Listen to the interview

Take a listen to Harbour Master Rob Parsons as he keeps us updated with all the harbour activity.

You can find the show here on Listen Again:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p07kkx5w – Jump to 02:37:37. You will need a BBC account to listen

 

Alternatively, you can find the transcript below

 

Let’s head to Newlyn now for our regular harbour report, which comes from Harbour Master Rob Parsons. Hello Rob…

Good morning!

 

What’s been happening in Newlyn over the last week?

It’s been chaos actually. Last week was absolute chaos… my deputy was on leave, so unfortunately the boss was outside, which means everything is going to go wrong.

We had a huge amount of scallopers coming in, so that in itself was busy, which is great, because you get all the landings etc… and we’re getting the traffic, but the tide, the large spring tide that we had meant all the gillnetters are in, so we’ve had the fleet come in, so finding parking spaces and landing and managing them was quite testing really.

But it’s great for the harbour, but now my deputy’s back, they’re all going to sea, so he can’t see the problem, which is always frustrating but it has been a busy time, but it’s been enjoyable in a nice way, if you know what I mean.

 

A lot of them in, as you say, and difficulty finding a parking space, but much landed in the midst of all of that?

Yeah we have, yeah, but it’s only been scallops. Now the landings for the market have been really low, because of the tide, and some of the vessels have had maintenance periods etc… so all the gillnetters are in for the spring tide… they’ll probably look to go, I would probably say, either tomorrow at the earliest, right up to the end of the week.

We’ve got a couple of beam trawlers which are laid up, and we have one of the scallopers laid up with problems with her engine, so this morning’s market we had 4 boxes of fish, so it’s very light there, but the scallops are keeping us going, because they’re coming through the harbour, straight into the back of lorries and away, so it’s ticking over, but not in the way that I would like.

 

Much talk of the latest political shenanigans on the quay?

Yeah a lot of no-deal planning for us, and that’s generally to do with the no-deal sort of things, [such as] signing off consignments and working with the council with that, so we’re rushing with that, and also we have to sort out our water.

We had an inspection test a couple of weeks ago, and we failed because of lead. There are no nasties in it in terms of E. coli, because we have our own processing plant, and sort of clarity and filters and things like that… and injection and stuff, but we found that the test point that we’ve taken it from was actually my office, so we’ve got lead pipes in the back of the office, so we need to now rip all of those out, so I’ve had to put a blanket warning out to everyone on social media and the website, saying just to be cautious, boil your water, but I know what the problem is, it’s the lead content in the test place, which is my office.

So now we have to rip all of those out, as if it wasn’t busy enough, and make sure that that’s done, so we’re in a bit of a rush with that, so it’s a testing time for Newlyn, as ever!

 

Rob thank you very much indeed, and we’ll catch up with you this time next week