Seafood Naturally

This face book page is to promote the line caught fishing boats Skindeeper and Shaman .

Until summer 2008 the Weymouth line caught Bass Fleet handled their catch in the same way. Once the fish was caught it was koshed (this bruises the fish) and then put into a standard fish tray on deck, often with just a wet sack over the fish to protect them from elements, as you can imagine at the end of a two tide day (12 hours) the quality of the fish was less than perfect!

During the winter of 2007 I met with Nathan de Rozarieux of Seafood Cornwall who informed me new methods of slush icing fish and the tagging scheme of line caught fish. I got together with the other fisherman of Weymouth’s line caught fleet and formed the Dorset Handline Fishermans Association (DHFA) .

On behalf of the DHFA and with the help of Nathan and Weymouth & Portland Council I was successful in securing £36, 585 of FIFG /MFA funding to help us to install a 1. 2 ton Ice plant on Weymouth Quay and for the members to purchase insulated fish storage bins so they would be able to take ice to sea and also store their catch iced. Then with the help of Business Link the members of DHFA became members of www. linecaught.org. uk and purchased our own design of tags to mark our catch as line caught fish.

In the spring of 2008 my vessel Skindeeper WH12 enrolled into the Seafish Responsible Fishing Scheme and is one of only two boats in Weymouth to hold the RFS certificate.
The New Way
Skindeeper WH12 is Weymouth’s newest and largest line caught commercial Fishing Vessel; we have up to 6 crew and only use rod and line methods to catch our fish. We always carry ice to sea and all our fish are bled and then immersed into our purpose built slush ice bins within 2 minutes of being landed on board. Once they are at the right temperature the fish are then packed in the insulated fish bins until arrival back in port.
The fish are then tagged and re-packed with fresh ice and sold.

The quality of our fish are second to none and I have feedback from buyers that their customers are insisting on skindeepers fish.