Fish Driven from North Sea

[A Norfolk Boy]

Spanner don't know what the exact temps are but water is at its densest at 4 degrees Celcius, so at depths over Xm then the temp is more than likely 4 deg C.

[kentangler]

Just to really cheer you all up, take a look at this lot!

http://www.heatisonline.org/Oceans.cfm

[big_cod]

The reason the sea birds are starving has a lot to do with industrial fishing,sandeels are caught by the thousand ton why is this practise is still been allowed is beyond me,if there is a shortage of food for these birds ie globel warming or over fishing these birds are starving and something has to give.

[Guest jay_con]

yeah the birds lives are giving by the looks of it while the fat cats bank accounts get bigger

[wurzel]

Big Cod,

I can only go on what I saw and experienced at whitby my self, I know that if I had caught half what they said I had caught, it would have been twice what I actualy caught.

 

With the mesh sizes trawlers have to use for cod these days discards should not be a problem any more.

 

what bait did the catfish get caught on? the ones I gutted only ever had sea urchins in their stomachs , ugly critters, but quite tasty though.

[SeaDooDavid]

Well said Big Cod!. Where I work, I watch trawlers all day on my radar which covers the Irish sea from the Cumbrian coast out to the Isle of Man. The amount of commercial boats out there is unbelieveable!. My screens are dot to dot with boats, Irish / foreign / local, some HUGE factory boats!. I hear them talk on their local marine channels about the catch and the "returns" and it is very worrying. Only when you can see a view like the one I get, can you really appreciate the amount of fish taken from our waters~~~~Scary I think!. So far, as a kayak / shore fisherman, I have taken...............................................NONE!

[Guest jay_con]

I thought we had a problem with the local fleet untill jaffa posted that pic of a big trawler from the shetlands. Too many far too big boats on the water chasing ever decreasing numbers of fish.

[Jaffa]

big_cod:

The reason the sea birds are starving has a lot to do with industrial fishing,sandeels are caught by the thousand ton why is this practise is still been allowed is beyond me,

Big Cod, I used to think that too, and its a common enough opinion among many UK commercial fishermen, I've met, as well.

 

I've changed my mind over the years, as the evidence just does not show that its fishing that's causing these crashes in the seabird colonies.

 

Now they are discovering that North Sea sandeels are in fact a multitude of seperate stocks that tend to be localised. All the work I've seen suggests there is no match up between where the fishing is going on and where the local sandeel stocks are collapsing !

 

I think even the RSPB, are beginning to accept that whatever is happening to the seabirds, it has little or nothing to do with fishing.

 

The scale of sandeel fishing is huge; about half of all fish landed from the north sea, but it has been for a long time. The areas they fish tend to be very specific, and those are just not the only areas where stocks seem to be crashing.

 

I know the fisehery scientists/managers get their estimates and figures wrong at times, but somethings up when the Danish Industrial fleet can't even catch half its quota.

 

I guess its no surprise given the sudden change in Plankton species thats going on.

 

An ecosystem shift in the north sea is happening and it seems to be happening fast

 

Another aspect is that, given that the whitefish fleet has been halved and is stuck in port half the month, net meshes have been drastically increased, it must be the case that discards must be way down on what they were 2 or 3 years ago.

 

What has that meant to the millions of seabirds that rely on discards as a big part their diet? More big changes. I wish I did believe that it was really about overfishing

 

[ 17. May 2005, 12:06 AM: Message edited by: Jaffa ]

[Toerag]

Ken Davison South Wales:

Hi All,

What I don't understand is the cod on the southern wreck marks all year round.

They're not there all year round. The Bristol channel & needles get cod in winter but the wrecks only hold pollack and ling. In summer cod move onto the wrecks. As someone else said, the pictures in the magazines would have you believe that a lot more cod are caught than really are, it's just that everyone likes to see a big cod. There are also a lot less that there used to be, I know of one channel wreck which produced up to 2000lb of good (20lb+) cod per trip 25 years ago, now you never see any cod there. This is a wreck that's not netted either.

 

Sea temperatures - daily updates here:-

http://129.13.102.67/wz/pics/brack5.gif

[Guest jay_con]

Jaffa.

 

I know you will rubbish anything I say that is not backed up by science. But wouldnt you expect fishing for sandeal with the current effort would have some impact on the sandeal stocks????? You cant take that amount of fish from the sea and expect it not to. In turn the food source is not there for the birds and so they starve to death.

 

Are the sandeals being caught or are they dieing as a result of global warming?

 

As for you saying the boats cant catch thier quota . What exactly does that mean? I bet that guy from the shetland (overfishing of makeral) was under quota on paper.