to be fixed.

 

Cheers

 

Clive

 

Must be different there to the rest of Scotland then, I know plenty of fishermen who can mend to a very good standard and most can wire splice too. Quite a lot of them build thier own nets as a matter of fact. Your statement is an insult to Scottish fishermen.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If you go to Peterhead today, very few of the crew can mend properly and you wont find many that could splice a warp on the deck. When the gear gets smashed it goes back to the factory to be fixed. There are very few crewmembers today that have the practical skills of the Hull and Grimsby Trawlermen.

 

As a trawl designer and netmaker who has worked and sold gear all over the world I will hold my own with any scot on trawl or seine gear

 

Cheers

 

Clive

 

I have no idea if what you say about modern Peterhead crews is true or not; its a big fleet and likely to contain allsorts. All i think about is what t i saw in the 1980's; the tail end of the Humber style trawler companies,and they were ugly to me; crew treated liked dirt and dealing with their "company" officials through the kind of defence cages i have only ever seen in hard Glasgow off-licences. Charles Dickens would have recognised the way they worked as being everyday.

 

I suspect he would also recognize the missionaries, who while taking a big pay from the codend feel obliged to do good works ;):)

Help predict climate change!

http://climateprediction.net

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If the first pair trawls were taken to Scotland, by this lovely Humber synergy, in the mid eighties then i was obviously just hallucinating about all the pairs that landed at Aberdeen in the early eighties :rolleyes: Happily I dutifully wrote down all the catches and methods so they should be available for anyone to look at ;) Suggest you look at your dates again :P:)

 

 

I reckon your memory is fine and you're not halucinating, the Clyde herring boats were midwater pair trawling in the 1960's.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Not possible. Nothing happened until the MAFF history unit says it did. You took the wrong pill..

 

 

That must be where SSACN are going wrong too, they should've asked MAFFF. The following is copied from their website.

 

 

During the 1960s, most of the Clyde fleet switched to full-time demersal trawling59. A combination of market forces that upped the price of Nephrops and the reduction in labour compared to seine netting, encouraged the switch59. As trawlers increased in power and adopted rock-hopper gear, they were able to trawl in grounds that had previously been out of reach to fishers due to the rocky nature of the seabed59.

 

Those that did stay on in the herring fishery started to use pair-trawls to catch fish. With this invention, whole shoals of herring no longer had to be located, instead, the mid-water trawl could be towed behind the boats and herring captured gradually59.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest challenge
I think you may be mistaken with your dates. Jens Bojen pioneeered pair trawling out of Grimsby and we had around 15 pair teams fishing from the port until the mid to late 1990s. I worked very closely with Pete McKillop of Cosalt who took the first pair trawls to Peterhead in the mid 80s, I also worked with Arthur Buchan who went on to further develop high lift pair trawls for targeting haddock in scotland. I originally worked for Cosalt and after leaving them to join the College and later the university of Humberside I worked as a gear development consultant for Cosalt making all their models for flume tank trials at SFIA in Hull. Hull may well have stayed with its deep water industry but Grimsby adapted to pair trawling and Gill netting, and still had a fleet of fine ground trawlers, seiners and a few ships that worked off Mablethorpe. Developments did not take off in a big way until the mid 80's in scotland, and admittedly they have continued to develop and survive as both Hull and Grimsby went into total decline at the end of the 90s.

Regarding enforcement Scotland has its own independant agency that looks after Scottish affairs.

 

If we come back to net technology, it is based on trigonometry a failly aincient form of mathematics, and any tricks or techniques that can be used to keep a mesh closed or open are governed by this and do not change because the Scottish are dominating the playing field. The basic skills that I was taught by some old Iceland skippers gave me a very good apprenticeship which I spent 30 odd years building upon.

 

If you go to Peterhead today, very few of the crew can mend properly and you wont find many that could splice a warp on the deck. When the gear gets smashed it goes back to the factory to be fixed. There are very few crewmembers today that have the practical skills of the Hull and Grimsby Trawlermen.

 

As a trawl designer and netmaker who has worked and sold gear all over the world I will hold my own with any scot on trawl or seine gear

 

Cheers

 

Clive

Clive.

I have no doubt about your fishing technology skills as I have worked nets made by cosalt. The pair teams that worked from Grimsby that you mention where second to none when it came to working hard ground with the pair trawl. The same as Whitby trawler men where exceptionally experienced at working gear on very hard inshore grounds and of course the net mending skills came with the territory.

I have also worked out of Aberdeen and have worked with quite a few very experienced Scottish fishermen who where as good with a needle as any I have seen from my home port.

The Scottish boats that occasionally visited Whitby in the seventies and eighties use to specialize with ropes and by god where they good. We would sometimes steam off to the shallow water grounds with them and did they show us how it was done. Incredible fishermen who (with there rope reels etc) showed Whitby men how to fish that certain method of fishing. The same as the Grimsby anchor boats where magnificent at what they did. Fishing skills very as you will know (fishing all round the world) and fishermen will all have different skills. At the end of the day the ones who have survived and who are still handing down there skills to future generations despite all the things that have changed in the industry are the successful ones.

Scotland certainly fly’s the flag at the moment using my theory but that doesn’t take away any of the pioneering skills that fishermen on Humberside (or anywhere else come to that) have shown in there lifetimes. Weather your commercial fisherman is from the under ten’s or the large pelagic boats they will all have there own fishing skills and I think we should all think very hard before we start criticising them.

Regards.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Clive.

I have no doubt about your fishing technology skills as I have worked nets made by cosalt. The pair teams that worked from Grimsby that you mention where second to none when it came to working hard ground with the pair trawl. The same as Whitby trawler men where exceptionally experienced at working gear on very hard inshore grounds and of course the net mending skills came with the territory.

I have also worked out of Aberdeen and have worked with quite a few very experienced Scottish fishermen who where as good with a needle as any I have seen from my home port.

The Scottish boats that occasionally visited Whitby in the seventies and eighties use to specialize with ropes and by god where they good. We would sometimes steam off to the shallow water grounds with them and did they show us how it was done. Incredible fishermen who (with there rope reels etc) showed Whitby men how to fish that certain method of fishing. The same as the Grimsby anchor boats where magnificent at what they did. Fishing skills very as you will know (fishing all round the world) and fishermen will all have different skills. At the end of the day the ones who have survived and who are still handing down there skills to future generations despite all the things that have changed in the industry are the successful ones.

Scotland certainly fly’s the flag at the moment using my theory but that doesn’t take away any of the pioneering skills that fishermen on Humberside (or anywhere else come to that) have shown in there lifetimes. Weather your commercial fisherman is from the under ten’s or the large pelagic boats they will all have there own fishing skills and I think we should all think very hard before we start criticising them.

Regards.

 

Challenge you are quite correct and I could not agree more, however 'I was fighting an opinion that Grimsby had been in the history books since the 80s'. Regarding my criticism of crews and their net skills , that was maybe unjust but from what I have heard and what I have seen they are not as good as they were 30 years ago across the board, and that is partly influenced by the training which is not as extensive as it was and currently concentrates more on safety at sea than core skills. With modern vessels working big gears off net drums, access to the gear to undertake major repairs at sea is some what restricted. I have however had several comments back from some of the Scottish net makers that we worked with, who felt that the net repair skills were not as strong as they had been.

 

I will confess that the crews in the Grimsby seiner fleet had very limited net skills, but thet rarely broke a halfer or found a crows foot to mend with that method of fishing.

 

I was only defending our ability in grimsby to participate in the training of Naval Fishery protection officers and as I recall many of the SFC staff undertook a similar course organised by MAFF over the years. but sadly that is all in the History books now along with me!!

 

Cheers

 

Clive

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I was only defending our ability in grimsby to participate in the training of Naval Fishery protection officers and as I recall many of the SFC staff undertook a similar course organised by MAFF over the years. but sadly that is all in the History books now along with me!!

 

Cheers

 

Clive

 

 

Why were the Scottish fishery officers, and apparently the navy, still being sent to learn about commercial fishing on the Humber when it was totally irrelevant to what they were seeing everday? I was paid fantastic expenses money to learn from you experts; i crashed the trawler simulation but stood in awe at the flume tank as it showed the effect of a 1 knot current on a gill net.

 

 

Im not having a pop at you Clive but it bugs me to know why on earth I got dragged away from my work, transported to a godawful humber hotel, spent half a week listening to history about the humber fleet, then got punted back up the road having gained not one single usefu,l idea other than Maff really were the useless pain in the neck everybody i'd ever worked with told me they were.

 

 

My expensive Maff "education" taught me nothing about the world i lived in fishingwise. It taught me lots about power and money and organisations unwillingness to let go at any cost though.

 

Like you though, thats all just ancient history.

 

Any chance the At reps can catch up? :P:D

Help predict climate change!

http://climateprediction.net

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now

×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We and our partners use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences, repeat visits and to show you personalised advertisements. By clicking “I Agree”, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies. However, you may visit Cookie Settings to provide a controlled consent.