With videography by Evan Roberts, this youTube is pretty self explanatory.

The actual location is a campsite at Camping Moreiras, O Grove, Pontevedra, Galicia. The fish, a whole monkfish, came from the fish market on the harbour at O Grove itself, as did the vegetables and the cider is an Asturian Sidra Natural obtaine en route from one of many Eroski supermarkets.

Just a bit of fun really, but it captures one of many happy mealtimes from a memorable holiday touring Asturias and Galicia in September 2011. There are loads of photos online  at both my collection and Linda’s Flickr  photostreams.

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Cooking Monkfish with Cider in Galicia

Well this article arrived just on the same day that Linda reported seeing an enormous flying beetle, shiny green coloured, in the back garden near our small pond. We identified the beetle as the great diving beetle and I knew that these insects are viscious predators, at least in the larval form. I’m not going to panic about loosing frog tadpoles though, or even fish fry. As far as I’m concerned if a great diving beetle chooses to use our small garden pond as a nursery for his aquatic offspring then we should be honoured to play host to such an auspicious example of native pond wildlife. I’m sure the frogs will manage to keep up their numbers one way or another.

Who’d be a tadpole?
http://thegardenpondblog.org.uk/2011/05/01/whod-be-a-tadpole/

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Who’d be a tadpole?

Who’d be a tadpole?

By Jeremy Biggs

Larva of a great diving beetle feeding on a frog tadpole.

A common question we get at this time of the year is: “Where have my tadpoles gone?”

A common answer is probably provided by this picture from Pond Conservation member Carole Woodall who managed to capture what must be a common fate for many a tadpole. Indeed, it’s probably one of the main fates that nature intended!

And this is not the only way that our precious tadpoles get gobbled up: fish of course are regular frog tadpole eaters and so, to the surprise of many, are our innocent looking newts.

Now of course, almost every normal person loves newts – but not your average tadpole because a tadpole is basically a tasty newt snack.

A common course of events is:

- Pond lover makes pond, frogs arrive in year 1 or 2, pond lover very happy.

- Newts arrive in year 4 or 5, pond lover even happier.

- Tadpoles disappear, pond lover puzzled, calls Pond Conservation.

- Frog and newt lover discovers newts eat tadpoles and realises newts not quite so cuddly as previously thought.

- Pond lover becomes older and slightly wiser!

But it’s not all one-way traffic: our clever little frogs have learnt (excuse the anthropomorphism) to steer clear of the nasty newts, and other predators.

Tadpoles can sense the presence of backswimmers and dragonfly larvae, and take avoiding action.

They can also sense fish too.

Although many may still perish, if you are one of the few that gets through, that’s all that matters.

——

via posterous

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Great Diving Beetle in a small garden pond?

The Last Nail – St Monan’s Boatyard

Originally uploaded by AndyRob

The Last Nail is a recently finished song for the old boatyard at St Monan’s in Scotland, with general reference to traditional craft industries.

Above the stone walled harbour, or down the winding hill,
That’s where they built the boatyard, and the structure stands there still.
Not much boat building happens now, just repairs and fitting out
but when the wind rattles the boatmasts, you can hear the old boatbulders shout:

Will you pass the last nail over and I’ll knock it into place,
Then with four more coats of varnish, she’ll be ready for the race.

Our grandfathers put up the boatyard, to build the fishing fleet,
more than fifty boats in the harbour, and shops all down the main street
then the steam age brought in the drifters, boat builders became engineers
Now the wind blows straight through the boatyard, there’ll be no more boat building here

Will you pass the last nail over and I’ll knock it into place,
Then with four more coats of varnish, she’ll be ready for the race.

With a keen eye for staying in business, they switched over to build leisure craft
And the weekend yachtsmen snapped them up, no expense spared fore or aft
Then wooden hulls went out of fashion, the order book emptied last year
So the bankers foreclosed on the boatyard,
and there’ll be no more boatbuilding here

Will you pass the last nail over and I’ll knock it into place,
Then with four more coats of varnish, she’ll be ready for the race.

Now the Vikings invented the clinker for both strength and shallow seas
and the herring boats followed the coastline, until the canning ships found the key
There’s a regatta here every August, and the whole village turns out again
But the Sea Queen’s no real competition, and it’s guaranteed to rain

Will you pass the last nail over and I’ll knock it into place,
Then with four more coats of varnish, she’ll be ready for the race.

Above the stone walled harbour, or down the winding hill
that’s where they built the boatyard, and the skeleton stands there still.
No more boat building happens now, not even fitting out
but when the wind rattles the boatmasts, you can still hear the old boys shout:

Will you pass the last nail over, we’ll knock it into place,
Then with four more coats of varnish, she’ll be ready for the race.

the last nail

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The Last Nail

Octopus Agua Amarga Pulpo

Originally uploaded by AndyRob

Octopus was on offer at “Buy One Get One Free” at the local Asian groceries and fish shop yesterday so I picked up two and cooked one today. I simmered the octopus in a Tom Yum broth then added it to a nice sticky tomato sauce with chunks of parsnips, carrots, onions and and beetroot. Served with potato cooked with green peppers.

They also tried to make me buy three sacks of potatoes for the price of four tomatoes but I only wanted the one and stuck to my guns.

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Octopus BOGOF

We found a little patch near Kenwood House where some walkers were feeding the birds and squirrels. There was not one but several Jays, and a small gang of blue and great tits who came very close.

Also on Hampstead Heath we spotted a large hawk, not a kestrel and down by the ponds the RSPB had set up a little visitor centre tent and recorded a large number of species spotted including Kingfisher.

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Hampstead Heath

A new independent body to oversee the quality of UK quantitative statistical data publication was launched yesterday.

The UK Statistics Authority run by Sir Michael Scholar is outside of government control, (like Torchwood) being answerable directly to the elected Parliament, not to ministers or any single government department. The USA has a remit to restore public confidence in the neutrality of government statistics, an urgent task since a survey revealed that only one citizen in five actually believes them! A poll by the European Commission about public trust in 27 member countries’ government statistics ranked Britain 27th out of 27.

USA can issue and take away a “kite mark” of quality assurance to each of the 28 UK Goverment departments which issue statistics, and will also act as a central reference for the vast amount of data which gets published. The website at www.statistics.gov.uk publishes a link to any new statistics which have been released daily at 9.30am, which is also available as an RSS feed

As another gesture towards open government, the USA will publish the minutes from their monthly meetings onto the website as well. Other plans for the website appear to include a new taxonomy and some kind of maps mashup.

Today’s new stats include a tour of emergency services in Wales, Scottish manufactured exports for the last quarter of 2007 and a survey of construction industry materials but the one which caught my eye was a publication of UK Sea Fisheries Statistics for 2006.

UK Sea Fisheries Statistics provides a compendium of statistics relating to the UK fishing industry. It includes information on the size of the UK fishing fleet, the number of fishermen, key economic indicators and the quantity and value of sea fish landings, imports and exports. Comparisons are made with the fishing industries in Europe and the rest of the world. The level of exploitation of the main European Union quota stocks is also considered.

It’s interesting to me for example, to see how Newlyn in Cornwall compares with other large fishing ports but there’s also an overview of the world fishing industry:

The world catch figures from marine fishing areas fell by 2 per cent from 85.5 million tonnes in 2004 to 83.7 million tonnes in 2005. In 2005 China caught the largest volume of fish, 14.7 million tonnes. Peru had the second largest annual catch at 9.3 million tonnes. The USA, Japan, Indonesia and Chile each caught between 4 and 5 million tonnes. Of the 83.7 million tonnes of fish caught in 2005, 63 per cent were caught in the Pacific Ocean, 26 per cent were caught in the Atlantic and 11 per cent in the Indian Ocean. Marine catches from the Pacific Ocean have shown a long-term gradual increase reaching a maximum of 53.6 million tonnes in 2000. Landings in 2005 were 52.5 million tonnes, a decrease of 1 per cent on 2004. In the Atlantic, the 2005 catch is 12 per cent lower than in 2001.

Here are some more tasty extracts:

In 2006, the UK fleet landed 21 thousand tonnes of cod (26 per cent of the 1996 level) and 40 thousand tonnes of haddock (44 per cent of the 1996 level). This represents a combined decrease of 109 thousand tonnes. Landings of the relatively low value blue whiting have increased over this period from 14 thousand tonnes to 82 thousand tonnes.

Herring landings by the UK fleet were higher than mackerel landings for the first time in over 10 years. Since 2002, mackerel landings have decreased by 49 per cent while herring landings have increased by 50 per cent.

In 2006, 41 thousand tonnes of nephrops were landed, a 35 per cent increase in two years. Landings of cockles fell to their lowest level for over 10 years.

This is all fascinating stuff but some of the vocabulary is unfamilar so I welcomed the opportunity to learn:

Nephrops are lobsters, langoustines, dublin bay prawns, scampi etc

Demersal fisheries target species which live on the or near the seabed and feed on bottom-living organisms and other fish. Although fisheries may be directed towards particular species or species groups, demersal fish are often caught together and comprise a mixed demersal fishery.

In 2001 the total landings by the Scottish demersal fleet were in excess of 130,000 tonnes and had a first sale value of around £150 million. Cod (Gadus morhua), haddock (Melanogrammus aeglefinus), whiting (Merlangius merlangus) and monkfish (Lophius

Oily fish generally swim in the pelagic zones of the oceans.

So to the consumer or cook, roughly speaking demersal = “white fish” and pelagic = “oily fish”. The oily fish live in the deep cold waters (clue) and the demersals are more coastal, except that the continental shelf extends a lot further out from some coastlines than others. And the Mackerel do come in close to shore in large numbers at certain times, as witnessed in Lekeitio recently:

Back to the UK Statistics authority website, as you can see it has the potential to provide considerable distraction as well as having great educational and informative uses, quite possibly marketing and business use as well. Perhaps one day it will also be considered to set up an authority site for aggregating national qualitative data in a similar but appropriate way.

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New UK statistics authority web site