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A DUTCH fishing and civic delegation is due to visit Grimsby this week on a very special mission.
The group from the port of Urk in the Flevoland province of the Netherlands wants to build and develop its own fishing heritage centre. They arrive on Wednesday to look at Grimsby's National Fishing Heritage Centre which has been attracting thousands of visitors since it opened over 20 years ago. But it also hoped that the port of Grimsby can forge fishing links with their Dutch counterparts at the same time.
The visit was requested by Teun van der Lee from Urk who also supplies fish to one of two Grimsby based processors. He contacted Steve Norton, chief executive of the Grimsby Fish Merchants Association, with a view to arranging a visit.
Steve told Fishupdate: "I have known Teun for over 25 years and from the time I was at Young's Seafood. When I was Mayor of Grimsby in 1993-94 he visited me and I showed him our fishing heritage centre, which is now famous around the country and indeed overseas. He has always been keen to see something similar established in Urk."
He added: "I also think the visit is a good opportunity to develop a closer working relationship with an important fishing port and community almost on our doorstep."
The delegation will also visit the Ross Tiger, a traditional Grimsby trawler which is now part of the heritage centre, the Humber Seafood Institute and the Five Star fish plant.
Urk is an extremely traditional fisheries community, home to both a large beam-trawl fleet and the Netherlands’ largest fish auction (also one of Europe’s largest). The main fisheries activities are trawling, the auction house, and processing with almost no aquaculture activities and limited support firms. The fisheries have been in decline in recent years because of quota restrictions for their limited species of interest and decommissioning schemes.
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