Dear All,
It is the end of February and this month has seen the harbour visited by around 100 Jiggers all wanting licences to fish for squid in the waters around the islands. I had the experience of visiting a Jigger with a fisheries officer as he carried out his inspection. The boat we visited is the one shown below.
Jiggers generally come from Korea, Taiwan and China. The one above is Korean and apparently they are amongst the better of the Jiggers - some are very basic and unpleasant for the crew to work on. To board the boat we had to climb up a rope ladder. Now my brother might do this day in day out but for me it was a slightly anxious few seconds as when the fisheries officer was climbing the ladder slipped. No harm done but a few celtic curses were offered to the skipper of the boat.
Jiggers are very efficient and catch squid by using flourescent lures illuminated by bright lights that shine down into the water.
The squid are scooped up by the lures and dumped into a gulley with running water that flushes the squid into the hold where they are processed and put on a conveyor which takes them into a blast freezer and then they are packed and stored. When the boats have about 400 tonnes of squid they trans-ship the squid on to a mother ship and take on more fuel.
So the chances are that if you go to the Med on holiday and ask for squid - it may be squid from the Falklands!
I have also had my own success at fishing in the last month. It seems as though the trout are back and on an evening last week I caught four trout. One was thrown back due to it being too small but the others were big enough to keep as you can see from the picture below.
That's all from me for February. Work is very busy and tension levels are higher than usual because of the antics of our neighbours across the sea. No sign of William though I have seen the Search & Rescue helicopter a few times and waved!
I hope all is well with you all and you enjoy the arrival of Spring as I say goodbye to summer - its definately getting colder.
Love to you all
Mark
