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.
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.
– "…animal welfare depends on how the technologies are used, which species are present, and which conditions can be found at the respective locations."
– "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
– "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
– "…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!
Any news or views about the global commercial fishing and aquaculture industries? Send it through to editor@baird.com.au ASAP (between now and November 13), so we can add it to this current edition of Fishing and Aquaculture Week!
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