First herring arrives at Catch

THE FIRST herring of the summer has sparked the Shetland Catch end of Lerwick Harbour into life this week.

First to arrive at the Gremista factory was the Fraserburgh pelagic trawler Ocean Venture, which berthed at Gremista on Tuesday.

She was followed on Wednesday night by the Faroese Jupiter, which many people might have mistaken for the Shetland pelagic trawler Altaire. She is indeed the old Altaire and still looks much the same as when she left about four years ago.

None of the Shetland fleet has actually started on its herring quota yet. The Research is set to head off on Monday, possibly along with the Charisma and Antarctic, while it looks like it will be into the following week before the Zephyr and Antares try it.

Neither the Adenia nor the Altaire will be at the herring at all this summer. The Adenia took her quota earlier in the year and the Altaire swapped hers for mackerel, as she did last year.

As the summer continues, the large numbers of yachts that have been arriving at the port are beginning to peter out, but there have still been a dozen coming in over the last week.

Most of the visitors have been from Norway, but others have come from Switzerland, Norway and Germany.

The cruise ships are continuing to arrive in steady numbers, however.

On Monday the Hebridean Princess berthed at Victoria Pier, before sailing on to Orkney.

The Saga Rose arrived on the same day, before leaving for Liverpool.

They followed the Silver Cloud, which arrived from Kirkwall last Friday before heading on to Torshavn.

Four more cruise ships are due to arrive this month, with one or two still scheduled to arrive in September.

In other news, a good number of standby boats have been in to port, and the dredging of the harbour is continuing as planned.