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'WHEN FISHING WAS FOR MY LIVING'
'Early morning scene of what was my work place'
Pic taken at Te Wae Wae Bay, Southland, New Zealand.
As a job, I was self employed as a commercial fisherman, and still hold a Master Coastal fishing Vessel
ticket, Second Class diesel trawler engineers ticket and a restricted radio licence - all of which I have held
for over 45 years. I started my full time fishing as a career in 1965 - before this I used to spend all of my spare time with a couple of local fishermen and would fill in for their crews on holidays and weekends.
| Before taking my retirement I was working the 'F.V. Marlene' for and owned by Otakou Fisheries of Dunedin. I worked for Otakou Fisheries for the greater part of my fishing career. I started with them back in 1965 on the fishing vessel 'Diane' which was skippered at that time by Mr Matenga Taiaroa. I worked as deck crew for a while and then attended 'Otago polytechnic fishing school' where I gained my 'coastal Fishing Masters certificate' - Otakou Fisheries then gave me the chance to skipper one of their vessels - the crayfishing vessel 'Kitere'. This vessel I worked mainly in and around the southern fiordland coast of the South Island. Most of this time was spent in 'Dusky Sound' - one of the most beautiful of New Zealands southern sounds or fiords. Captain Cook took refuge here in 1761, and there are still signs to be seen of his stay in the sound. I changed from crayfishing (lobster fishing) to trawling in the 1980's and continued doing this until my retirement in March 2002. |
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The 'Marlene is of wooden construction, 70 foot long, 18 feet of beam and draws 10 foot unladen. It is powered
by a V8 GM 240hp Diesel and has a 40hp Isuzu auxillary to drive the freezer unit and supply 230 AC power. I worked
the vessel along with two deck crew, mainly in and around the southern coast of the South Island from Dunedin (Port Chalmers) around the coast to Milford Sound, New Zealand. |
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The FV Marlene
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We bottom trawled for the catch which when landed ashore was transported to Otakou's factory in Dunedin for
processing. The types of fish species that we caught and landed were:
Stargazer, groper, ling, tarakahi, blue and red cod, lemon and english sole, brill, skate, flounder, warehou, elephant,
rig, school-shark, and gurnard. |
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This 'haul' was mainly Groper, Stargazer and shark. We towed the net for
3 hours - 11pm through till 2am.
In this trawl we had about 2 tonne of Shark and Rig.
The cod end here has about 4 tonnes of mixed fish species in it, mainly
Ling, Rig, Stargazer, and the old favourites - Dog Fish!!.
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