Cod, off the menu

[Leon Roskilly]

I suspect you will merge with what we know as the MFA and with a few reinforcements become quite a police force.

 

The MFA will be subsumed into the new Marine Management Organisation (MMO), which will be based in Newcastle and which will manage mostly all that goes on in the marine environment (not just fisheries).

 

Inshore Fisheries and Conservation Authorities (IFCAs) will replace Sea Fisheries Committees (SFCs) and will have new responsibilities for conservation, as well as fisheries, with new and clearer duties and new powers.

 

As well as County Councillors, the MMO will appoint others such as commercial fishermen, anglers and conservationist to sit upon the new authorities, but with a more stringent selection criteria than currently applies to SFC committee members.

 

SFC Fishery Officers will become Inshore Fisheries and Conservation Officers and will recieve appropriate training including their new duties and (this is the interesting part), will be cross-warrented and work with similar Enforcement Officers employed by the MMO and the Environment Agency (as well as working with police officers etc).

Edited November 22, 2009 by Leon Roskilly

[big_cod]

You will need a licence to crap next its getting more and more like a police state the country has gone mad when there is nobody left to police then what all you be left with is some crazy nut stairing at his sponges.

 

paul.

Edited November 22, 2009 by big_cod

[Guest challenge]

The MFA will be subsumed into the new Marine Management Organisation (MMO), which will be based in Newcastle and which will manage mostly all that goes on in the marine environment (not just fisheries).

 

Inshore Fisheries and Conservation Authorities (IFCAs) will replace Sea Fisheries Committees (SFCs) and will have new responsibilities for conservation, as well as fisheries, with new and clearer duties and new powers.

 

As well as County Councillors, the MMO will appoint others such as commercial fishermen, anglers and conservationist to sit upon the new authorities, but with a more stringent selection criteria than currently applies to SFC committee members.

 

SFC Fishery Officers will become Inshore Fisheries and Conservation Officers and will recieve appropriate training including their new duties and (this is the interesting part), will be cross-warrented and work with similar Enforcement Officers employed by the MMO and the Environment Agency (as well as working with police officers etc).

Always have been cross warranted with the EA Leon and we do work along side the police force on a regular basis.

Regards.

[clem]

Hi Barry. please ask as many questions as you like barry it,s all part of my job. will try and answer them the best i can.

Like I say there are now somewhere in the region of 1800 limited shellfish licences in our district under the by-law they are allowed to work max 10 pots per licence that’s a possibility of 18000 recreational pots in our district. I would say that 70% of all our prosecutions are against recreational fishermen. They have no limit as to how many lobsters they can catch, but are only allowed to take 2 size lobsters per day from the fishery. So there is the possibility Barry of somewhere in the region of 3500 lobsters per day to be removed from the fishery.

There licences the tags they have to have for there pots (and changed every year) and all the administration costs are free. I believe we only charge for administration costs if tags etc are lost and asked to be replaced.

It all just a matter of filling in a form, sticking to the rules. But still we take dozens of cases of either no licence, undersize lobsters, over the limit for amount allowed to go ashore or a mixture of all of the above. We have repetitive offenders who often get caught 4 or 5 times in the same season. Unfortunately we still have to give him a licence when he applies. Hopefully with the new marine bill and the new powers that this will give us to enforce this by-law we can stop such cases.

Regards.

I do not know quite how we are onto crabs but it is my experience that the majority of tag holders do not use them year in year out there are also many that proudly attach them to a pot but never actuall go to sea with it. I do not know anyone who works the full ten pots and if they did work ten pots well they would be over the catch limit most times they came to haul. I know you only gave POTENTIAL numbers John but the actual numbers are tiny but the enforcement and harassment by you guys is way over the top and the cost to the taxpayer to save a few porks must be enourmous.

Paul is right the licensing , bylaws and costs of enforcement is getting stupid. With a change of government on the cards and talk of a serious thinning out of all these Quangos then I feel this is the only option unless the coastlines become a war zone because that is what will happen believe me more rules and regs will not be taken lightly you are talking generations loosing their rights.

[big_cod]

I do not know quite how we are onto crabs but it is my experience that the majority of tag holders do not use them year in year out there are also many that proudly attach them to a pot but never actuall go to sea with it. I do not know anyone who works the full ten pots and if they did work ten pots well they would be over the catch limit most times they came to haul. I know you only gave POTENTIAL numbers John but the actual numbers are tiny but the enforcement and harassment by you guys is way over the top and the cost to the taxpayer to save a few porks must be enourmous.

Paul is right the licensing , bylaws and costs of enforcement is getting stupid. With a change of government on the cards and talk of a serious thinning out of all these Quangos then I feel this is the only option unless the coastlines become a war zone because that is what will happen believe me more rules and regs will not be taken lightly you are talking generations loosing their rights.

 

 

You are right howard lets have some figures as to what all this rubbish is costing and what is going to be truelly gained by it all the money wasted would be far better spent on something like kidney machines in the NHS one of these unviversity baffons straight out of university who was handing out the forms for natural england for anglers to fill in in local tackle shop actually thought anglers fishing in no take zones would actually do serious damage to sponges with there hooks when asked did he know what a northerly gale does on big tide he said what do you mean he was told there is more damage done to the sea bed within 500 yds of the shore with a big northerly swell than any angler could inflict clueless people being paid by the tax payer the worlds gone mad.

 

paul.

 

paul.

Edited November 23, 2009 by big_cod

[clem]

There was one bit of sea last winter when a good friend of mine gathered up 21 size lobsters and a bucket full of porks. No hearsay or made-up numbers here cause I saw them. This was just one small area the carnage would put a Dutch beamer to shame . This is nature not anglers. You are right Paul the countrys going nuts!

[glennk]

The shellfish byelaw is totally biased in favor of the commercial skippers, and rightly so to a certain degree, but at the moment the thing is just OTT. The thing about velvet crabs is ludicrous. You have recreational collectors limited to 10 a day and the amount of time they are of interest to bait collectors is about 2 weeks in the year (Weather and tide dependent) whilst potters working huge fleets smash every velvet they find and put it in the bands as bait, which must amount to thousands or 10's of thousands each week. Had it not been for Nigel getting the Green crab removed from the law we would have been on 10 of them a day too. NESFC needs a shake up because at the moment they are appearing to be the enemy and not the friend of sea anglers. Whilst they are there to protect sea life, they must apply some common sense and logic too.

 

WRT mcz and Robbie Fishers band of merry men, when we met with natural england last year why werent you guys there ? It was down to me and a couple of lads from Filey to fight our corner. Whats worse is you have once a month shore anglers going to these meetings and they are willing to hand over the fishing rights which you treasure. You need to go to these meetings with Natural England and tell them theres more to life than sponges or you can expect to be walked all over.

Edited November 23, 2009 by glennk

[Elton]

You will need a licence to crap next its getting more and more like a police state the country has gone mad when there is nobody left to police then what all you be left with is some crazy nut stairing at his sponges.

 

paul.

 

That wouldn't be quite so bad if they actually went out and did that, Paul.

 

You go out to sea more often than most - how many 'sponge-watchers' have you seen in all your years? It looks like we're in danger of being restricted by a bunch of armchair-conservationists, content to sit at home clicking on 'areas of interest', while you have to steam 40 miles just to get to an area you're 'allowed' to fish in.

[barry luxton]

I challenge any of the do gooders, the knowledgable scientists, defra, mcs, co-op punters to justify why an area should be a total ntz to include anglers, not even rocks or seaweed to be removed. Tell us please, what damage anglers do? Should be simple, as there is plenty of noise coming from them on the internet, plenty of tax payers money being used by these ngo's on the subject. Why an area that is built up with rocks, should have a trawling ban. however who wants to bet on no takers.

[Leon Roskilly]

I challenge any of the do gooders, the knowledgable scientists, defra, mcs, co-op punters to justify why an area should be a total ntz to include anglers.

 

 

First thing to remember is that currently no MCZ that excludes anglers has yet been proposed.

 

And despite the strenuous efforts of the environment lobby to make the legislation disregard socio-economic data when looking at which areas to designate, socio-economics still have to be considered when selecting areas.

 

Second thing to remember is that although it's all very well putting together arguments based on rhetoric, when all parties sit down to make the decisions those arguments need to be backed up with credible information and data.

 

And this is where we (RSA) are weak compared to other organisations with their own particular agendas, and the budgets and resources to do the science, to back their particular arguments.

 

(It's frustrating knowing that if anglers were prepared to get organised and provide the money and resources, we could easily be amongst the biggest players and the hardest-hitters in the game).

 

But without the ability to commission the research needed to support our case, we need people who can use what data is available, and to find the holes in the information and data being used to establish areas which might not be of 'benefit' to RSA (or worse!).

 

As an example have a go at this:

 

http://randd.defra.gov.uk/Document.aspx?Do...03_7653_FRP.pdf

 

(There might be scope for some work in our favour

 

e.g.

 

The link between biomass and recreational values is more tenuous and reasonable assumptions must be made about the quantity of visitor days and their value.

 

Some hard information that demonstrates those 'reasonable assumptions' are far too low, would put us in a much stronger position, as others have done with the initial report increasing the overall cost benefit figures of protecting areas )

 

Hopefully we will end up with a network of protected areas, including MCZs, that will be of considerable benefit to the marine environment and thereby improving the quality of our fishing, with no or very little impact on angling activity.

 

But we can't rely on hope, or unsupported argument to carry the day.

Edited November 23, 2009 by Leon Roskilly