Downgatebatman

 This Fishing Life. 1969 - 1980 Part III PROGRESS? I don’t remember whether Peter Bartlett came next or the Stella Marie, but our success with the Karen Marie was responsible for both. Peter was farming a National Trust farm on the coast near Polruan, but he also had a fishing boat, the Carmania. She was a 50 ft. Fifer, a cruiser-sterned, flush decker, rigged with gallows fore and aft. Peter wanted to join forces with us, so he was accepted as a fourth Director, although we jibbed at adding his initial to DAM Trawlers Ltd. So now we had a ‘fleet’, if two vessels can be called that. Ashore we were working out of a ground-floor store of one of the terrace of buildings along Quay Road on the Barbican at Plymouth. This, as the name suggests, was immediately across the cobbled road from the quay at which we normally moored, just around the corner from the fish market quay. This was suitable for storing gear, for maintaining the vessels, and fishing gear, but not really suitable for a...

 This Fishing Life. 1969-1980 Part II “THE DAILY GRIND.” To continue with the narrative, the day started about 6am when the catch was landed. This entailed the vessel getting a quayside berth, at least temporarily, to swing the iced boxes of fish ashore on a derrick from the fish-room. Each vessel generally had a hanger-on, an old retired fisherman living locally, who would help sort the catch. Although the catch had been iced away in boxes, all grades of each species were in the same box, but ashore, on sorting tables supplied by the market or the “agent” (in our case Mashford’s) the fish was separated from the ice and sorted into auction boxes with small, medium and large Lemons, Plaice, Megrims, etc. and each box was labelled with the vessels name. It was spread out on the market floor awaiting the auction which started at about 7.30am. Meanwhile, each vessel took on a stack of clean boxes, moved round to collect ice, discharged from a chute at the ice works, and fuel, if...

  THIS FISHING LIFE. 1969 – 1980 Part I I’ve been prompted to put something on paper (so to speak) of my experiences during the fishing stage of my life, by my inability to remember correctly the details of the joke about ‘hauling a mine’. But that will now come in due course. So how did I end up being a fisherman?  On leaving our island farm I/we tried to find a farm or small-holding on the mainland to move to. But we had very little capital, and anything that we could afford seemed to offer very little prospect. But brother Mick, who had been lobster fishing with me on Bardsey suggested we go into the trawling business from Plymouth. He too was restless in his job as a boatbuilder with Mashford’s of Cremyll. So somehow or other he’d teamed up with a Skipper from a trawling company in Plymouth. Doug Neilson had recently lost his job (and the boat under him!) so was looking into going solo. So we formed DAM Trawlers. (Douglas, Anthony, Michael. Although Mick had wanted...

 Biological recording should be more than collecting train numbers, shouldn’t it? For some it starts as a compulsion to make lists. For others it may be the need to name something. Good reasons, but why not make it “valuable”. Worth doing for the sake of science, or someone else’s interest, or conservation. ADD VALUE by sharing what you record! Pass your records to the County Recorder. Or put them on a database. Or send them to the local records centre. To be of any interest to anyone else a basic biological record must have the four basic components: WHO – WHAT- WHERE – WHEN. The WHO tells everyone which person “collected” the record. It is a person or organisation that one can go back to to query the record, or elaborate it. When it comes to the verification of data on a database, it gives the authority doing the verification an idea of how reliable the record is if it is a known person or group. The WHAT tells us a species or genera name. Unless a biological group has a ...

  PHENOMENON: strictly “..any event that is observable.” (Wikipedia) Common usage “..most commonly used to refer to occurrences that at first defy explanation or baffle the observer.” (Wikipedia) Keen natural historians go through life observing the wonders of nature. Day by day we see “life” happening before us; the passing of the seasons; life cycles of animals and plants; the feeding; the mating; the changes of form or size. We find wonder and enjoyment in all the changes as they occur. Some of it we understand; much of it is still a mystery. But every now and again, something happens which takes us completely by surprise. Something which we have never seen before; possibly never heard of; possibly heard of but never witnessed. Some “event” which we may have guessed at , or realised must take place but never seen. A “natural phenomenon”! Some years ago Mary and I were on a conducted birding holiday in Romania and part of the trip was living on a boat and cruising t...