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Discards


glennk

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I would suspect discards for mackerel are minimal

 

 

I've had these couple of emails sent to me, the first from an angling bait supplier:

 

 

"Just to put some perspective to the number of mackerel killed by commercial boats and dumped, I have a story from the late eighties.

 

I was collecting small mackerel (pike bait size) from a vessel landing into Plymouth.

 

The boat was one of the smallest bulk catchers landing most of its catch (larger mackerel) to the big processor, Interfish.

 

My small truck at the time could take about 1 tonne and the agent advised me to be on the quay mid afternoon.

 

Interfish have a fish pump system installed on the quay so the larger fish were being pumped out of the hold directly into the factory.

 

Eventually the pumps closed down and it was my turn for loading.

 

The skipper used what we call a craning net -- a huge landing net suspended of a pulley--- and dipped into the fish hold of small fish, picking up about a tonne in one lift.

 

This was then unceremoniously dropped on to my fish boxes laid out on the quay.

 

I was left to roughly equalise the fish into the boxes and load them.

 

The skipper then asked if I wanted any more?

 

I said I couldn't carry any more and in any case the tonne was as much as I could process in one go.

 

The skipper said "OK, I'll have to dump what's left."

 

He then proceeded to lift five more tonnes and about a further half tonne out of the hold and just let go back into the harbour!

 

Those fish were mostly between 20 cm and 25 cm total length. Say 90 gramme fish.

 

For ease of calculation lets call them 100 gramme fish.

 

That's 55,000 mackerel dumped by one boat on one day!

 

On other occasions, Divers in Falmouth reported dead mackerel on the sea bed up to three feet deep.

 

Trawlers reported they were unable to tow because of dead mackerel spread over miles of ground.

 

I am not saying anglers should not worry about wasting mackerel, but just bear in mind that large pelagic boats will on occasions dump literally hundreds of tonnes if the size of fish in the shoal is wrong -- that's a lot of fish!"

 

--------------------------------

 

"Just as an aside to *****'s point (above), we were carrying out some seabed sampling in Plymouth sound back in 1999, and around the Cawsand Bay area we were getting dead (but fresh!!!) mackerel in almost every other grab (size 0.1m sq), we then put the ROV down to ground truth the benthic grab samples and the seabed was littered with dead mackerel.

 

This was confined to just the Cawsand bay area, we never saw any further mackerel in our other survey areas (Torpoint, Breakwater, Yealm Estuary, Jennycliff Bay)."

RNLI Shoreline Member

Member of the Angling Trust

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I would suspect discards for mackerel are minimal, pelagic trawling doesn't really suffer from much in the way of non-target species discards, only undersized fish if any.

The only info I have to hand is for 2000 :

 

Maatje herring fishery < 1% bycatch around 10% discard

Ordinary herring 2% and < 1%

Celtic sea herring < 1% and 5%

Mackerel - Scottish < 1% and 2%

Mackerel - English < 1% and 11%

Edited by seaside
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Of course if we shut down areas of the seas around Britain to allow stocks to recover, this would not happen. Also please will someone explain to Wurzel why this is necessary. Painful I know, but necessary.

Out of many things I enjoy in life, those that start with an F tend to feature the most.

 

Plea to save our fish. Please visit http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/Seafishstocks/ and sign it if you agree.

 

The one on the right is Trubshaw, the one on the left is Teal.

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I remember reading a report on AN last year about the dutch pelagic fleet. Apparaently they have automaric graders on board which thrw the undersize fish back.

 

Apparently whilst hauling there is a motorway width of dead mackerel as far back from the vesslel as the eye can see.

Hi Ian,

 

If this report is true, i would have to ask was they using the correct mesh size. If they was then this is a problem that needs to be adressed. I wonder if mr bradshaw gets to here about this?

 

cheers barry

Free to choose apart from the ones where the trust poked their nose in. Common eel. tope. Bass and sea bream. All restricted.


New for 2016 TAT are the main instigators for the demise of the u k bass charter boat industry, where they went screaming off to parliament and for the first time assisting so called angling gurus set up bass take bans with the e u using rubbish exaggerated info collected by ices from anglers, they must be very proud.

Upgrade, the door has been closed with regards to anglers being linked to the e u superstate and the failed c f p. So TAT will no longer need to pay monies to the EAA anymore as that org is no longer relevant to the u k . Goodbye to the europeon anglers alliance and pathetic restrictions from the e u.

Angling is better than politics, ban politics from angling.

Consumer of bass. where is the evidence that the u k bass stock need angling trust protection. Why won't you work with your peers instead of castigating them. They have the answer.

Recipie's for mullet stew more than welcomed.

Angling sanitation trust and kent and sussex sea anglers org delete's and blocks rsa's alternative opinion on their face book site. Although they claim to rep all.

new for 2014. where is the evidence that the south coast bream stock need the angling trust? Your campaign has no evidence. Why won't you work with your peers, the inshore under tens? As opposed to alienating them? Angling trust failed big time re bait digging, even fish legal attempted to intervene and failed, all for what, nothing.

Looks like the sea angling reps have been coerced by the ifca's to compose sea angling strategy's that the ifca's at some stage will look at drafting into legislation to manage the rsa, because they like wasting tax payers money. That's without asking the rsa btw. You know who you are..

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Hi Ian,

 

If this report is true, i would have to ask was they using the correct mesh size. If they was then this is a problem that needs to be adressed. I wonder if mr bradshaw gets to here about this?

 

cheers barry

 

Barry,

 

Tried to reply yours in petition to no 10, but can't as it won't let me. Is there a size limit on forum subjects perhaps of 10 pages?

 

Sent you a PM instead with the answer. Please feel free to put it up.

 

H

Out of many things I enjoy in life, those that start with an F tend to feature the most.

 

Plea to save our fish. Please visit http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/Seafishstocks/ and sign it if you agree.

 

The one on the right is Trubshaw, the one on the left is Teal.

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I feel the size limits for landing should be removed, while slightly increasing mesh sizes. By limiting the tonnage landed more fish will be left in the sea. Small fish are landed around the Med, with less effect on fish stocks. It is daft to ban the landing of undersized fish and have them left to rot at sea.

IF YOUR DOG THINKS YOU ARE THE BEST

Don't seek a second opinion.

 

http://www.anglingireland.info

Fish Paintings

Linocut fishy prints..

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Guest challenge
What information is available on discards by the UK fleet of UK species ?

 

Mostly interested in Haddock, Cod and Mackerel but any info on other species would also be appreciated

Why,

Have had a look back through previous threads on here and have not seen a single statement by any person who has had first hand experience of discards that you have believed.

Do you just want people to trawl the internet and find you discard figures that are acceptable to your own way of thinking?

By all means glen have a discussion on discards, but if you ask a question then please give some people a bit of credit for answering you.

Looking through previous posts it seams to start with discards, then if they don’t seam to get the point across it moves on to blinders. Put blinders in your search on here and it makes interesting reading. At least it would be interesting if FN was to read about the accusations that where being made. :)

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