Interview with Ian Skelly about the Isle of Man fishing industry
Audio Player:
Date(s): 3 February 1997
Creator(s): Port Erin Marine Laboratory
Scope & Content: Tracks 1 and 2: Ian Skelly talks to Matthew Slate about the advantage of beam trawler and the recent decline of the fishing fleet in Port St Mary and it as a scallop port in comparison to Peel; fishermen; cost of boats and licences; competing with Scottish and Irish fleets; wages; fishing for scallops and queenies; fishing for herring 1979-81; prawn and whitefish fishing; cost of transporting catch; times spent at sea; crew numbers; fishing legislation and quotas; decommissioning boats; increase in cost of licences; Spanish fleets; management of stock and fishing grounds in Manx waters; purchasing the ‘Bounty’; Ian Gelldart; government grant and loan scheme; boat technology; shortage of ‘girls’ and factories in the Isle of Man to clean queenies; queenie stocks and price; seismic survey boats; boat insurance; decline in scallops; Manx fishing families; decline of processing factories and scallop fleet in Port St Mary; growth of Scottish scallop fleet; impact of DTI boat safety regulations; fishing superstitions; fishing weather; Scottish fishermen; personal life of fishermen; aptitude needed for fishing; UK policy of decommissioning boats; Port St Mary lifeboat crew; Peel lifeboat crew; radio and mobile phones; herring ‘hogs’ often a pilot whale; story of a twenty foot herring hog; gulls looking at a boat, supposed to be old sailors; pods of killer whales seen in Laxey bay in 1980 or 1981; harbour porpoises and dolphins; basking sharks; thresher shark and basking sharks in Perwick Bay; other sightings in the past have been killer whales and once a blue whale jumping out of the water; porbeagles; sun fish sighted in Cornwall; lobsters on the march; whelks and spur dog fish; west of Rockall deep water fish such as grenadier; tusk and blue ling; only six whelk licences issued on the Isle of Man; queenies and the European market.
Administration / Biographical History: Recent changes in the Manx fishing industry, an oral history project by Matthew P. Slate and Laura Copeland of the Port Erin Marine Laboratory.
Other references: MS 12122 & PG/15334.
Language: English
Extent: 1 hr. 2 min. 26 sec.
Item name: cassette tape
Collection: Sound Archive
Level: ITEM
ID number: SA 2019-0015/1
Subject tags : #UOSH