One of the most obvious local industries is fishing, and in particular, scallop fishing or dredging. The vessel “Alcedo” is a scallop dredger belonging to West Coast Sea Products and you can see where the dredging apparatus gets hauled up at the side of the boat. In action, the derricks swing out like wings and the trawl is towed along from their outer ends – one trawl each side. The scallops are processed ashore and go all over the place to hotels and restaurants everywhere. They do how ever come up with other fish such as the Monkfish shown in the bottom picture – an ugly looking thing, but good eating.
From time to time a great pile of scallop shells appears on the quayside and then get loaded onto a vessel and taken away.
The pictures are taken from a West Coast Sea Products post on Facebook. There are many more photos on the WCSP web site – the fleet of vessels – and a gallery of all their activities, and others if you search around.
