Welcome to Fishing and Aquaculture Week!

This month’s Fishing and Aquaculture Week is both inspiring and interesting. It is also encouraging because, after a long drought, we are seeing a continuation of the flow of newly built fishing and aquaculture service vessels practically worldwide.

The vessels presented this week provide a clear affirmation of that fact with examples from several countries and a wide range of types and sizes. Most of them are innovative, if not revolutionary. They all show considerable thought and budget consideration. Some are even quite stylish. Almost inevitably these days, one even boasts a “mild hybrid” propulsion system.

One type shows innovative thinking in its composite construction involving HDPE and aluminium. Another, a steel barge, was built in Australia’s island state of Tasmania, a place where most people think that steel shipbuilding ceased decades ago. Many are multi-national with hulls built in Poland or Turkey, for example, with construction completed in Norway or Denmark. Some are tiny at 11 metres while others are huge, for fishing boats, at 67 metres.

Two were built for leading southern hemisphere fishing companies, one as a salmon farm service vessel and the other as a wide-ranging Patagonian toothfish and icefish catcher. Others were built for Scotland’s Shetland Islands and, still others, for Egypt, Germany and Vietnam. Their designers and equippers come from just about everywhere. All these vessels are very cosmopolitan products.

The salmon farm feed and accommodation barge for Sanford’s operation on Stewart Island to the far south of New Zealand is particularly interesting. Built in Hobart’s southern suburbs, it is yet another steel fish farming support vessel designed and built by the prolific Crisp Bros. and Haywards.

Trawling • Longlining • Seining • Potting • Aquaculture • Mariculture

The 23-metre steel trawler Om El Shohadda was designed and built in Egypt by the 60-year-old family-owned company Mohamed R. Eissa and Co. It appears to be a practical and economical little ship.

The very modern and stylish Kristin and Cape Arkona have a classical Scandinavian look to them even though they were built quite separately on foreign-constructed hulls in Denmark and Norway, respectively. They will also operate half a world apart for their German and Australian owners.

Small but nevertheless interesting are the Flugga Boats-built salmon farm workboats in Shetland. They look like RIBs but their “tubes” or “collars” were constructed from HDPE and are very strongly attached to their rugged aluminium hull bottoms. Their propulsion system is also interesting as it comprises two OXE120 kW diesel outboard motors on each boat. They are reportedly working very well.

Finally, from the famous old Vietnamese shipyard Halong Shipbuilding, comes a very rugged but compact Baudouin-powered vivier crab catcher.

If you can’t obtain some really good ideas and inspiration from these fascinating boats, you can’t have read our feature very carefully.

Vessel Reviews:

• Cape Arkona – Austral Fisheries newbuild capable of trawling, potting, and autoline fishing on a single trip
• San Hamana – Highly-automated feed barge for Stewart Island salmon farm
• Kristin – German-flagged trawler boasts advanced catch transport and energy-saving features
• Grieg 04 – General service fish farm workboat for Grieg Seafood
• Om El Shohadaa – New trawler built for extended trips and tough sailing conditions off Egypt’s Mediterranean coast
• Sharon Anne – Catamaran trawler combines Irish innovation with traditional quality
• Aodh Na Mara – First of two Vietnam-built, custom crab boats for Irish owner

Features and Opinion:

FEATURE | Are there hydroelectric power plants that are fish-friendly?

– “…animal welfare depends on how the technologies are used, which species are present, and which conditions can be found at the respective locations.”

News and Gear:

• Faroe Marine Research Institute takes delivery of locally built vessel
• Croatia’s Tehnomont wins Norwegian fish farm workboat order
• Norway Royal Salmon subsidiary to get new feed barge
• MacDuff design chosen for new Croatian-built trawlers
• Royal Greenland orders fourth newbuilding from Spain’s Murueta
• Shetland operator gets new whitefish trawler
• South Australia owner orders lobster boat from Dongara Marine
• Padmos delivers twin-rigger to Urk fisherman
• GEAR | ABB to supply power and propulsion package for Norwegian hybrid live fish carrier
• New study reveals shifts in water temperatures affect eating habits of larval tuna at critical life stage
• Samherji trawler to have added live transport capability
• Piriou completes Navimon longliner order with delivery of final three vessels

Recent Important Features:

OPINION | EU governments privilege cheap imported fish over sustainable EU production

– “The fishing industry…believes that [autonomous tariff quotas] are being used in many cases with the sole purpose of getting access to cheap and low-standard fish from foreign fleets which in turn puts pressure on EU producers’ prices and employment.”

– by Europêche

OPINION | Something fishy about Hao Atoll?

– “The notion that France would allow China to use its territory to attack US sea lanes in the eastern Pacific doesn’t pass the pub test.”

– by Nic Maclellan, Fiji correspondent, Islands Business magazine

FEATURE | Dauntless: More than a new shell

– “…it may be more appropriate to think of the boat as a butterfly out of a cocoon.”

– by Alan Haig-Brown, marine writer and photographer

Remember to come back every day to see the latest news, opinion and vessel reviews!

Call for content!

Any news or views about the global commercial fishing and aquaculture industries? Send it through to [email protected] ASAP (between now and November 13), so we can add it to this current edition of Fishing and Aquaculture Week!

We are after:

• Vessels – Orders, new deliveries, under construction
• Gear – Latest innovations and technology in the fishing/aquaculture sectors
• Interviews – Owners, operators, processors, co-ops, distributors etc.
• Reminiscences – Do you have any exciting, amusing or downright dangerous anecdotes from your time in the fishing world? (example here)
• Other – Any other relevant news

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