This video shows skipper Anthony Hoskin and Darren Thirlaway retrieving 90 mm gill nets, set 2-3 hours previously. Its one of four videos taken onboard on this trip and available here, the others show the setting of this gear and 68 mm red mullet gill nets; the extraction of fish from large mesh monkfish (angler) gill nets, and the hauling of the red mullet nets.
The camera is allowed to run to give some impression of capture rates. Stills photography and other information of this session are available on the Pisces-RFR website at www.pisces-rfr....
The (evidently new) nets were hauled at 9.00 am, having been set in ca 80 m/ 40 fathoms of water. The video show the catch of haddock, ling, pollock, pouting, scad (horse mackerel) and other fish. The abundance of haddock in these Cornish seas is unusual, the result of an exceptionally strong local year class also picked up in ICES fish stock assessments. Ling are more abundant than I've seen in previous years, but the large cod year class is no longer being caught, at least with this gear, and pollock and whiting are also not as abundance in previous years (see Pisces-RFR website for documentary of these). Also worth noting is the absence of monk, compared to the monk gear retrieved earlier in the day, showing the difference that a small difference in location, plus different fishing mesh size, and soak times, can make.
The sequence starts with the gear already being cleared (i.e fish being taken out of the net) because I was also doing stills photography and a large number of brown crab coming up. There is a discussion about what determines whether crabs are extracted whole or broken out of the net. At 3:00 two dover sole come over the hauler, followed by a ling at 3:50. At 4.13 the buoy for the second set of nets is retrieved, and at 4:50 in the video (not real time) a haddock and lesser spotted dogfish are being extracted, with another haddock and scad being extracted at 6:10 onwards. Haddock can be distinguished by the 'steel grey over pink' upper body, large black 'thumb mark' on the body, and black lateral line. Anthony is extracting a pouting (bib) at 12:50 - the bulging eyes are characteristic. At 13.15 they act quickly when the net getting trapped in the hauler. At 14:30 a large ling is shown. another at around 15:10. Darren switches between extracting fish and untangling and feeding the net through the 'flaking machine' into the net bins. By 16:08 the haul is complete, and at 16 10 Anthony makes an unusual appearance in front of the camera. From 17:00 Darren is gutting haddock, gutting of ling from 17:30, John Dory at 17:55, and then from 18:15 onwards, final washing and icing of fish before going on to retrieve red mullet nets, the subject of another video.
28 дек 2012
