The Good Old Days

[Steve Coppolo]

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Good ole Stevie ....

 

always had an enquiring mind.

 

 

It's one of the required qualities, Ada.

 

I just wondered why you rubbish the idea of cycles, then quote two?

 

They are nice cod in the photo. What year were they caught?

[H.A.]

I just wondered why you rubbish the idea of cycles, then quote two?

 

I thought it would be apparent from my personal observations that the 'good' cod years along the Solent (86 - 90) and more recently ('07 - '08), were NOT natural cycles; merely a species under constant threat from netters, and is a small peak which appears once in a blue moon when odds are stacked in their favour.

 

Cod cycles should repeat every 2 - 4 years, at least, when nature takes it's course with such a fast-growing species in temperate waters, BUT -

 

Stocks: NE and NW Atlantic

 

The most important stocks today, are the Norwegian Arctic stock in the Barents Sea and the Icelandic stock.

The NW populations around Greenland and Newfoundland have declined dramatically.

Vulnerability: High to very high vulnerability

after Cheung, W.W.L., T.J. Pitcher and D. Pauly, 2005

 

www.iucnredlist.org/details/8784

 

Doesn't matter what year I caught those cod, 'cos you'll never see the likes of them again from S Coast beaches or 'oop N'.

 

Edited December 22, 2008 by H.A.

[Steve Coppolo]

Doesn't matter what year I caught those cod, 'cos you'll never see the likes of them again from S Coast beaches or 'oop N'.

 

It would have been nice to know so I could compare your catches with what was being caught up here at that time.

 

Never mind.

[barry luxton]

Another example of previous stock:

 

Tuesday 23rd December - Ted Tuckerman Remembers Britain's Vanished Seas - Ted Tuckerman, the well respected angling writer and broadcaster Emailed today, in response to the article by Malcolm Gilbert. Thanks Ted. As always, your input is greatly appreciated. Ted said:

 

Very interesting, I remember those days well because it was during this time I was presenting angling programmes and in the eighties a Fisheries News a programme for the industry; on one occasion I flew in a fisheries protection plane with a camera crew over the Klondykers off Falmouth, massive boats processing vast quantities of Mackerel.

 

You also mention Turbot, I remember turbot fishing off the Skerries (Start Bay) from the late 1950's when as anglers we could catch several each up to 20lb +.

 

Harry Good who pioneered angling over the Banks had a one day record of around 26 as I remember it, plus Brill and Plaice.

 

I remember how the bubble burst; a commercial boat found where turbot spent the winter, it first came into Brixham with huge numbers and from the following summer the fishing over the Banks ebbed away very quickly, now it is a rare occurrence for a Turbot in double figures to be caught, even small ones are rare.

[barry luxton]

This one that was posted on another forum:

 

This from John Labelleur

 

Devon Sea Fisheries policed Devon & Cornwall coast to lands-end and I do remember drawing alongside a Hull stern trawler which had been displaced from Iceland, when she was hauling her trawl. The stocking to the cod end was approximately 60 – 80 ft and between 12 – 14ft in diameter was bursting with mackerel. I cannot put a true tonnage but about 20 tons estimated.

 

We were engaged in boarding and inspecting and it was the Scots trick to shoot their purse nets and then take a sample of the mackerel catch and if too small slip the haul. Falmouth Bay seabed was allegedly a carpet of rotten mackerel by such practise, as the fish drowned

 

The crewmen on the klondykers, took Falmouth by storm buying up everything from televisions to wash machines to take back home. Week after week this fishery went on with mother ships when fully leaden, conveying their spoils to African countries as well as to the Soviet. The protein contained in a kilo of mackerel was equal to a pound of steak so a cheap way of feeding the masses.

 

It was a regular practise for me to stop off at a wreck when returning from such a trip and fish for Pollack so that the other fishery officers had fresh fish for our young families. Most fish were good size and into double figures with no effort.

 

It was also common practice for angling boats up and down the coast to steam for four hours, fish for two and then steam back to port. 2000lbs of fish was the norm and no one ever gave it a thought that it was not sustainable.

 

I remember a Spaniard using mono nets around the Eddystone lighthouse for the first time and landing very large amounts of big bass into Plymouth. Fish we would all dream about today. The local fishing mafia torched his boat and nets and eventual drove him out of Plymouth. However the success of his use of mono nets, spread like wild fire to what we all recognise today.

 

The technical creep and greed over the last 30 odd years has been the demise of fish stocks with fishery managers, scientist and fishermen equally to blame. We were the proud owners of the finest fishing grounds in the world, but along the way we have not individually and collectively taken the responsibility that went with them.

 

Just some thoughts!!!!!!!!!

 

John L.

[barry luxton]

Yes i know it's another copy from another forum, but i thought it was worth a read.

 

In reply to the Sunday Times article "Britains Vanished Seas" http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/envi...icle5375191.ece Malcom Gilbert wrote:

 

I don’t go back to 1776 or even the 1830s ! --- but a mere three decades ago I personally witnessed our seas teeming with fish, relative to today that is.

 

In the mid and late 1970s I fished on dense mackerel shoals consisting of 1+ kilo fish, from Mullion Island on eastern side of Mounts Bay, right down to Tater Du light house (20+ kilometres) , west side of Lamorna Cove. No matter where you dropped a line (feathers or plastics) you immediately got full lines. These fish extended from 20 meters depth outwards off the land. The tonnage was incomprehensible, but not enough to withstand the industrial fishery with klondykers plus 24/7 landing at Penzance into bulk grain carriers for road transport to Hull where the mackerel were processed into fertiliser.

 

Grey mullet were also frequently seen in huge shoals and caught with seine nets at places like the Scillies, Sennen [visit http://www.peterpuddiphattphotography.c ... 32899.html , Penberth, Porthgwidden (St Ives),. In 1974 I witnessed the whole of the cove on east side of Gurnards Head (west of St Ives) almost solidified with mullet. The shoal extended from right up against the rocks under Gurnards Head east to Carnelloe Rock (900 metres?) and out about 300 metres. They were so thick from the seabed to the surface that there must have been more fish than water. Fortunately, the conditions didn’t allow them to be seined. Very spectacular though with 5-7 lb mullet frequently jumping like salmon leaping a waterfall.

 

As recent as the early 1980s, vast shoals of spurdogs congregated around the south west. Boats that targeted this seasonal fishery with traditional hand baited lines reported shoals ten miles long. Then some clever whoops thought of using mono nets on them. Below I’ve cut/paste a paragraph of an email I sent to a student who was researching the same species on the other side of the Atlantic where they are known as spiny dogfish.

 

Anyway, back to dogfish, I gather you have copies of the Fisheries Report from the early eighties and I will be sending you a newspaper cutting which appeared on March 5th 1982 in Fishing News which is a report of how the port landings were being broken by thirty-foot class boats and on one day alone there were insufficient boxes in Newlyn to land the catches into, they had to be piled in huge mounds down the entire length of the quay. Incidentally, many of them were aborting and even the report refers to the super efficiency of the multi-mono nets which replaced the traditional long line fishery. The traditional long line fishery was one where the hooks were hand baited and the amount of work in acquiring the bait and baiting the hooks for the baskets prior to shooting restricted the amount of gear and what’s more, even when dogs were marking well on the sonar, if they were not feeding the long line method would not catch them. With the advent of nets - where there is no preparation required and, of course, whether the dogs were feeding or not the nets caught them - the increase in fishing mortality was just tremendous, as evidenced by the spectacular unprecedented catches which exceeded sixty tonnes daily for many consecutive days. The only stats I have access to are the normal MAFF stats which are published each year by the stationery office. I have a current copy for the 1998 stats, which shows that in Newlyn there were just 97 tonnes of dogfish landed for the entire year!

 

A superb tasting crustacean, the saltwater crayfish – Palinurus Vulgaris [ http://www.jjphoto.dk/animal_archive/pa ... lgaris.htm ] that is know locally just as ‘craws’ were plentiful up to about the mid 1970s. Originally caught in pots with lobsters and crabs and in tangle nets (old type courelene twine), the craws also attracted commercial divers in the 1960s who reported areas where the sea bed was paved with them. The quantities they were able to collect per dive was testament to the abundance of these wonderful animals. Then, in the mid to late 1970s the tangle gear changed to mono netting -- end of craws! Today, craws are so scarce that they can legitimately be called rare.

 

So there have been huge changes to the ocean’s fish stocks during the last thirty years, let alone the last century. I’ve seen a wonderful photo of fish landed in St Ives harbour being loaded onto horse drawn carts. I guess it was taken during the late 1930s. What is immediately significant is the size of the fish. Huge hake, turbot, pollack, john dory and of course common skate like barn doors which required four or six men to load onto the carts. I must try and get a copy of it with date.

 

Incidentally, during the 1970s, 2 stone turbot (28 lbs+) were regularly caught around Cornwall. Such specimens are rare today.

 

Despite all this evidence, many influential voices within the commercial sector still deny that fish stocks have deteriorated. There was even a book published a couple of years ago called Cornwall Fish and Seafood by Carol Trewin that was highly publicised. Here is an extract from the launch publicity [ http://www.england-in-particular.info/g ... e4-02.html ]. No guesses who the drivers behind these lies were.

 

"Cornish fishing is thriving, and so are fish stocks in the seas around the Cornish coast. If you don’t believe this then look no further than a radical new book on fishing in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly that turns many preconceptions on their head. Cornish Fishing and Seafood reveals the true state of fishing and fish stocks in the far South West, and discovers the thriving onshore industry that processes and handles the fish and shellfish landed by England’s last fishing fleet of any size.”

 

The current state of South West stocks and the question of ‘had they changed’ and if so ‘how they had changed’, was a topic for some prolonged and difficult discussion at the Invest in Fish project. After one particularly acrimonious meeting, one very senior leader of the commercials who has been known to me since he left school, approached me at the bar after the meeting and actually agreed that fish stocks had been decimated but I should understand that it was unrealistic to imagine they could ever be rebuilt to previous levels and if the commercials were to acknowledge the true situation, such an admission would open the doors to even more restrictive management such as reduced quotas. In other words, they know; but they aren’t about to admit the truth. On the contrary, their short term interests are best served by challenging the very notion that stocks are in trouble.

 

Malcolm Gilbert

[H.A.]

There was even a book published a couple of years ago called Cornwall Fish and Seafood by Carol Trewin that was highly publicised. Here is an extract from the launch publicity [ http://www.england-in-particular.info/g ... e4-02.html ]. No guesses who the drivers behind these lies were.

 

Just a wild guess .....

 

her cousin, Elizabeth???

 

Or Essex Ron?

 

[barry luxton]

her cousin, Elizabeth???

 

 

 

 

Your wicked H A. happy christmas.

 

 

Just another thought, her confiscation hearing was supposed to have been delt with in the early part of this year, not heard a dicky bird of the outcome. Has the crown done a quiet deal with her or is it still on going. I am also aware there was two people arrested who where trying to pevert the cause of justice linked with this case, wondering what happend to them as well. Just interested, thats all.

Edited December 25, 2008 by barry luxton