I keep publishing films and this one is rather special. Allthough the quality is “average” it is a very rare film as it is from 1952 and in colors. It is also a unique documenation of the first years of fishing bluefin tuna with purse seine in Norway.
The film shows an ordinary Norwegian fishing vessel using a tuna purse seine. Allthough it seems primitive, this was how it was done in the early 1950’s. The fishing vessel gets a large catch and the catch is more than the vessel and the crew can handle. The captain calls for help, and when the film starts we can see that another vessel (named “Ådrott”) has arrived. With one vessel on each side of the purse seine the crew lift the tuna out of the purse seine.
When a bluefin tuna dies it sinks, and the weight of the dead fish in a large catch could make it impossible to lift the purse seine and the fish to the surface. The force of the heavy purse seine could also be a danger to the purse seiner and the crew. That is why we can see that a third vessel and two motor boats starts to tow the purse seiner and the catch while the vessel “Ådrott” still helps to stabilize the weight in the purse seine.
The heavy purse seine, the purse seiner and the vessel “Ådrott” are towed towards land, and when reaching shallow waters the purse seine with all the dead tuna is rested on the bottom. Then we can see how the fishermen are “fishing” for dead tuna in the purse seine. We can see several smaller boats helping out, and this film is recorded by a man in one of the motorboats that assisted the purse seiner.
1952 was the best year for bluefin tuna fishing in Norway. Catches of several hundred fish were not unusual. The tuna seen on the film have an average weight of 120 kilogram. Unfortunately the number of fish in this catch is not known. The catch was loaded on several vessels and landed on different locations. It is still likely to believe that there must have been more than 200 bluefin tuna in the catch.
During fishing for herring in the northern part of Norway the fishing boat “Kaisa Marie” ended up on a rocky shoreline. Another vessel was nearby and tried to help. A towing rope was attached to “Kaisa Marie”, and the pictures below show how “Kaisa Marie” is dragged back into the sea.
The photos are taken by Thor-Stein Løvås on the fishing vessel “Sjohav”.
During the fishery for herring in the northern part of Norway this year, a purse seiner got an unusual catch. As the crew was hauling the seine they saw a mink whale swimming along with the herring. It was a young whale estimated to weigh about 5-6 tonnes.
Neither the fishermen nor the whale thought it was appropriate for the whale to be in the seine. One of the fishermen, Thor-Stein Løvås, therefor found a long fishing gaff and started to tear a hole in the seine. The young mink whale seamed to know what was going on and swam towards the fisherman.
The wale waited patiently, without any sign of panic, while the fishermen made the hole bigger.
The mink whale found the hole in the net, and had no problems finding its way out of the purse seine. The last picture shows the whale swimming away from the fishing vessel.
In March I published a post about a marbled iceberg. I could never imagine the attention these pictures got. Since then the pictures of this beautiful iceberg has been published in newspapers and shown on news channels all over the world. Daily Telegraph described it as a “Rainbow iceberg”, while Daily Mail compared it to a “giant humbug”.
Some days ago I received an email from a scientist participating on the same survey in the Antarctic Ocean. He gave me the right to publish his pictures of the same iceberg, and here are some of them!
Leif Nøttestad took 14 pictures of the iceberg as the research vessel passed it. This gives us the opportunity to study the iceberg from different angles.
Here we can see the top of the iceberg. The next picture was taken as the vessel (”G.O.Sars”) was sailing away from the iceberg.
One of the comments to the first post about this iceberg said that “The way those lines come together remind me of the lines on an agate”. I have to agree. Agate iceberg is an adequate name of such an iceberg.
There are no closeups of this iceberg, but by zooming in and cropping one of the original image files from Leif Nøttestad we can get an idea of what it looks like on short range.
When the Norwegian scientists saw this iceberg passing, one of them said: This must be the beauty of the Antarctic! All photos: Leif Nøttestad.
