Yorkshire Tunny 1935

[Paul Boote]

Saw this piece - Andrews of Arcadia Scrapbook: The Days When We Were So Happy And Did Not Know It - flagging up an exhibition of re-worked Tunny photos in Bond St, London West End earlier, noting that the biggest of the season was taken by a "boy at Eton".

Eighteen years of age in 1935, I thought to myself, with war just four years off, I wonder what happened to him? So I did a search.

This happened to him - https://s3.amazonaws.com/bg.ami.com/headstones/images/20140524/7181767.jpg

26 or so. One of ten of thousands of others that men like my Dad, a Flight Lieutenant bomber pilot and a survivor of the conflict, never forgot. By God, we might moan these days, but....

 

[S-Kippy]

Quite.

That headstone reminds me of a school project of the boy's about our village where a bit of googling revealed that Geoffrey Drummond VC was buried in the local churchyard. The local vicar hadn't a clue but we found him.

[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffrey_Drummond"]Geoffrey Drummond - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]


On the subject of Tunny I bought Chris Berry's book on a whim. Fascinating insight & a thoroughly good read. Worth getting hold of a copy.

 

[greenie62]

When next in Alnwick - have a look at Hardy's where there is a potted illustrated history of the Tuna industry in N.Yorks
OR
If you can't be bothered going all the way to Alnwick - have a look at the website The Fishing Museum Online - Tunny

Where have they all gone?

 

[Paul Boote]

Where?

As a penniless, just back from India, Sandersons van-driving kid in the late 1970s, I replied to an A.T. Classifieds Ad (or was it someone replying to mine? I wanted a GREAT trotting Aerial at the time).

Brunton-Green, Beaconsfield, Bucks, was the man and the address.

I bought his Aerial (still have and fish with it).

Then he showed me the following: 9-inch Hardy Fortuna (box, tools, lube-gun); Hardy Zane Grey (immaculate); Allcock "Tunny"; a very fine, London-made, wooden-cased (brass-bound) Ship's Sextant; a whole pile of hooks, traces and fighting harness.

Stunned by what I saw, I made my apologies and looked to leave the fine old Town House that he was obviously clearing out after the death of a close relative...

He named a (reasonable, but beyond my means) price.

I smiled and declined.

Then he gave me a month or two to pay.

I accepted.

Begged, borrowed and eventually bought.

Eventually sold to America years later. Didn't want to, but then I have never had a Trust Fund or been some City Sh1t.

 

[mick b]

Since the 1930's Tunny aka Bluefin Tuna have been fished to the brink of extiction by commercial interests.

However several species of Tuna are now being caught in the Channel and other regions around our coasts by those who know how to do it.

I expect the populations will be allowed to increase until they can be caught in commercial numbers whereupon they will be decimated and set back another 60years.

.

 

[greenie62]

I expect the populations will be allowed to increase until they can be caught in commercial numbers whereupon they will be decimated and set back another 60years.

Hi Mick,
Do you not think the new Marine Protection regime, voluntary codes, lessons from history and the lessons of sustainable Sportfishing Tourism elsewhere in the world will safeguard the re-establishment of Britain as the world leader in Tuna Angling?

 

[mick b]

Hi Mick,
Do you not think the new Marine Protection regime, voluntary codes, lessons from history and the lessons of sustainable Sportfishing Tourism elsewhere in the world will safeguard the re-establishment of Britain as the world leader in Tuna Angling?

Sustainable Sportfishing Tourism....in the UK.....ha ha ha.....

No it takes a REAL politician to do that........like the La Guaira Bank in Venezuela where it took direct action from their Prime Minister to drive through the elimination of Commercial exploitation of their sportfish stocks and in so doing produce and preserve the finest Offshore Sportfishery in the World.


For such an thing to happen in the UK Hell would have to freeze over first.

Commercials will continue to influence Governments, who in-turn will preach conservation, ethics and (for Tunas) ICCAT regulations, while at the same time reducing funding and staffing for the Enforcement Authorities.

For real life examples look no further than our Public Health Authorities and their dealing with the Horsemeat scandal, or the knee bending grovelling of our Fisheries Minister when he lowered the Bass size limit simply to appease Commercial interests.

Our only hope is that the guys catching these fish already continue to clean and prep them at sea and keep their catches out of the comics.
As soon as the Glory Boys get in on the act all will be (once again) lost.

.

 

[greenie62]

As soon as the Glory Boys get in on the act all will be (once again) lost.

So you wouldn't like to see the Whitby Whalebones Arch used to suspend a pair of tuna - providing a wonderful (ironic) framing of the resurgent industry! mg:

Sorry to upset your brekkers, Mick. When you calm down, have a good day, now breathe deeply, hold ....exhale. Better now?
Cheers :thumbs:

 

[mick b]

So you wouldn't like to see the Whitby Whalebones Arch used to suspend a pair of tuna - providing a wonderful (ironic) framing of the resurgent industry!Cheers :thumbs:

No.


But I would like to suspend a few of the human species...:wh


.

 

[Paul Boote]

I've only ever seen a handful of the giants in the flesh - in Malta as a kid in the 1960s when my folks and I spent summer holidays in Marsaxlokk, then a fishing village beside a huge bay in the south of the island. The local bar, Toni's, was run by a retired fisherman Antonio, who counted not only my parents and Pop-glugging me, but also many a local fisherman and even local resident Desmond "Naked Ape" "Zoo Time" Morris among his customers.

Toni took me out in his small, traditional, wooden fishing boat, trolling for smaller-species tuna a couple of times, having a couple of around 12 to 15 pounds, but promised me the sight of some real big ones when certain boats of the local fishing fleet came in.

Wow! Real giants.

I wondered what happened to those fish earlier this morning.

This happened - Bluefin tuna season opens; Malta eligible for 160 tons - timesofmalta.com

And this -

[ame=http://youtu.be/afBuOVVqOks]Tuna Farm Malta - YouTube[/ame]


We did mess up.

 

[mick b]

True Giant Bluefin are VERY big animals indeed.

In the mid '90's one fish was removed from the Barbate tuna trap in Andalucia Spain which weighed over 1000kgs......gutted


.

 

[Paul Boote]

Just remembered something about the Yorkshire Tunny Heyday that I watched and enjoyed a few years ago. Still on YouTube - here it is:

[ame=http://youtu.be/H1wW1lbTNyo]Fieldsports Britain : 1940s film stars and the extraordinary Tunny Club (episode 9) - YouTube[/ame]

 

[Paul Boote]

News just in - https://www.change.org/p/ban-ki-moo...dium=email&utm_campaign=petition_update_email - about a petition I felt compelled to sign the other day. With the UN involved and the slow trickle of "E-e-e-w! Killing Oceans (and the Planet) is so like yesterday and no tomorrow", the much hated, by "Do Badders" and Single-Species Fetishists, Bunny and Tree Huggers and "Do Gooders" will eventually win out. Whether there is anything left to save by then, though, is quite another matter, but at least the Flat Earthers and dollar-and-a-half Tree Museum Zombies will have been forced to retreat to their chi-chi retirement backwoods and know that it really is in their best interests to keep a teeth-grinding, partly deranged silence now. About so much more than a few ruddy, now disappeared, trophy fish, all this - about us and whether mere shopping in a Mall for useless tat and watching opiate TV will seem like a good idea in a few decades time....

 

[Paul Boote]

Slebs refusing to eat Bluefin at eateries like The Ivy and the Groucho save the fish, a report claims.

Atlantic bluefin tuna: Sienna Miller and Stephen Fry among those credited with raising awareness of overfishing danger - Environment - The Independent

The Big B'stard Bluefin Collective, the species' own representative body, responded to the report with its own press release issued from somewhere in the deep blue between Malta and Sicily yesterday: "Stop piggybacking on every fashionable cause, you bunch of self-serving, attention- and publicity-seeking, coke-snorting foreign monomaniacs. But tell Greta Scacchi this doesn't include her.".

 

[Paul Boote]

Press Release from the Sardine, Anchovy and Trash Fish Trust [S.A.T.T. - Founder and Incumbent Well-remunerated Everything, Mr Paul Boote]


'Ere, you lot, you've done for the big boys, the Flash 'arry Preds, so don't go coming after us now and put us into your bait mix or onto toast.

Small ocean fish are thriving while humans eat up all their predators - Environment - The Independent