Good news - a full page (broadsheet) article appeared in todays local press called " Bass Breeding Ground Must be Protected ".

It gives a lot of convincing data, calls for a closed season during the spawning and accuses the local SFC of " being in the commercials pocket"

http://www.thisisguernsey.com/code/showart...rticleID=000308 or see text below

i ask you email your support to the paper - editorial@thisisguernsey.com and the Guernsey sea fisheries - seafisheries@commerce.gov.gg. and/or write to : Stuart Falla, Minister of Commerce & employment re Sea Fisheries, Raymond Falla House, PO Box 459, Longue Rue, St Martins , Guernsey, GY1 6AF


UK lads, please point out you are potential tourists

nice one rapala9 ;D ( who i suspect may be on anglersnet. )

GB

text is as follows :

quote:

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This month thousands of bass will congregate on the west coast of the island to spawn – many will not survive. One reader is asking whether more should be done to protect the shoal so that it can lay its eggs in safety



LOOK out to sea from Cobo on any day in February and you would be forgiven for thinking a new island had appeared off our west coast.

The mass which at times appears to be a small town is in fact a large fleet of boats packed tightly and vying for pole position over the Boue Blondel reef.

The reason for the gathering is bass. Each year hundreds of thousands of mature bass, from as far away as the south coast of England, make their way down the southern approaches, arriving off our west coast to spawn.

With the water temperature around nine degrees, the huge shoal masses together in a frenzied action and over an eight to 10 week period deposits its eggs on the surrounding seabed. The size of the spawning shoal and subsequent hatch is critical to the survival rate for the slow-growing bass, which take seven to eight years to reach maturity.

As with all natural events of this magnitude, a successful breeding season is by no means assured and is subject to nature’s fine balance. As such, any significant reduction in the hatch, e.g. by removing a large number of mature fish from the shoal prior to spawning, would undoubtedly affect the future number of bass in local waters.

A couple of weeks ago I heard a fisheries officer on local radio reporting last year’s catch as approximately 350,000 fish with an estimated weight of 100 tonnes, figures he appeared to find ‘insignificant in the scheme of things’.
Consider, then, that the taking of a single female bass of 10 pounds in spawn removes over 2,000,000 eggs from the hatch. That data indicates that, on average, only 0.025% of the hatched fry go on to be mature fish; thus the killing of that fish has removed 5,000 bass from the system. No big deal you may think; however, multiply that by a very conservative 100,000 fish and that becomes 500,000 bass.

Half-a-million bass is roughly equivalent to 50% of the UK’s annual commercial catch. Remember those figures are based on 100,000 fish, not 350,000 as reported. In addition to those killed, the continual harassment and disturbance of the fish by the boats and lines would disperse the shoal, enlarging the spawning grounds and thus increasing the effects of natural predation during the hatch.

The Guernsey spawning is not a new occurrence; however, up until a few years ago, the final destination of the bass had not been discovered and the shoal was able to spawn unhindered and in peace. Now the word is out, boats from the UK and France are in position outside our limits from mid January ready to intercept the fish. When the bass finally arrive here, the local fleet is waiting, with some boats catching up to a tonne of fish a day on rods and lines.

By any standards the bass are huge and prime breeding stock; a large percentage of those caught weigh between 10-12lb, with some fish reaching 20lb. This certainly brings into question the estimated weight of last year’s catch. If the fish caught last year averaged only 5lbs (2.3 kilos), 350,000 fish would weigh about 800 tonnes, which is half as much again as the total UK bass landings for the whole of 2003.

To put that figure into perspective and to underline the impact the actions of the few might have, the UK offshore pair-trawl fleet managed to catch only a little over 100 tonnes of bass last winter.

So what is Guernsey, the island that permits the humble rabbit a breeding season, doing to prevent the bass from becoming a distant memory here? The answer: absolutely nothing. It would appear that our Sea Fisheries is in the pocket of the Fishermen’s Association as it continues to pay only lip service to the issue.
The recent ban on nets and trawling within half-a-mile of the reef was typical of the nonsensical and futile measures our Sea Fisheries implements. Trawling within half-a-mile of the reef would be impractical and non-productive and the tides in that area make netting impossible. As Fisheries well knows, for once local boats with rods and lines, not trawlers and nets, are doing the damage.

I would wager that over the last two years, fisheries officers have spent more time measuring ormers than they have considering the implications of what is happening on our west coast. The Sea Fisheries seems to have adopted a ‘head in the sand’ attitude and we really should question whether:

a) Our fishery is safe in its hands; and If we get value for our money from this inert States division.
What is painfully clear is that Guernsey has a duty to protect the breeding shoals. It should immediately ban fishing for bass in the area around the shoals and take steps toward implementing a close season on commercial bass fishing during the breeding season. The benefits of this fishery to us as an island is immense; however, when the bass are gone, they are gone.

Guernsey will not have achieved any significant monetary gain or even had a glut of cheap fish, as most of the catch is destined for Europe. The few unscrupulous greedy individuals will have spent their easy money and turned their attentions to other species.

It would also be a lost opportunity for tourism; indeed Ireland is showing the way forward on sustainable use of bass stocks. In the Republic of Ireland commercial exploitation of sea bass is not permitted and recreational anglers are restricted to retaining a maximum of two per day.

No bass may be retained during the spawning season and maximum and minimum size limits are in place.
While this may appear extreme, the Irish Government has recognised that a properly managed fishery is seriously big business and in south-west Ireland, sea angling tourism is currently valued at £27m. annually. The most recent report predicts this figure will to grow to £40m. within a few years, far more than the commercial bass fishery contributed to the economy and of course it is sustainable.

You don’t have to be Einstein to see the greed of a few is threatening the very existence of the species locally.
Failure of the States to act will be catastrophic for the long-term survival of our bass stocks and they will be destined to follow in the path of the red bream.
For those who do not recall, it was abundant in local waters until it was trawled into oblivion in the late 70s; it’s now commercially extinct.

I would urge anyone with the slightest concern for the health of our sea and the future of our fishery to write to this newspaper and the Sea Fisheries and lobby your deputy – because there aren’t plenty more fish in the sea.

rapala9@yahoo.co.uk

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Nice one I'll write.

Me too.......Jaffa, .......can I copy yours

Good effort GB

DOH their not my bass after all ,i though i had ordered some

Okay YY , lets do it from the new fangled kayak angle

An email has been sent to both parties, I hope it will help your cause and if an action is taken perhaps others on the mainland will wake up to protect all breeding fisheries.

My wife for one would welcome a closed season

just to clarify chester, if you look at the figure you'll see that 50% more bass are taken by commercial rod n line anglers here in 6 weeks than the whole of the UK fleet for the year- pair trawlers included.

and as the fish spawning here come from all along the coast as far north as denmark they probably would be the ones you'd target (if you bass fish)

GB

[ 18. February 2005, 08:50 AM: Message edited by: guernseybass ]

Anyone know how many places bass spawn?

Bass need water about 9C to spawn, which is why they used to head down to the South West, where the pair trawlers found their spawning grounds.

Recent work now shows that they are now spawning within the 12 mile limit, and only around 10% of those fish are being taken outside of 12.

(Probably a combination of global warming and evolutionary pressure, as the offspring of inshore spawners survive longer and spawn more often than those who go offshore to spawn)

One of the problems faced by UK unilateral conservation measures in the past for bass, is that no one was willing to allow the fish to grow inshore, only to be taken by foreign boats when they went outside 12 to spawn.

Now it can be demonstrated that we can build and manage an inshore stock that is allowed to exceed 36cm.

That is why the BASS Bass management Plan is being seriously looked at.

The 2002 year class is bigger than previous year classes, initially thought to be 10 times bigger than any previous year class (CEFAS are not so sure now, but it's still big).

Those fish are the schoolies nicking anglers baits before older, larger fish can get at them, giving the impression that it's all small bass now.

The 2002 year class gets to 36cm in 2006, and campaigners are looking for an increase to 42cm before then, in time to protect that year class, with an eventual mls of 55cm.

55cm are each worth a lot more per lb to 'commercial' fishermen than 36cm fish competing with farmed fish, and plentiful 5 - 8lb fish could really pay dividends to UK PLC if it grows a thriving recreational sector, as was achieved by the restoration of the striped bass recreational fishery in the States, which was all but destroyed until stringent conservation measures were adopted.

Tight Lines - leon

[ 18. February 2005, 07:21 PM: Message edited by: Leon Roskilly ]

Save Bass!
Sell your cars and only fish places you can cycle to!
Only eat in restaurants you can cycle to!
Don't have a passport so you will never get to Paris, where the eateries make it worthwhile catching Bass to sell!