19 Arrivals for the Period
Whitefish totalled 5000 boxes from one Anglo-Spanish liner and five Scottish trawl landings. The Anglo fleet are still working west of Shetland with only the long-liner Meaban landing here before tying up for a two week break. The Peterhead-registered 40m twin rig trawler Atlantic Challenge has had two very successful trips to Rockall landing full boatloads of haddock on both occasions. Due to technical problems, the Inverness-registered Adventurer had a long layoff but is back fishing and has made three very good landings of monkfish and squid from the shelf edge. When the Atlantic Challenge was built in 1999 marine fuel was 8p a litre and the business plan allowed for a worst case 50% increase to 12p a litre. It’s amazing to see the boat still going and fishing well despite fuel now costing as much as 60p a litre.
Shellfish was very quiet; the offshore crabber Our Hazel landed on three occasions combined with the efforts of the local prawn fleet.
Non-fishing was once again diverse. The aquaculture support vessels Kiera Fiona, Ocean Viking and Orcadia all worked locally day-running from the harbour, the tank ship Froytind called in for 80,000 salmon smolts destined for Orkney and the Serco-owned dive support vessel Moorfowl conducted daytime training for Royal Navy divers.
Well done to the Fire and Light gang for putting on a fantastic display of pyrotechnics once again.