A DAY out on a Yorkshire fishing coble, launched from the beach at Filey, shows that this time-honoured craft is still the business for catching lobsters in this sustainably managed North Sea fishery.

AN east coast of England skipper said he was being forced to throw back large quantities of top-quality whiting, including 3500kg on just one day this month, because he and fellow fishermen had no quota allowing them to land the fish.

MORE than 40 men attended the first safety-at-sea training courses held in Scotland for crewmen from the Philippines. The courses were put on by the Fish Training Industry Association, which is also planning classes to explain the traditions of Scotland’s fishing community for the many Filipinos working in the UK fishing industry.

THE Co-operative, Britain’s fifth-biggest retailer, is committing £200,000 over two years to financially support fisheries that would otherwise struggle to fund the process to achieve MSC status as sustainable fisheries.

NORWAY’S fisheries minister, Helga Pedersen, said the country would demand that all fish caught in its waters would have to be taken into a Norwegian port, regardless of the final landing port. Her statment followed widespread media coverage of a Shetland boat caught on camera discarding saithe for which it had no quota.

A TWIN-RIG trawler based in Shetland is being used in sea trials from the South West port of Newlyn to explore more efficient fishing methods than those used by beam trawlers at Newlyn, where high fuel costs threaten the fleet’s future.

FISHERMEN in The Wash and north Norfolk, who have had excellent catches of cockles, mussels, whelks and crabs in the past year, face serious problems as fuel costs bite deeper and restrictions from planned wind farms threaten the fishing grounds.

ORKNEY crab creel fishermen are taking a series of measures such as increasing crab landing sizes to maintain the outlets for their catches in Europe’s heavily over-supplied markets. Big increases in Norway, Ireland and the UK have caused a collapse in prices.