Boston-Bergen- Oslo-Bergen (again)-Seychelles (Holiday!)-London-Cornwall-Iceland-Paris!

Well its been a really busy start to the year! So I thought you might like to have a catch up?

My work with GAA and the Best Aquaculture Practice Certification programme has taken me to Boston - for our annual planning meeting, plus I had a great day out in Great Barrington with my brothers who have lived there for the last 40 years, followed by a meeting with the GAA team at their headquarters in Portsmouth New Hampshire - then a couple of times to Bergen (off there again in May!) 'the home of Norwegian Salmon Industry' and my base for the first week in March, while I attended the North Atlantic Seafood Forum (Just under a thousand people from the Seafood Industry including many Young future stars, a couple of hundred CEO's and loads of B2B players from across the world). We covered some exciting innovations for the future of fishing and Aquaculture which I will cover next time.

John and Robin in Great Barrington Mass

After a weekend spent Downhill and Cross country skiing in Lillehammer with JL and his lovely new Yorker wife Lucille we headed on down to Oslo for a couple of meetings followed by the most wonderful dinner at the Art Deco Hotel Continental ( where all the Edward Munch sketches on the walls are replicas in case they get nicked!) and an evening with Arne Foss who has been blind since birth and his brother Torben. I think Arne is great! He speaks perfect English which he learnt over the years by listening to records by Meat Loaf!

I have to admit that Adele was a better Cross Country Skier than me!

Stavanger was a short trip on behalf of GAA and then off to Hamburg for the two projects I am involved in with The World Economic Forum and Friends of the Ocean which will help in the search for Ocean Data Gathering from Fishing Vessels in each of the World's Oceans and Blockchain Traceability from Farm or Fishing vessel to Plate. More about these later in the year.

Seychelles was a brief holiday and an absolute delight with our two best friends R&G and I have included a couple of shots to give you a glimpse at this 'paradise on earth.' I even spent a morning 'line fishing' for Barracuda, Coral Grouper and Sweet Lips! Adele and I stayed in an old Peter Sellers House at the bottom of Male Island where we had the most exciting afternoon watching a Turtle 'flipper' up the beach and lay around 180 eggs before scraping her way back into the surf!

This was 'truly' a labour of love!

Our view from the Villa

The resort had a wetland hosting 5 different types of Heron!

When we returned from the Seychelles I made a trip down to Fowey (pronounced Foy)in Cornwall to see the latest Rope Grown Mussel farm which I shall be working with over the next couple of months and helping them into the Foodservice Market in April / May. The mussels are awesome! The tidal ebb and Flo is around 5 metres and this brings enormous amounts of Plankton into Saint Austell Bay where they have place around 2000 tons of glossy jet black scrumptious Mussels Mytilus eduli. These feed uniquely by filtering litres and litres of nourishing seawater and hold themselves to the ropes by the byssal threads.

There is also another fantastic Blue Mussel Farm about six miles off the Brixham coast run by a great couple N&J H. who have been growing mussels for years and these are equally brilliant! It just goes to show that with a huge degree of endeavour that anything is possible and as these wonderful morsels of protein don't require feeding they are very, very sustainable!

Superb Cornish Rope Grown Mussels

After Fowey I made a one night trip to Iceland to speak at the Icelandic Sustainable Fisheries inaugural seminar. No Northern Lights but I captured a beautiful scene of Reykjavik's enigmatic Cathedral which was close by the hotel and met some great Icelanders committed to 'doing the right thing' when it comes to Sustainability.

Hauntingly beautiful!

Paris beckoned in late March with a once in a lifetime opportunity for me to present our WEF projects at the inaugural ATLANTOS Conference https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KySJYWPOtPk

https://www.atlantos-h2020.eu/first-international-atlantos-symposium/agenda/day-4/

Just prior to the conference I walked along the Seine opposite the magnificent Cathedral de Notre-Dame de Paris where I had sung as a choir boy on a school visit back in 1969 aged 14

Little did I know that it would suffer such a catastrophic fire just a few weeks later.

Fantastic to present in the United Nations UNESCO building in Paris!

The rest of the time I have been busy!

If I am around you can catch me down the pub on a Friday evening! https://www.theclifdenarms.co.uk

Next months blog.....I visit Japan! The 2020 Olympic Games. Tokyo's 'Raymond Blanc.' Plus what was it that I was given to drink back in 2001 when I visited Tsukiji Fish Market?....Konichiwa and Sai unara!