Steve Coppolo's Vision

[Leon Roskilly]

Initial report-back on the Balanced Seas meetings

 

(Gives a good idea of which stakeholders are taking an interest)

 

http://www.balancedseas.org/staticfiles/pd..._update_web.pdf

[wurzel]

Hi Wurzel,

 

(and remember MCZs are a nature conservation tool, not a fisheries management tool, more about protecting habitat than restoring fish-stocks),

 

 

Surely you are not that naive Leon.

 

The constant reference by the balanced seas team to 20 endangered fish species, along with one daft bat claiming there was utmost haste needed to implement these MCZs before there was nothing left, gives the game away.

 

As yet I have not read any thing that makes a notable difference between a MCZ and Natura 2000 sites.

[cleeclive]

Surely you are not that naive Leon.

 

The constant reference by the balanced seas team to 20 endangered fish species, along with one daft bat claiming there was utmost haste needed to implement these MCZs before there was nothing left, gives the game away.

 

As yet I have not read any thing that makes a notable difference between a MCZ and Natura 2000 sites.

 

The big thing that bothers me is how little these stakeholders are likely to actually know! Let us look at the Flamborough cod stock, and if my memeory serves me correctly the scientists use this term to describe a genetic group of cod that cover an area from the Tyne to the Thames estuary and approximately half way East across the North Sea, so this is the stock that southern North Sea Anglers are concerned obout. As we all know these fish group up and have their annual 'jiggy jig' hopefully leading to stock replenishment. The scientists tell us that the fish are becoming sexually mature at a younger age in their attempt to combat stock depletion. The facts are that every fifteen to 25 years there is a very strong year class in other words a very successful breeding year, which may be due to climate or the lack of a key predator at the larval stage. We see this within most species groups but do not really understand the reasons why and cannot predict when it will happen. It is only from small fish surveys or from shrimp discard studies that the strong year one class can be detected

 

The Flanborough cod stock had a very successful year class in the early 70s then again in 94/95. I know a lot about the latter as I was undertaking a by-catch study in the shrimp fishery during 1996 along the Lincolnshire coast, during which we were seeing over 1000 baby cod (1year olds in a haul). during previous years we saw two or three fish in a haul. The following year we saw trawlers working the Flamborough grounds dumping 80% of their catch on a dialy basis , arguing that they needed to catch something to stay in business. regrettably there was no management system in place to react to this situation and I fear that no lessons had been learnt from this. What happend was total decimation of a potential real recovery of the cod stock because they were murderedand wasted one year too early. Would an MCZ have saved these fish?

 

A few maybe but I doubt if it would have had a really significant Impact unless it had been based upon the key trawling grounds in the Southern Nort Sea for a significant period of time

 

This no doubt happens with many species in different areas of our seas, and I would fully support temporary closures of areas when there is evidence of strong year classes of juveniles appearing for 1-2 years. But I would want to be very confident that the right places were being closed at the right time.

 

Currently I have little or no confidence in a bunch of stakeholders with limited facts playing politics with our sport more for the sake of a few egos than the good of fish stocks.

 

I hope this example might stimulate a few to start asking the right kind of questions to the scientists at the meetings.

 

Anglers often get excited when they start to see a lot of 7lb plus fish in the seasonal catches. Sadly this is not a good sign, large catches of juveniles fish under 34cm boades much better for the future of the sport. Whilst anglers views are important regrettably the lack of understanding of fiheries science by many in the fold leads to a distortion of the value in some of their views.

 

Cleeclive

[wurzel]

One site could be where they play mothers and fathers, are you saying that if they are left alone for that period during the year it wouldn't make any difference. The second is a place that for many many years held a sustainable fishery, then they went, wasn't global warming as when the pressure on them deminished they returned albeit much smaller. Leave them alone for a period of time and give them a chance to grow. Is that not a fair assumption. Or do we leave it all for the likes of the co-op, to choose.

 

Is the above better than sticking pins in a map that someone else has determined.

 

 

Yes it's a good thing the mcs arn't in control Leon as they would close down angling as we know it for sure. However when you have a funded ngo with that sort of agenda, 600,000 co-op shoppers who this ngo has hoodwinked, it makes it slightly difficult for the rsa to compete against. Some of the rsa have made an effort to meet deadlines for ages Leon, hasn't made one jot of difference though has it. They are just playing games, fiddling.

 

Quote: And remember too that socio-economic considerations may be taken into account.

 

don't beleive that. There would still be an airport plan on the table for hoo marshes if the twitchers hadn't got their way and can you see boris's suggestion of an airport off herne bay, margate coming to fuition, with a new crossing over the thames, na it will be too conveiniant to say yes and like likes of the guys who have to drive up to london in the traffic can carry on doing so, continuing the horrible pollution while stuck in traffic. Let people continue to struggle, que up, to get to heathrow, because it looks green on paper.

 

 

Hello Barry

 

I don't know of any spawning aggregations of cod that are a targeted fishery, perhaps some body does? I catch cod with roes in them then they suddenly disappear and return a month later with no roes where they go I don't know, I don't know whether they are even catch able while they are actually spawning I have never heard of large catches of cod that are running with spawn, so no I don't think it would make a difference, if you wanted to protect egg carrying cod then you would have to stop fishing from November to February perhaps March in some places, There would have been a lot of very unhappy anglers just off Harwich today if a ban was introduced .

There has been a large closed area in the Irish sea approaches (Trevose Head)

during spawning time for several years part of the cod recovery program, not made the slightest difference.

 

I presume you are talking about the Varne.

 

Again I doubt it would make much difference, exactly the same has happened to some of the offshore banks a bit further North, one was heavily trawled the others that are to steep and rough were not, the fish have disappeared from all of them at the same time so I believe it is to do with feed, the fish we caught on those banks were always stuffed with small sand eels now it's rare to see sand eels in fish and the same as the Varne there are plenty of fish close by on the ground and wrecks which are fished just as hard as the bank ever was. You think those cod were permanent residence of the Varne ?

[wurzel]

The following year we saw trawlers working the Flamborough grounds dumping 80% of their catch on a dialy basis , arguing that they needed to catch something to stay in business. regrettably there was no management system in place to react to this situation and I fear that no lessons had been learnt from this. What happend was total decimation of a potential real recovery of the cod stock because they were murderedand wasted one year too early. Would an MCZ have saved these fish?

 

Cleeclive

 

Hello cleesclive

 

I can also remember those years and others along with the reports of large amounts of discard.

 

 

Not sure I agree " total decimation of a potential real recovery of the cod stock" The Flambough grounds are only a small area compared to the total area teeming with those codling and the fishing rose and fell at more or less the same rate for the long line fleet in this area, as far as I know there was no huge decimation of small codling by trawlers south of the Humber.

 

I can't argue that it doesn’t help and I agree they were "murdered and wasted one year to early" more like two years to early.

 

I once watched a slide show and lecture by a scientist, by altering the position of 120ml square mesh escape panels he was able to eliminate all white fish discard under 40 cm , he had been mainly working with the prawn fleet. This was 4 years ago at a North Sea RAC meeting, I've never seen or heard of him since.

Would I be a bit cynical if I said that initiatives like this that leave little room for other and more management get pushed under the carpet by those that need to manage ?

 

Quote

The facts are that every fifteen to 25 years there is a very strong year class in other words a very successful breeding year, which may be due to climate or the lack of a key predator at the larval stage.

 

 

Successful breeding years got further apart which is not good for a real recovery,if it ever got to 25 years I think cod would be in trouble. perhaps it will change back to having them every 5 or 6 years like when I first started sea fishing.

[big_cod]

There is a meeting comeing up shortly regarding closed areas charter skippers invited its going to very interesting .

 

paul.

Edited December 28, 2009 by big_cod

[cleeclive]

Hello cleesclive

 

I can also remember those years and others along with the reports of large amounts of discard.

 

 

Not sure I agree " total decimation of a potential real recovery of the cod stock" The Flambough grounds are only a small area compared to the total area teeming with those codling and the fishing rose and fell at more or less the same rate for the long line fleet in this area, as far as I know there was no huge decimation of small codling by trawlers south of the Humber.

 

I can't argue that it doesn’t help and I agree they were "murdered and wasted one year to early" more like two years to early.

 

I once watched a slide show and lecture by a scientist, by altering the position of 120ml square mesh escape panels he was able to eliminate all white fish discard under 40 cm , he had been mainly working with the prawn fleet. This was 4 years ago at a North Sea RAC meeting, I've never seen or heard of him since.

Would I be a bit cynical if I said that initiatives like this that leave little room for other and more management get pushed under the carpet by those that need to manage ?

 

Quote

The facts are that every fifteen to 25 years there is a very strong year class in other words a very successful breeding year, which may be due to climate or the lack of a key predator at the larval stage.

 

 

Successful breeding years got further apart which is not good for a real recovery,if it ever got to 25 years I think cod would be in trouble. perhaps it will change back to having them every 5 or 6 years like when I first started sea fishing.

The trouble with selectivity paneles is that selectivity scientists make a living researching their performance and they always like to have another project funded just to ensure that the statistical analysis of ther data is correct and they get a different result. You know how it works!!!

 

The other problem is that selectivity devices work quite well when fishing is light but as soon as you get into some heavy bulk fishing most technical measures be they selectivity devices or mesh size suffer a severely reduced level of effectiveness.

 

The stock assesment scientists who are the strongest group politically tend not to have a lot of faith in selectivity devices and prefer to dispose of fleets , quota allocation or fishing opportunity and let econimics sort out the consequences.

 

Re the Flabborough stock masacre, that is definitely what it was off Flamborough head for a couple of years with a lot of Scottish boats alongside the local fleet during 97 & 98 feeding a lot of gulls

[Jaffa]

Hello Barry

 

I don't know of any spawning aggregations of cod that are a targeted fishery, perhaps some body does? I catch cod with roes in them then they suddenly disappear and return a month later with no roes where they go I don't know, I don't know whether they are even catch able while they are actually spawning I have never heard of large catches of cod that are running with spawn,

 

Hi Peter,

 

I have no idea if the spawning aggregations are targeted these days but they certainly used to be by plenty of east coast Scots boats; it was an annual bonanza for the boats that knew when to be in the right place. The landing records at places like Aberdeen and Peterhead will show these very clearly as the catches were almost exclusively big codling/cod and loads of roes, taken from grounds like the Devils Hole.

 

My experience is in pre cod quota days, when the fleet was at its height but it seems daft to think the aggregations would no longer be a target given their worth. A lots changed up here though so i don't assume it is stil the case.

 

 

Chris

[big_cod]

The trouble with selectivity paneles is that selectivity scientists make a living researching their performance and they always like to have another project funded just to ensure that the statistical analysis of ther data is correct and they get a different result. You know how it works!!!

 

The other problem is that selectivity devices work quite well when fishing is light but as soon as you get into some heavy bulk fishing most technical measures be they selectivity devices or mesh size suffer a severely reduced level of effectiveness.

 

The stock assesment scientists who are the strongest group politically tend not to have a lot of faith in selectivity devices and prefer to dispose of fleets , quota allocation or fishing opportunity and let econimics sort out the consequences.

 

Re the Flabborough stock masacre, that is definitely what it was off Flamborough head for a couple of years with a lot of Scottish boats alongside the local fleet during 97 & 98 feeding a lot of gulls

 

Clive 97 ans 98 saw hugh amounts of fish taken off flamborough head thousands upon thousands of boxes of cod were taken down off the head end that area has never recoverd my son worked on one of the local boats and they were working off the head and he told me what was going on it was shamefull there large amounts of dead codling comeing up in the codend which had been thrown back because they werent upto say a medium the big boats were dumping them over the side as there was that much fish with each haul they were nt bothered with anything under a medium our local top boat our lass 2 does extremly well working off norway she is breaking records at the moment with over 1000 box landing for only short fishing times well that was the scale of the fishing with the big scotch boats down off this coast in 90ss they couldnt belive what they were catching just how rich these grounds were with cod somebody has a lot to anser for we aint getting large amounts of juvenile fish anymore the simple anser is you have to the fish to produce them in the first place with decrease in fishing effort things may take a turn for the better but what boats are left are pair trwaling most of the time which is in clear water 10-1 catch rates against a single trawl so if you are talking about effort there still plenty at certain times of the year.

 

Wurzel says that cod disapeare when full of spawn they go well off the bottom to breed i have seen vidios of cod spwaning which clearly show they are they are many fathoms up from the sea bed quite often they will gather up in large shoals on the bottom just before they start there breeding process at the end of the day its a good job they do go off the bottom just to keep out of harms way.

 

paul.

 

paul.

Edited December 29, 2009 by big_cod

[barry luxton]

Hello Barry

 

I don't know of any spawning aggregations of cod that are a targeted fishery, perhaps some body does? I catch cod with roes in them then they suddenly disappear and return a month later with no roes where they go I don't know, I don't know whether they are even catch able while they are actually spawning I have never heard of large catches of cod that are running with spawn, so no I don't think it would make a difference, if you wanted to protect egg carrying cod then you would have to stop fishing from November to February perhaps March in some places, There would have been a lot of very unhappy anglers just off Harwich today if a ban was introduced .

There has been a large closed area in the Irish sea approaches (Trevose Head)

during spawning time for several years part of the cod recovery program, not made the slightest difference.

 

I presume you are talking about the Varne.

 

Again I doubt it would make much difference, exactly the same has happened to some of the offshore banks a bit further North, one was heavily trawled the others that are to steep and rough were not, the fish have disappeared from all of them at the same time so I believe it is to do with feed, the fish we caught on those banks were always stuffed with small sand eels now it's rare to see sand eels in fish and the same as the Varne there are plenty of fish close by on the ground and wrecks which are fished just as hard as the bank ever was. You think those cod were permanent residence of the Varne ?

 

Hello Wurzel, regards for the season to you, it's all hypothetical because the green lobby, the government and ngo's who are all directing this next round of misery, this time not only for commercial but also the rsa. The reason being, don't matter what commercials put forward, nor the rsa, can you trust the suits organising it to get it right, You have only to look at their track record.

 

The bit about protection of the habitat is a good one, shame some of the ngo's who have spent a long time and the public's money coming up with their 'jewels' have chosen a lot of areas that can't be trawled in any event, whats that all about. Along with their 600,000 co-op shoppers, prince charlie, sounds just like a stitch up to me. They won't stop as they are also looking for 30% of the ground to be protected. This is what the 'main stakeholders' need protecting against. Is this the same group that the AT are endorsing, how encouraging, more of the same then.

 

Anyone know how much of our money defra have spent this year?

 

Didn't mention cod spawning grounds as i don't know of any, certainly the bass spawning grounds in the western approaches aught to be considered, following tagging of the same, they eventually spread out throughout the channel, so yes i would consider that breeding area, there are still enough areas where both commercial and the rsa can fish for them on an equal footing. Would i consider it as permenant, no i .......... wouldn't.

 

 

Although there are areas up and down the channel that hold the same, yes the second area i would consider is the varne, how did you guess again i couldn't tell you if they actually live there all year, however there are the areas where they feed all summer, mainly crab, with three or four year classes. don't know about the winter as we give it a rest for obvious reasons. The varne also hold sand eel and blonde ray, so yes as a rsa i would be prepared to see pressure taken off part of the varne to see if it could make a difference. Would i like to see it permanant, no i bl@@dy well wouldn't unlike the likes of the do gooders and those who think they are doing good. The varne used to hold onto a fleet of charter boats, when the cod went so did the boats, much the same as the commercial sector all this summer there was only one weekend charter boat out of folkestone, shame really, in my mind. I don't think the varne is fished as hard as it was, lots of small french boats, they are after the bass and look at the codling secondary.

 

And i do agree with you as regards to one minute they are there the next dissapeared, feed yes but there must be more than that, why would say pollack dissapear from the wreck marks on mass to return some time later, after they have spawned? however this year we saw large pollack up and down the channel all through the summer, to me that was unusual.

Edited December 29, 2009 by barry luxton