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[spanner]

wurzel,

 

I'm not familiar enough with things on your patch, but in general you sound pretty responsible and fishing in a reasonably sustainable manner. But that is certainly not the case for all commercial fishing activity, and there is plenty of evidience to show a pattern. Often in life there is no single piece of absolute proof, but when a lot of different pieces show a similar pattern it generally means something.

 

For example, yes spurdog are highly migratory, and I am sure we anglers know much less of their movements than the commercial longliners. The boat concerned follows the pack up to north coast and back down again, right now he is on his way down. You chose to infer that the drop off in anglers catches after the boat left was because the pack had moved on and teh boat followed, i.e. all the anglers have to do to keep catching is to be as mobile and as knowledgeable as the longliner.

 

Sound logic indeed, but completely ignoring another piece of evidence.... the fact that it didn't used to be that way. It used to be that big fish, mainly females in pup, would come into the deeper lochs in the late autumn and be there most of the winter. Now after a vistit from the longliner there are very few fish for the rest of the season......so either the presence of the longliner has prompted a migration, i.e they run away scared....or they are significantly depleted.

 

Exactly the same took place with the cod stock in the Firth of Clyde, although I have to admit anglers played their part in hammering them as well....but not to the same extent as the trawlers..... who also destroyed the sea bed while they were at it.....and all the west coast sea lochs as well.

 

Depletion of rays in Luce Bay as detailed by Ian .....

 

By the way, I am including the effects of shell fish dredging etc in the term 'overfishing' as its a commercial activity.

 

You might chose to blame other environmental factors on each case individually, but when so many cases are also accompanied by a sudden frenzy of commercial activity just before the collapse, you can see a pattern emerge. I was going to say every case, but some are due to other factors as well, e.g. decline in common skate was as much due to angling pressure as commercial.

[guernseybass]

Wurzel,

 

straight question - what do you blame for the decline in cod stocks and other species then ? including lower anglers catches of bass in England, Wales, France etc.

 

and what do you think could be or should have been done?

 

GB

[wurzel]

Hello Spanner

 

I understand what you are saying, but you still don't give an answer to solveing the problem as you see it , it is not an issue for the boat lineing for the dogs, he's doing what fishermen do , catching fish, It's the same all over where ever anglers see commercail boats . but when I say the only answer is to ban all commercial fishing you all say, oh no no need for that , we want a commercail fleet. It seem it's like wind farms, they are a good thing but we don't want to see them.

Any stock that is being fished will show sighns of it, you can't be off it, you call it depletion of stocks, I call it fishing.

[wurzel]

Hello gernsybass

 

Quote

 

 

straight question - what do you blame for the decline in cod stocks and other species then ? including lower anglers catches of bass in England, Wales, France etc.

 

and what do you think could be or should have been done?

 

The decline in cod is defently down to climate and not much eles.

 

What other species?

 

I was not aware of lower bass catches, I seem to remember sombody quoteing a angling mag saying " best year ever" I did try to find the post ,

 

In fact The other day when we were waiting to lock in to the marina a welsh holidaymaker, interested in our catch was telling me that at home he had been catching more bass than ever and large bass, he was compareing the fish we had on boared .

 

I dont think any thing should or could be done that would have made much difference, exept banning fishing angling and comercial altogether perhaps. even that would not have made much difference to the cod stocks.

[guernseybass]

if bass catches weren't generally down there wouldn't be bass anglers in their hundreds on the net and in magazine grumbling. bound to be a few good catches, but teh consensus seem to be catches have been falling sharply for years.

 

and if cod stocks were largely down to climate ie. temps in the north sea rising, how does that effect western channel cod ? where the temps have hardly changed.

 

I read a that the theory is that plankton is moving north out of the northsea but i can't see how that affect round here - could it not be also a result of overfishing for sandeels etc that cod feed on. didn't we also have herring shoals too that cod would have fed on - especially up your way.

 

?

 

GB

[Steve Coppolo]

I don't really buy the global warming theory for two reason.

 

First, when you look at North sea temperatures over the last 60 or so years, there have been highs and lows throughout that period. What we are experiencing now isn't that unusual, and as a matter of fact there were periods in the 50's when the sea was warmer than it is now. Yet the North sea Cod never seemed to suffer as badly back then as they are now. The North sea Cod suported far more commercial boats back then, and anglers caught big Cod on a regular basis from beach and inshore boat.

 

Second, we still get the same run of Cod as we've always had. The range of the North sea Cod doesn't seem to have changed at all over the years. The only difference is, the fish are much smaller. Instead of getting a run of 7-10lb Cod with the odd 20 pounder, we now get a run of 1lb codling with the occasional 6 pounder. If global warming was to blame we wouldn't be seeing a run of Cod at all. Their range would have changed.

 

The pattern with Cod is the same as with many more species. They just seem to be getting smaller and smaller. It does appear as if we are seeing what is left after the commercial boats have finished, ie, we are catching those fish that are not big enough to be caught commercially. It seems that no matter how big or successful a year class of fish is, you never see many of them after they have reached the MLS for that species. The last example I can remember is the Codling run we had in 1997. There were thousands of Codling everywhere, yet by 1998 they were all but gone. That 1997 year class also proves that warm water has nothing to do with local Cod stocks. During the 90's we had a run of very hot summers and mild winters. Sea temperatures would have been just as warm then as they are now.

 

My theory has very little to do with global warming. I think technological creep is to blame. We have become too efficient at catching fish. As soon as there are fish around in any numbers, they are caught as soon as they reach the MLS. That leaves us with a sea full of small fish, with the odd survivor dotted around here and there. I don't think this has happened over the last few years either. It has been going on for decades. If you compare fishing methods and technology now with 50 years ago, there will be a hell of a difference. It's the same technological creep that has put many commercial fishermen out of business and kept market prices low. Less technology = less fish caught = more demand = higher prices = more commercial fishermen.

 

Take away GPS and Decca, limit horse power and get rid of monofilament nets, then see what happens over a 10 year period.

[spanner]

wurzel,

 

OK, this is long one.......

 

I don't have a problem with commercial boats unless they are fishing unsustainably or without any consideration for others, whether that is other local commercials, anglers, divers, cetaceans, albatrosses or whatever.

 

I think its wrong for one boat to go in and remove the income for a whole bunch of local boats, whether its a super trawler, super crabber super dredger or whatever.

 

Just like I think its wrong for supermarkets to stomp all over smaller local shops, farmers markets, local abbotoirs etc. It might produce cheaper food but that doesn't stop it being wrong. Its wrong to truck food all over the UK as it has a wider impact on the environment, i.e. emissions. And I think it lowers the quality as well.

 

Same with fish. Locally caught and fresh is best, not some prepacked, dyed yellow, insipid fillet that has been on and off ice for two weeks since is was squashed in a net.

 

One key to that is educating the masses and making people realise that so much modern day cheap food is cr@p. But it doesn't have to be that way and it doesn't have to cost an arm and a leg, but it will cost more.

 

 

 

Sustainability ..... you always seem to have a problem understanding what means in a practical sense for fishing. It means preserving the 'natural order' and not taking too much, and taking it in a way that has the minimum of harmful side effects.

 

What do I mean by preserving the natural order? All species in an ecosystem stack up in a pyramid, the most plentiful small critters at the bottom who get eaten by the less plentiful critters above them, with the apex predators at the top. As you remove numbers through fishing activity you should preserve the shape of that pyramid, just reduce everything by an equal percentage, i.e. you can take more mackerel than you can sharks.

 

It gets more complicated when you consider that the young of an apex predator mught be food for a species below them, different rates of reproduction and growth, ability to adapt, and of course natural changes that are occuring anyway. But if you hammer away at one species you are going to cause problems, and you can cause big problems with only minor targeting of certain key species, like the apex predators.

 

Plus of course this pyramid is not just fish, it includes plankton, crustaceans, shell-fish, worms, the whole shebang.

 

So when 1 boat targets a slow growing shark like spurdogs and continually hammers them by following then as they move around it has a very large impact. He is only doing what he does, fishing, yes, but he is doing it in a very damaging amnd unsustainable way. Its not necessarily his fault, its the whole industry, political system, and society as a whole. We all want cheap fish right, so he has to catch lots to make a living?

 

By the way, despite always appearing to be in pup spudog have a very low reproductive rate. Cod drop millions of eggs every year, spurs have a 2yr gestationand drop between 1 and 20 pups, which then take about 10yrs to reach sexual maturity. It takes more than 14yrs to double a population without any losses to predation etc. That is why they are so sensitive to overfishing.

 

 

So what kind of commercial fleet should we have?

 

Basically it needs to be a lot more flexible. Specialist boats geared for certain species should only target species that can talke that kind of activity, i.e. pelagic. Other boats need to be able to chop and change to suit stock and availability. Some species can only tolerate minimal pressure then they have to be left alone a while, so ideally youd have much more species specific methods of fshing. And only use methods that have minimal impact on the rest of the environment, so ban scallop dredging for a start.

 

So our spurdog longliner should move on and target other species, but there is the current problem. He is not targetting spurs as part of a manged system but because the other species he'd rather go for as he would get a better price, like cod, haddock and hake, have already been hammered before.. So instead of a system where we try to fix the problem we have a system where the fisherman do what they do best, go catch more, and in doing so make the problem worse.

 

And I'll bet he'll say, what problem, plenty of spurs here, no overfishing here mate.

 

 

 

I can't tell what these new methods would be, or how you make a boat efficienlty flexible. I'm not a fisherman. But I think its what is needed and we need you guys to start thinking along these lines rather than ignoring the problem.

[wurzel]

I am beginning to get fed up of going round and round in circles on this forum.

If I don't get off soon I'm going to need therapy to wean me off it.

 

one last go.

 

Iceland have been manageing thier cod stocks to the advice of thier scientists for years, prased for it . tight quotas very big mesh sizes every thing the scientist suggested . now suddenly they are experieancing a drop in stocks around thier coast.

Mean while in the Barents Sea north of Norway, where Russian ,Polish and a host of other nations are fishing totaly unmanaged as they have always done, no quotas or mesh regulations, nothing but whole sale slaughter by huge hoover ships as you would put it.

 

Now can somebody explain why the cod are decreaseing at Iceland but according to reports I hear and read INCREASEING in the Barents sea ?

 

I experience things at sea that anglers know very little about.

Just a change in wind direction can make a difference to daily catches, let alone prolonged warm or cold spells.

I have tried to share that experience with you all.

 

We experience the same thing with bigger boats comeing in and giveing our spots a hammering or even another local boat susing out a mark you have been trying to keeping secret, it happens we learn to live with it. the only answer is to ban all commercial fishing, that aint going to happen so I suggest you learn to live with it as well.

 

Bye

[stavey]

Wurzel if you had to fish with a minimum 120m mesh net would stay in the business or would that force you out? because if the goverment bring legislation maybe next year or two to achieve the goal of a minimum mls of 55cm for bass would this size of net be needed to atleast or bigger mesh?

 

If you dont think it would come to this then let me remind you, no you know the figures that have impressed these politicians they know where and who offers the best finacial future and i am afraid the writing is on the wall for the commercials, not today or tommorrow but whithin 5 years sea anglers will be calling all the shots and if commercials want any future they will have to play the fiddle to the sea anglers tune.

[Guest binatone]

Stavey. We do have to fish with a 120m mesh. We do that because we are targeting cod, we do it because that is what we want to do.

We have signed up to a mesh size management scheme that means that we can catch as much cod as we like within the days we are allowed to fish, but if we are found to have any mesh under the 120m on board our boat then we would be ordered back to port and our fishing license would be suspended immediately for a minimum of seven days.

The reason that we signed up to this scheme was because it gave us one extra day at sea.

As I have said before, the smaller your mesh the longer you are allowed to fish, but it’s what you can target that is the stumbling block.