Someone Is Listening

[Guest binatone]

and then deduct how much it costs to run.

Not with you on that one bob? Do you mean how much it cost to police or what?

[Leon Roskilly]

Very interesting Leon. Thank you for giving me this information.

I noticed that when valuing the commercial industry they only give you the value of the fish landed.

This is a poor way of valuing an industry. As regards what money it actually generates.

And what industries it actually supports.

 

 

Hi Binatone.

 

In valuing the worth of the commercial sector, it can be expressed in 'downstream value' and 'upstream value'

 

The first hand value at landing is the downstream value.

 

That is what is used to buy and maintain the boats and gear, the fuel, the mortgage, the crews wages etc and the cost of all supplies and the businesses that supply the catching sector, the price of the beer that the crew drinks when ashore, and the food they feed their kids etc etc.

 

'It all comes out of the cod end'

 

 

Upstream of that is the business that takes those fish, transporting, processing retailing etc which is dependent on the landed fish.

 

It gets very difficult to value that accurately.

 

For a start, the upstream value of fish landed in a foreign port is not part of the UK value.

 

Then, although it is often claimed that the catching sector supports an onshore processing sector worth x millions, by far the greater part of the fish processed by processors and retailed in the UK comes from fish which is imported.

 

If the dastardly plan of the eveil foreigners to completely destroy the UK catching sector ever succeeded, most of those upstream industries would continue with barely a hiccup, as they process and sell products imported from other fleets.

 

And when all the fish have been caught by Wurzel, people still need to eat, so instead of processing and selling fish, it would be sausages and turkey twizzles that would keep those upstream industries going.

 

So, the downstream value, what comes out of the codend (or wurzels nets) is probably as accurate estimate of the value of the catching sector as you are going to get.

 

Tight Lines - leon

[Ken Davison South Wales]

Hi binatone

 

Then of course there is the grey area, small boats that could be registered as commercial boats but do not fish on a commercial bases. I.e. they catch as much as they want but for recreational purposes only.

With out wishing to appear rude the above quote is one hell of a joke Yes they catch fish but one would have to stretch the point to breaking point to call that recreational.

 

I could say that an average trawlers expenses for a weeks fishing would run at about £5000 depending on what he caught, as the more he catches the more he has do pay for landing etc.

 

How does that £5000 break down roughly, fuel, port fees, wages?

[Guest binatone]

Hi Binatone.

 

In valuing the worth of the commercial sector, it can be expressed in 'downstream value' and 'upstream value'

 

The first hand value at landing is the downstream value.

 

That is what is used to buy and maintain the boats and gear, the fuel, the mortgage, the crews wages etc and the cost of all supplies and the businesses that supply the catching sector, the price of the beer that the crew drinks when ashore, and the food they feed their kids etc etc.

 

'It all comes out of the cod end'

Upstream of that is the business that takes those fish, transporting, processing retailing etc which is dependent on the landed fish.

 

It gets very difficult to value that accurately.

 

For a start, the upstream value of fish landed in a foreign port is not part of the UK value.

 

Then, although it is often claimed that the catching sector supports an onshore processing sector worth x millions, by far the greater part of the fish processed by processors and retailed in the UK comes from fish which is imported.

 

If the dastardly plan of the eveil foreigners to completely destroy the UK catching sector ever succeeded, most of those upstream industries would continue with barely a hiccup, as they process and sell products imported from other fleets.

 

And when all the fish have been caught by Wurzel, people still need to eat, so instead of processing and selling fish, it would be sausages and turkey twizzles that would keep those upstream industries going.

 

So, the downstream value, what comes out of the codend (or wurzels nets) is probably as accurate estimate of the value of the catching sector as you are going to get.

 

Tight Lines - leon

And if that’s what you honestly believe Leon you surprise me.

 

 

Hi binatone

 

 

 

With out wishing to appear rude the above quote is one hell of a joke Yes they catch fish but one would have to stretch the point to breaking point to call that recreational.

How does that £5000 break down roughly, fuel, port fees, wages?

What would you call it then?

As fore expenses the crew get nothing till the expenses have been paid.

[JB]

To Jaffa.

 

Hi Chris,

I know we have disagreed about sandeels, possibly because we are looking at it from a different perspective. However, I agree with a lot of what you have said on this forum. And find it interesting reading.

 

Several times you have mentioned the lack of big fish and the problems this may cause to the stocks recovery. Again I can only speak for cod as it is 99% of what we catch. There has been a definite reduction in big cod caught on angling boats in our area over the last 8 to 10 years. You know my area of operation. I have to use all of it, to try and keep my customers satisfied with quality and quantity of cod.

 

The main areas charter boats have found big cod over the past 25 years has been on wrecks. Yet within my working area, over the last six years there are hardly any commercial gill netters catching cod on wrecks.

 

Within a 40 mile radius of Whitby, from north to south east, there are only angling boats working the wrecks; with the possible exception of a very few Hartlepool gill netters, which now may not be working at all. (I only mentioned them, to cover all possibilities.)

 

In the same direction, between 40 and 100 miles off, only I work the wrecks. Beyond that, there is only myself and 3 Grimsby gill netters fishing the wrecks, but two of the Grimsby gill netters have been on guard duty all summer. Occasionally there are three part- time Danish gill netters, who fish approximately three days a month to get their quota in. So, all in all, given the thousands of square miles in this area, this is a minimal fishing effort.

 

In the past I have put the lack of big cod down to the lack of correct nourishment and consequently the fish not growing to its potential full size. I would be interested to hear your angle on this subject.

 

JB

[Bob Jerunkel]

Not with you on that one bob? Do you mean how much it cost to police or what?

 

Well just say for example the commercial fishing industry was worth 100 million pounds.

Then say it costs 150 million pounds to run the commercial fishing industry.

That means it is actually costing the country money just to have a commercial fleet.

I dont know what the figures might be.

The above is just an example of what it might be.

The running costs would include sea fisheries officers and committees, DEFRA people, CEFAS scientists, Fisheries minister, etc.

At the moment sea angling doesnt cost anything to run.

Maybe it will when we get licenced but our licence fees will offset the cost of running the joint.

[sam-cox]

plus they pay very little tax on fual and most are zero rated on VAT so they put very little back into the econermy to pay for all the back up servises it takes to goven them.

[Ian Burrett]

H John

I believe that there has been a forced negative evolution of fish stocks

 

with genetics if you breed a 40 pound cod with another 40 pound cod then the offspring will be likely to turn into 40 lb plus cod.

 

A 40 poud cod will produce 8-10 million eggs

 

Correct me if i am wrong but Cod used to breed at 4-5 pounds and now I have seen some full of Roe as small as 1.5 pounds. These fish will never grow into 40 pounders as there genetic make up has changed to allow it to breed earlier.

Also they will only produce 1-2 million eggs

 

The folowing goes someway to explaining the cod demise

 

Big Fish Important in the Gene Pool

 

June 23, 2005 — By Reuters

LONDON — Anglers chasing big fish and leaving the small fry might be doing far more harm than good according to marine scientists in the United States.

 

Charles Birkeland at the University of Hawaii and Paul Dayton at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California have discovered that big fish are vital to maintaining populations, and taking them does crucial damage.

 

Not only does the fertility of big females increase dramatically compared with small fish, but the offspring of big fish tend to grow bigger and faster than those of little ones, New Scientist magazine reported.

 

This means that taking the big fish weakens the gene pool by effectively favoring the fish that grow more slowly and stay small.

 

Source: Reuters

[Leon Roskilly]

From the Net Benefits Report - Section 3.4.1

 

http://www.strategy.gov.uk/downloads/su/fi...fits_s03.htm#bb

 

Fishing changes the mix of species in the sea and this can have a significant impact upon the ecosystem structure. Fishing has the potential to selectively kill large animals from species like cod, and removing them may allow the expansion in numbers of smaller species which they previously ate. Analysis of the catch in north-east Atlantic fisheries suggests that the average trophic level of the catch (the average number of links in the food chain) has dropped from 3.6 to 3.4 over the past 40 years.

 

Fishing pressure is changing the genetic composition of wild fish by preferentially selecting smaller, faster maturing individuals, as shown in Figure 3.15. The long-term effects of such genetic drift are not known but might well reduce resistance to any future environmental changes, including climatic change, which could increase temperatures in southern England by up to 1.5°C in the next 15 years (Hadley Centre, 2001).

 

Commercial fishing has a large impact on marine ecosystems, affecting commercial species, valuable habitats and biodiversity, which are protected under UK and international law. Current knowledge of the workings of marine ecosystems is low, and the long-term costs of such damage hard to assess and calculate. However, it is a reasonable assumption that they will reduce the resilience of the ecosystem to future environmental perturbations and climate change.

 

 

Those paragraphs are followed by a graph (Figure 3.15: Mean age at maturity for North Sea cod (both sexes)

 

Which shows how the Maturity Age for North Sea Cod has gone down from around 10-11 years between 1930-1950 to around 8 years old in 1980

 

 

Tight Lines - leon

[wurzel]

QUOTE

and then deduct how much it costs to run.

 

I've always said DEFRA was nothing but a huge burden on the taxpayer.

 

I think theres a lot of ifs and maybe's with that gene pool waffle, sound like some more scientists after more grant money.

 

I am sure that there are enough very large cod in the north sea to replenish the stocks if conditions become favourable, last spring we had a few weeks of very cold north winds suddenly we started to catch some large cod 20 to 35 lb, so were did they come from? were did they go? I don't know and the scientists deffently don't .

 

Hello John,

I found that anchoring to the wrecks and useing large baits prodused a much better class of fish, I was wondering if you had tried it.

You say that the size of the cod you catch have been smaller, I wonder if this is also true of the cod around the many oil rigs, where there is no fishing and a mile exclusion zone, pahaps one of the stand by vessels would know.