wurzel

Hello Bob I note that they were former commercial fishermen. You need to spend at least six months as crew on a current successful fishing boat taking a wage from the share of the catch, you then might know a tiny bit about the way they manage their work.

Hello Worms Discard of under sized fish and discard of large marketable fish are two totally different issues and to try and combine the two together only makes things complicated. The issue of undersized discard is being addressed reasonably successfully with a number of initiatives in place and more being investigated, I don't see any benefit to any body or stocks by being forced to land those that are caught. The discard of over quota fish is caused by two reasons, one, what little quota is available is mainly held by a select few who were in a position to buy it. Two, there is a huge imbalance in what the scientists say and what is the actual amount of fish in the sea. There is only one solution that would cure discards of marketable over quota fish and that is to raise the quotas back to what they were 20 years ago, simple.

Do you know different then?

Hello Barry I spoke to Darryl Clifton-Dey, after he claimed that our gill nets were blocking the salmon from entering the river and issued us with a reminder of the fines imposed if caught landing salmon, in the end he admitted that the reason the scheme had not worked was due to global warming and that if it continued at the then present form salmon from all southern rivers of the UK would probably become extinct. That must have been 4 or 5 years ago so it seems he's managed to obtain some funding to carry on for few more years. Perhaps with weather trends on the change it might be that more salmon start to reappear.

Quote Before plan making begins, the MMO wants to hear the views of as many people as possible, from fishermen, residents, conservationists to wind farm operators, surfers and other users of the sea. Is it me or has any body else heard the same statements before i.e. Net Gain, Balanced Seas and Finding Sanctuary? Is it as well as or instead of ? Perhaps just the MMO generating some work for them selves using a tried and tested format .

Looks like good bass conditions to me.

Quote "i think our wealth should shared out not give more to allready privileged" Didn't the Russians try that?

Sacking 99% of the management industry would be a good place to start again. High grading is just selective discarding, it's better than chucking it all away.

Hello ColinW I don't know about an hour out from Grimsby the ground there is a bit soft for cod, a bit further 3 to 4 hours no problem, half a hour from Whitby a little further up the coast would see a boat like the Sea Gull having no trouble filling up with cod if they had the quota. Big Cod might get a bit upset though. Did you not see the part of the program where small boats fishing close inshore from Hastings and Ramsgate were catching and having to discard quantities of large cod? Fishermen still sell their catch to feed their families, and I suspect the bank has always wanted their share first even if the owner was buying a sailing smack for £500 200 years ago. Why do you presume the old methods were any more sustainable than they are know? If fishermen were forced to fish as you claim, the old sustainable way, who would be able to afford a fish supper? As you would have to pay something like £200 a portion at the local chippie.

Hello Glenn I dismissed Callum Bloody Roberts as a rambling idiot years ago along with his chum Charles Bloody Clover.

Sad to hear of HA's demise, I crossed swords with him regularly on here as a commercial fisherman but I always suspected if we had met up for a angling session we would have got on alright.

Hello Bob With the size of the fleet as it has been for the last 10 years I doubt there would have been a noticeable difference. We are in the business of catching fish, to go to sea and ovoid catching fish goes against the grain especially when you are finding it hard to make ends meet. Perhaps you have to decide whether you want spectacular angling sport and no commercial fishermen or good fishing along side a commercial fleet, with your anglers perception there is not room for both and don't forget you accused commercials of being greedy. The amount of fish on Big Cods patch depends on whether he is peddling for custom or slagging off commercial fishermen.

Hello Paul I'm not sure condoning is the right term, I'm a realist and with advances in technology think it's inevitable. The local knowledge issue does not hold a lot of water with me simply from experience of listening to many distress calls over the years, with the present system you try shouting a garbled message only stating some obscure local name and see what response you get .

Yep that looks like technical creep to me, we'll have to wait and see if it works. Seafoods to answer a very much earlier post. By installing the soft ware from the PC on my boat I could instigate an effective grid search any where in the world from my home PC. I think that sir Allen whatshisname must be the worst PR man ever.

Just watched the last episode. like Glenn, Hugh is not able to distinguish between undersized discard and discarding marketable fish,. The EU under pressure from NGO's like Green Peace set out to eliminate discard of undersized fish, they were under the elusion that this was the reason they considered fish stocks (cod) was not recovering at the rate they should be.(more like plenty of work for the management) The response from one EU rep was " you will never totally eliminate discards" he was referring to undersized or unwanted no value fish, he was right it can and is being addressed to minimize to the lowest possible levels but will never be eliminated. Until the two issues are separated he will get nowhere with the EU commission. just add confusion . Another thing Hugh doesn't seem to readily admit is the fact that where ever he goes North of Scotland to Hastings cod are abundant and the main species being dumped solely because the science is wrong and is the main cause of the discarding of marketable fish. Hopefully the public will now realise they have been misled (brainwashed) on the state of fish stocks (cod).

Still the same old Glenn. There is no such thing as a greedy fisherman, only a successful fishermen. The discard of undersized fish and the discard of large market size fish are two very different issues. Challenge was referring to undersized fish as discards and as was seen in the programme there were very few undersized fish being caught, I think challenge had finished on the trawlers by the time quotas had started to be lowered to a point of ridicules small amounts, you are right, the present discard problem has been caused by the clamping down on black fish. Here's some thing for you and others to ponder on. If all the trawlers in the North Sea had landed all the fish they had caught in the last 10 years would it have made a difference to the very good cod fishing that Big Cod has had recently and regularly reminds us of on AN. If so, how?

Hello Bob It's possible to be selective on sizes of fish you catch but very difficult on species, it also varies on areas and fisheries, there are also what quotas and track records you have been allocated for the vessel you have. The vessel in the programme fishing north would have difficulty in finding an area where there are no cod but other fish he has quota for, perhaps some soft ground for a some haddock but would have the same problem with wighting discard and would not find many monk or lemon sole. I can relate to the Hasting boats being closer to home, yes in the height of the summer sole season it is possible to have a relatively clean sole catch but the seasons over lap early in the year there are good amounts of sole turning up of which we have some quota for but there are still plenty of cod on the grounds and at the end of the season it's the same but in reverse, you just can't catch soles and ovoid cod, you can how ever by using large meshes catch cod with out catching sole or much else for that mater having no discards what so ever but with cod considered endangered there is no quota so there is no choice but to fish for sole. Days at sea are perhaps an option for larger boats, so long as there are enough days allowed to be viable, I think days at sea for smaller inshore boats would be dangerous forcing boats to sea when its not fit to do so.

Quote some inshore vessels are now working up to 40 miles of net. Some warped perceptions as well.

Hello Clive Thanks for an informitive reply and a happy new year to you also. When I mentioned bad practices Jens Bojen and other top boats of the time from the ports in the Grimsby area were top most in my mind, there was a time during the later 80's coinciding with a very large year class of O group of codlings, these trawlers were taking huge hauls of very small codling with only a small percent sizeable the rest dicarded, to us long liners it seemed a terrible waste full way to earn a living, even the smaller local trawlers here abouts were landing amounts of just sizeable codling so perhaps with out addmiting it they were doing the same, I'm sure this sort of bulk wastefull fishing had to have an effect on the stock, at least localy if not naitinaly. These days with complusery larger meshes, square mesh escape pannels , closing areas of high aboundent juvinile fish, and of cause lack of boats it would not be repeated. Quote " I also believe that if you re-introduced the fleet of the early eighties overnight and allowed them to fish as of that time most would be bankrupt within a year." I'm not so sure, there are reports of large amounts of cod on the NE coast, if left to thier own devises during the last 30 years and as I believe fish regulate fishermen it's not possible the other way round, some would have gone bankrupt,inflation and the ability not to keep up with the technecal creep would have played it's part, but others would have diversyfied into other fisheries, look at the Bridlinton shell fish fleet, cod stocks decreased but at the same time dover sole, prawns , pollack, coalfish , bass and of late plaice on the Dogger bank have increased considerably, I remember John Brennon investing in a boat and gear to go sole fishing then just as he got it sussed and was earning good money landing good shots of sole and other high value flat fish the minerstry stopped him by issueing a tiny quota due to lack of a previos sole track reckord, this forced him back into a declining cod fishery ending up haveing no option but to take decomission. I have nodoubt he would have cotinuned to make a living fishing for flat fish and others would have followed suit.

Well gentlemen I was asking a very open question without trying to direct the answer. That however was probably not the best option so it might help to glen some info if I now respond with my views. A bench mark of the fifties has been suggested by Ken personally I would prefer to start at the end of the WW2 which was before my time I hasten to add. At this time some say the fin fish had, as a result of reduced effort during the conflict, recovered well and there was a plentiful supply of easy to catch, cheep food for our nation. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- References to recovered stocks after WW2 are to the large off shore fleets of the time and no doubt lack of effort played a part but it also coincided with a massive year class of haddock of which was making up the bulk of catches, this has happened on a few occasions since despite heavy fishing pressure. I think there was still a traditional inshore fleet working during the war although reduced due to younger men off fighting, there are several accounts of fishing boats being attacked or sunk by mines. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- As a very young lad, in the mid to late fifties I recall seeing huge shoals of mackerel from the cliffs of the north Cornish coast. Then in the early sixties we had reports of huge factory ships hovering up these fish at an alarming rate, now that would have been well off shore as we at the time had control of our 200mile limit, at least where that was not impeded with other nations limits. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I remember it well and it was the early seventies and was a yearly event for a few years, unless you are aware of another episode before my time, as I remember the foreign factory ships did not fish but were anchored in Falmouth Bay and the English and mainly Scottish boats catching the fish and off loading the catches to them, I remember reports of large catches of small unwanted fish being caught and dumped polluting the grounds for other fishermen. It never interfered with my fishing and never had a problem catching mackerel either for bait on a charter boat from Brixham or Plymouth also when spending many hours standing shoulder to shoulder on Painton Pier or Torquay harbour wall with every body catching mackerel after mackerel on light float tackle, some thing I used to do regally until the nineties with no sign of a shortage of mackerel. The pelagic fleet now has MSC certification for their mackerel fishery with the stock very abundant. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Any way the thing is it was not long before along came the CFP and our own commercial fleet where having to venture further a field to meet the demand. We joined the French Spanish and other nations in the Newfoundland waters leading some say to the collapse in Cod stock there though other commentators point the blame else where. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I think you will find that we were fishing the Grand banks some 300 years before the CFP and over the years there are several reports of the cod fishing there collapsing with merchants and ship owners going bankrupt, the collapse in the sixties was the first to blame over fishing. _____________________________________________________________________ None the less there were then the Icelandic Cod wars followed by the introduction of CFP quotas all of which would suggest there was an impact on fish stocks. _____________________________________________________________________ Nothing what so ever to do with impact on fish stocks, politics, Iceland wanted the cod for themselves and who could blame them, fish exports are just about their only industry and makes them self-sufficient where as before they were reliant on Denmark. UK boats had been fishing Icelandic and Norwegian waters longer than they had the Grand Banks , I wonder why sail boats no bigger than what we would know consider inshore boats, from ports as far south as Harwich on the east and Fleetwood on the west coast of England voyage that far if as we are led to believe cod stocks were abundant in local waters. The CFP was devised to divvy up the fishing rights of the nations of the European Union (EU) with the UK loosing out big time. _____________________________________________________________________ As an RSA my thoughts are much more local though some of these events will have an effect as will that most unpredictable thing we call the weather along with slight tidal shifts particularly the track of the Gulf Stream. _____________________________________________________________________ At least you are willing to agree that these things do have an effect. _____________________________________________________________________ Inshore commercial fishing methods to have also changed drastically during my life time, with long lines replaced by tangle nets of vast length the introduction of gill nets, which some commentators say can be very selective. _____________________________________________________________________ Gill nets have been used for thousands of years, the introduction of monofilament was the turning point in making them more efficient and easier to use effectively in a wider range of fisheries. All nets are selective in the size of fish they catch which is governed by the size of the mesh, not so much selective on the species. A gill net or any other net used correctly and responsibly is no worse than any other method. _____________________________________________________________________ Chesters 1 makes a valid point also, in that our ability to capture fish is much better than it once was, so easy to conclude then that fish stocks are indeed under pressure and that the commercial effort is having a detrimental effect. _____________________________________________________________________ In some cases it is a valid point, it’s known as technical creep. In most cases technical creep allows you to keep up with inflation and inflation is the cause of demise of many fishermen, I’ve just worked out that the cost of my first house was the equivalent of 10 tonnes of cod that same house 30 years later now equates to 80 tonnes. Years ago it was possible for 3 men in a small boat working a few lines to make a liveable wage as time goes by they can’t, not because they are catching less fish but the earnings don’t go far enough so those that invest in a modern boat that can catch more fish possibly with less crew survive and the normal progression normally means less boats but more efficient, another example would be the old 1950’s herring drifters with ten men on board at to days prices they would not be able to carry enough fish to pay the wage bill but a modern pelagic boat with 5 men is a different story, so instead of hundreds of drifters you have a hand full of modern pelagic boats. As a detrimental effect on fish stocks I’m not so sure, there are so many variables where stocks fluctuate down just as they fluctuate upwards with fishing effort staying the same. It also depends on what species you are referring to and if you are referring to your local patch or to the stock nationally, for example I have no doubt I effect the RSA bass fishing on the areas I fish regularly but no way do I have any effect on the bass stock nationally , bass being an example of being heavily fished for as a non pressure stock (no quota) inshore as well as large boats pair trawling off shore, they are slow growing so we are led to believe vulnerable to over fishing yet the stock has increased in overall terms by numbers and range, then again cod despite savage cuts in quotas and days allowed at sea to fish for them and scrapping most of the white fish fleet until recently continued to decline and cod are very fast growing and capable of producing huge year classes of brood , So what was detrimental to cod stocks fishermen or conditions? Perhaps in some cases in the past with examples of bad practices a bit of both. These days I honestly believe that the Uk fleet as it is would be hardly capable of over fishing the local duck pond. ____________________________________________________________________ On the other hand nature would in some way suggest that things are not as bad as the conservationist claim, with good catch reports by RSA over the last couple of years. French and Spanish commercial boats are a common sight along the twelve mile line here in the south west again a pointer of good stock conditions, or theirs are very bad While that is indeed very true there are still many species no longer caught in the numbers they once were. Halibut in the English Channel now very few and far between Common Skate around the IOW gone 40lb Cod gone and those mackerel shoals gone. Some will say they have simply gone some place else for one reason or another and that these fish are still out there which brings us back to the question are they? Oh yes they are!!!! Oh no their not!!! tight lines Bob _____________________________________________________________________ I’ve had some very good catches fishing six miles off the French coast. For a large French boat twelve miles from your coast is not that far to travel . Spain has traditionally had a large nomadic fleet due to having a very narrow continental shelf so need to travel closer to the UK to catch the species that inhabit the shallower waters, I think Spain is restricted with only a few boats allowed to fish in certain areas with none as yet allowed in the North Sea. I don’t know much about halibut or common skate in the English channel, I do know they are caught regularly other places with just as much commercial activity. Were 40lb cod ever common? There are a splattering of 30 pound fish caught each year, one of 35 reported recently on Anglers Net, if we get anther gadoid explosion like there was during the early sixties, which I think could happen with the recent changes in our weather then 15 or 20 years later 30 or even the odd 40 pound cod would once again become more common. Have the mackerel shoals gone? I was not aware that they have. So at the end of all that waffle I believe they are still there some where in variable amounts as there is no evidence that they are extinct.

Hello Clive I've done a post that I will enter shortly on similar lines, not quite so in depth with the politics. My thoughts on a couple of points you have made . Quote "stock decline for many species" I don't believe this to be true, Cod were in decline from an all time high during the 70's, when any body talks of fish stocks in decline cod is the one species they have in mind, and I believe the EU used this and still are as a battle axe against British interests. Quote " and the use of rock hopper footropes on trawls which allowed no patch of ground to be left un-touched." At the moment I'm reading a book on the memoirs of a retired NE coast fishermen who mentions using rock hopper gear as early as the late 60's, 20 years before your reference to it and it is more of a northern technique for white fish further south and west the hard ground has little attention from trawlers, I once mentioned this to the late John Brennon, the reply " w'll ya can'a dig tha soles out o solid rock" and that's about right with soles being the main target species of the southern trawlers and not a species targeted by many RSA. I personally don't believe the introduction of the MPA's will have much of a noticeable effect on fish stocks in general, a few resident species perhaps will benefit, I also believe that the introduction of MPA's is more to do with job creation for the management as with recent severe restrictions on the inshore fleet means there will be little else to manage in the near future.

I certainly hope so.

Hello seafoods You have just confirmed what Bob was saying, technology has moved on. Given an accurate position and a list of reverent contact information I recon by googling earth even I could instigate a pretty effective rescue any where in the world let alone the UK from my home using a family computer and the house phone. The hard fact is that if you had 50% of your work force sitting around bored silly for 90% of their time and the same out put could be achieved with the remaining workforce you would be looking to cut costs. Why should the MCA not be run like any other private business? It's a sad and some times emotive fact of life and you are right to question aspects of any issues involved in any changes.

Quote So should we conclude that there are netting methods that have little impact and others that do have a very significant impact? Being an RSA rep on one of the governing authorities it would therefore be of use to know which are which, I have my ideas on the subject but would love to have yours I would not know where to start Bob, it would be better for you to let me know your ideas on the subject and I'll try and get it into some sort of perpective

You got that right chesters. Who knows what effects these last winters are going to have and what if they continue the same next year? Some species that have steadily been increasing might well start to decrease and some that have decreased could start to increase, at what point in time do you use as a reference point 30 50 or 80 years ago. The more I think about it chester's remark is about as accurate as you are going to get in this debate.