Someone Is Listening

[Guest NickInTheNorth]

Hi John, some very simple questions for you.

 

Are there as many fish in the sea as there where say 30 years ago?

 

If yes, then why can the scientists not find them?

 

If no then where have they gone?

 

Has the technology for locating fish at sea changed much over the past 30 years?

 

Has the catching abilty of commercial fishing boats changed out of all recognition over the last 50 years?

[sam-cox]

There are fewer commercial fisherman her now in the Thames Estuary than there was 10 years ago.

Now we have lots more thornback ray than then. The problem that we have hear is with the bass, although there are lots more bass than ever before they are mostly small. I think this is because a lot opf the commercial fishewrman who havent totally packed up have down sized to small boat and now fish close inshore.

I heard yesterday that a local fisherman has been catching up to 9 stone per day with a few good fish in with the mostly 36cm fish.

This is just one boat I know of at least anouther 3 doing the same job.

This pressure inshore can not be a good thing, the creeks and rivers where this netting goes on are the very foundations of our fishery and should be left to anglers with bag limits.

[stavey]

I've seen one theory that reckons big channel cod may be doing well off the back of discards from the channel fishing industry; any thoughts on that?

 

Cheers, Chris.

 

You are talking about my neck of the woods their chris, with respect mate i think your being a little naive to even give that notion a thought, for a start their is no big channel cod stock left and as for discards the only thing that is getting fat on these is the bloody sea gulls that are now in plague proportions here.

[JRT]

I think the refusal of the pro-commercials here to admit that there is any kind of a problem other than DEFRA, anglers and environmentalists picking on them defies belief!

There are very fewer sizable bass about than ever before - fact. There is virtually no control or policing of inshore fishing in this country and many of the inshore fisherman I have witnessed are nothing more than Peduncles in boats.

 

Yet another example on Saturday morning. A mate and I flyfishing on the south coast just before dawn. When my friend hooks into a fish. Then we are lit up by powerful spotlight from a small fishing boat. Next thing we know these w***ers are laying nets 50ft infront of us!! They only cleared off after we threw rocks at the nets and noted their number. I call the EA and reported them as netting is not allowed there and have heard nothing, typical. When it got light we saw them pulling nets up further out. Not 1 fish was thrown back. They would have sold all the legit ones at the dock and put all the undersized fish in the back of the car to be sold direct to the restaurants. Zero policing and zero risk to them.

 

You reap what you sew. I'm sick of all the hard-luck stories. Time for change.

 

JRT

Edited November 7, 2005 by JRT

[wurzel]

Hello NickintheNorth

 

I would also like to answer your questions,

 

Are there as many fish in the sea as there where say 30 years ago?

 

Yes, not the same fish as cod are scares but there are no shortage of bass, dover soles. dog fish(including sm hounds) skate the sprat boats had a very good season, plenty of herring although they seem to have moved a bit further north. the shrimp boats at Lowestoft are doing ok. although cod are scares there seems to be a showing of codlings in places, I heard a charter boat say he had 30 all around 2 -3 lb today, dispite what M.P says I heard of a beach match over the weekend,a bit further south than his, and they weighed in record amounts of codling, bass and dogfish so over all not so bad on the south east coast

 

If yes, then why can the scientists not find them?

 

I can't be botherd with this one

 

If no then where have they gone?

 

Or this one

 

Has the technology for locating fish at sea changed much over the past 30 years?

 

Not that much, bigger boats with sonar equipment a little pahaps, but not your avarage boat, we all had plotters and fish finders, they were paper printout machines that took up half of the wheelhouse , and then the DECCA took up the other half, but they were just as accurate most of the time, dawn and dusk were some times a bit dodgy with the decca signals.

 

Has the catching abilty of commercial fishing boats changed out of all recognition over the last 50 years?

 

Obviously the ability has changed in 50 years, what industry has not. out of all recognition I'm not so sure, some of those old steam trawlers had some grunt and could pull a fair net. With the herring drifters, there were a hell of a lot of them, where as to day just a handfull of large boats. We've seen the same with the beamer fleet 25 years ago it was not unusual to see a dozen boats working localy, mostley they were old coverted sidewinders, over the years they have been scraped or in some cases sunk, now you have the so called urocutters, efficient power wagons, but you rarely see more than 3 or 4. so in many cases the boats have inproved but there are a lot less of them, Other than not long lineing any more,I have not realy changed efficciency much in 25 years. only the speciece has changed.

[wurzel]

Quote

I'm sick of all the hard-luck stories. Time for change.

 

I'm quite happy with my lot in life, it's you lot that seem full of hard luck storys,

 

Quote

Not 1 fish was thrown back

 

Pahaps they only caught large fish, or did you actually see loads of under sized fish in thier net?

 

Are you sure they were fishing illegally? what did the fisheries office say?

 

Hello Stavey

For once we almost agree, I think there are still a few cod, couple of Hasting beach boats recently got fined for landing to many.

Also who is supplieing all the discards? do you ever see many large trawlers working off your neck of the woods.

[Barry Scholes]

Sometimes we need to stop and question what we are doing!

 

Is it true that in the UK, Europe, and indeed the rest of the world the market requirement for fish is not being met?

 

If the UK commercial boats caught more fish could they sell it?

 

With such a huge worldwide market demand, then why is there less and less fish available on the market?

 

Should we not bother about our fish stocks? The response from the commercial sector is that there is nothing to worry about, they convince themselves that all the supplied information is just propoganda and scaremongering.

 

Charles Clover writes: "The fact that the sea is presided over by lunatics who believe there should be commercial fishing in 100% of the sea breeds a culture that is corrosive.

Two erroneous beliefs have been allowed to flourish.

First, that you can cheat biology.

Second, that you can keep people happy in far-flung communities in the west of Ireland, Scotland and Spain by allowing them to fish, when the gallop of technology means that this year maybe only half a dozen people in the village can fish sustainably, and next year it will be four."

 

BACK TO THE FIRST QUESTION ABOVE!!!

 

Regards

Barry

[wurzel]

quote

With such a huge worldwide market demand, then why is there less and less fish available on the market?

 

Are there less fish on the markets then? recently Ive seen reports of record landings at Peter Head, the same for SW ports. Some places like Lowestoft market there are less fish, not because of less fish in the sea, but because the larger boats have been forced out of the business, they have been bought by the Dutch and are still catching the same if not more fish and landing it in Holland.

 

 

Charles Bloody Clover belongs to a much more corrosive culture than any fisherman.

[Guest binatone]

Hello Benatone,

What frustrates me most is the total misconception of commercial fishing by the general public, which is mirrored by most on this forum,

So often when I get asked " what do you do for a living then? It always go's like this " What, you go fishing for a living " yes " oh! is that possible? there's no fish left ," I spend half my life explaining that dispite what they have seen on tv or read in the press, I can and do catch enough fish to earn a reasonable living and there are no sighns of it ever not being so. Except for the intervention of DEFRA and now anglers.

As on this thread the Grand banks are usually mentioned, every body is under the impression that the cod stocks have been totally wiped out, it's what they have been told by the scientists and constantly dramatised by the enviromentalists as well as jurnalist's like Charles Clover. I'm not sure what happened, all I know is that 5 years ago a ex crew member (to escape an ex wife) went aboard a Portugese ship for a year, fishing the banks he says they had no problem catching cod , he's talking of hauls of 10 ton a go.

I see the new hate campaign is targeting bottom trawling, it started with a isoalated case of a bit of damage to some cold water reef off of N Ireland , if the truth was known the trawler responsable probably cocked up ,( a bit like the green peace ship recently,) tore his net to pieces, marked the spot and will never go there again, But now in a very short time the enviromentalists are sceaming that all bottom trawling is distroying the grounds making it inhabitable by any liveing creature, it must be true, green peace says so, even Charles Clover, an expert on these maters insists it's true, so you get anglers on this forum posting that all trawling should be banned and so the snow ball builds momentum.

The truth is that generations of fishermen have been trawling the same grounds over and over and there is no evidence of barren lifeless sea bed anywhere,not even in these parts that have been constantly worked by the dreded beam trawlers.

Funny how sand and gravel dredgeing hardly gets a mention.

Gill nets, now theres a subject that gets anglers in to a frenzie. the inpentratble wall of death that surrounds the British Isles killing every thing that swims near it, I quote Charles Clover "As we were returning to the slipway , the gill netsmen were going out to collect their nets all along the coast : up to 1,000yrds of death that will account for nearly all of the big fish. And these will be sold, probably outside the tax economy, for a few pounds of pocket money."

I pointed out to him that all the boats that he was refering to were lobster potters and did not own a yard of net between them, in fact I was the only boat at the port that used gill nets and I do all my work off shore, the only boat that worked close to the shore was further down the coast , he works a few gill nets ,herring nets, lobster and welk pots selling his catch from a stall on the promanade.

He reckoned I was lyeing because all the boats had net gards on them, he was referring to heavy pipeing used to protect the gunnells, He would not have it any ather way. The damage is done every one who reads the article believes him, then you get an enviromentalist reads it and blows it up to even bigger proportions, the snow ball builds momentum yet again, I get accqused of knowing nothing,not living in the real world or just bored and winding you all up.

 

Binatone's right about DEFRA it's a monster that needs feeding and it's going to swollow you anglers up hook line and sinker.

 

8 codling to 7lb from the shore in daylight, that don't sound so bad, @winter@ what are you doing wrong?

 

Weathers easing a bit here, I had better check the forcast, mind how you go Binatone,

Wurzel.

We don’t seam to be getting very far do we?

I can understand the frustrations of recreational fishermen to a certain extent, I mean there is a fine line between fishing and standing on the beach looking like an idiot, but at the end of the day if you catch nothing or very little then who is to blame.

Is that what it’s all about? There’s also a fine line between an attitude problem and thinking clearly. If you have got it in your head that commercials are to blame for everything that happens in your past time hobbies then al I can say is don’t believe everything you think.

We can go round and round in circles, day after day on this forum; I don’t honestly know what to say anymore. I am a commercial fisherman who loves angling so I accept that some days I am the pigeon and some days I am the statue. I only hope that one day they find a solution to what they are looking for. I have its easy.

Keep having a go at what you believe, be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind.

Remember wurzel, all truth goes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Then, it is violently opposed. Finally, it is accepted as self evident.

Good fishing mate hope that the weather is better with you than it is with us.

[sam-cox]

Are you guys honistly saying that the fishing is equall to what it was 30 years ago?