BASS AND COD IN BEFORE OVER FISHING

[Ian Burrett]

My mistake Ian. Should have said all the fish caught on planet earth. Like you, I've only seen the FAO estimates for fishing and aquaculture production, and have seen no estimates of all fish living on the planet.

 

That said, I'd guess his figures are still several times all the fish on the planet.

 

I wonder if hes mixing up 750 million sandeels (a figure i think I've seen the RSPB use at times) with tonnes?

Chris

 

Hi Chris

 

Yer there's definatley a cock up with figures

The TAC was set to 918000 tonnes in 2003 and to 826200 tonnes in 2004. There's far more than 750-1000 sandeel to a ton so even that doesn't add up

 

Surveys in April and early May showed that North Sea sandeel numbers were just half of the 300,000 million fish required to permit fishing to continue.

[wurzel]

Once could be a typo, 3 or 4 times suggests to me Charles Clover does not know his arse from his elbo.

 

He and others like him cash in on the "State of Fear" Syndrome

[Jaffa]

It seems Mr Glover is not the only one

 

Check out this from the House of Lords:

 

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/l...xt/50616-23.htm

 

After starting her speech with the words,

 

My Lords, we might be few in number but we are high in quality.

Baroness Byford then goes on say :

 

In presenting her case, the noble Lady, Lady Saltoun, drew our attention to some of the unacceptable practices that must be tackled if we are to reverse the devastation of our fish stocks. The use of total allowable catches, which is an inefficient system, results in the throwing away of immature fish and the landing of black fish. The wicked practice of discards continues. Boats are scrapped and replaced by more efficient ones, which, through new technical improvements, catch more fish than those that they replace. The practice of pair trawling catches dolphins and other cetaceans. The garnering of sand eels in the North Sea has taken some 750 tonnes each year and pulped them for oil and meal used in salmon farming. These practices should be ended.

 

God help us all

[Captain Black]

Wurzel said:

But we are not realy dealing with opinions are we, so far myself and other commercials that comment on the BMP on here or in the FN state facts as they have expierenced them, like Steve G claimes he is working amounst French trawlers who will not be effected by the BMP, he will not benifit from more or bigger bass, the BMP will cost him, this is a fact not an opinion. in 35 years I have never encounterd large shoals of over 45 cm bass inshore or in the estuarys IN MY AREA that is fact not an opinion.It will cost inshore bass fishermen a lot of money, another fact not an opionion.

And has Steve G or yourself contacted BASS to help lobby the EU: EU Petition. The offer by the Chairman John Leballeur was carried in Fishing News in November 2005. To my knowledge despite all the protestations about 'Johnny Foreigner' not being affected by the proposals in the BMP no-one from the commercial sector has taken up that offer.

 

As regards shoals of large bass I suppose it all depends on what is classed a 'large' shoal of bass. I have seen, what I would term, large shoals of over 45cm bass - not in recent years admittedly - but then for the reasons I've already stated earlier that's not surprising. However, I did see a shoal in Ireland in 2003 - covering an area slightly larger than an tennis court. They had corralled a shoal of mackerel in a cove and were hitting seven bells out of them - some of the bass were over 6lbs, their sides were coming out of the water as they overshot their prey. Unfortunately they were just out of range of my plugs and I didn't manage to catch one. But the sight was amazing. There was also a shoal of bass sighted harrassing another shoal of makerel along a local pier last year - one enterprising angler changed rods and flicked out a live mackerel and in three casts had two bass one was 5lbs the other just over eight pounds.

 

I'm truly interested in this continual claim that all bass over 45cms immediately head offshore to be caught by the 'foreign' vessels. Numbers of over 45cm bass have declined inshore I don't dispute that, certainly I and my companions catch fewer good sized bass than we used to, but that hasn't always been the case. Is it seriously being claimed that bass have changed their habits.

 

Not at all, I was refering to all the other posts and articles from anglers and thier reprisentatives concerning the BMP.

There's a similar echo from the commercials and their representatives.

 

I still say there are a lot more to stock so called collapse than just over fishing, I have never cliamed heavy fishing pressure does not have an effect on fish stocks, so far in every case of stock so called collapse there is always some other factor that triggers it before fishing takes an effect.

As my son would say . . .'Whatever'

 

I can see this going round in circles. I'll bow to one of your previous posts. Let's see what comes out when the dust of the consultation settles.

 

John

[Snatcher]

Christ Sam 10 f1ckin pages. Too p1ssed to wade through it but here is my input for what its worth

 

The Rhu Narrows back in about1968/69 Getting a bagful of 10lb cod was commonplace. Not sure about the polotics of this but went back the following year and the locals said the trawlers had done Loch Long,Gare Loch and Holy Loch to death

 

Surely Loch Long had to be a no go zone for them!!! the loch is that narrow a team of 2/3 trawlers would empty the place

 

Canny full of Mr Miller now but I bet some of you can remember the "good times"

[Captain Black]

Jaffa said:

Which species is this referring to John?

It didn't say.

 

Jaffa said:

Before you go insulting Wurzel, maybe you should take the time to do some reading and catch up

There was no intention to insult Wurzel - I apologise for the phraseology. Perhaps, I should have claimed that he was misguided (as he did about me) with regard to his views that no fishery collapses have been due to overfishing when they quite plainly have.

 

Jaffa said:

Btw, in the "End of the Line", does Mr Clover use the figure of 750 million tonnes, or 750 thousand tonnes for north sea sandeel catches?

 

In this piece

 

"EU prepares to ban fishing for sandeels in North Sea

By Charles Clover, Environment Editor

(Filed: 19/10/2005)"

 

and this

 

"Food chain fears may end 'industrial' fishing in North Sea

By Charles Clover, Environment Editor

(Filed: 09/06/2005)"

 

He uses a figure of 750 million tonnes, which is several times more than all the fish living on planet earth!

 

It would appear that Mr Clover has the same problem with figures as some commercial fishermen have in filling in their logbooks correctly and estimating the amount of fish in their holds.

 

John

[Steve Coppolo]

Just to reiterate what captain black has said about shoals of bigger bass inshore. I think there is a myth being circulated that once bass reach a certain size, they go offshore never to be seen again by anglers or inshore gill netters. Those circulating the myth say that if the bass MLS is raised to 45cm, they won't be able to make a living because they don't see many bass of 45cm inshore.

 

 

The above picture is of birds working over a quite a big shoal of bass. As you can see, it is very much inshore. The shoal was about 150 yards long overall and about 50yards across and was not unusual. In fact I had been seeing shoals of bass like that for a few years previous to these photos being taken.

 

The fish ranged from 45cm up to 55cm. That shoal of bass might not seem anything special to a commercial fisherman who has seen much larger shoals, but would have kept anglers happy for a very long time if they had been managed properly. By the following year most of them were gone.

[Steve Coppolo]

Just dig this picture out. It is my Dad with one of the bass taken from that shoal.

 

[Jaffa]

Hi John,

 

There was no intention to insult Wurzel - I apologise for the phraseology. Perhaps, I should have claimed that he was misguided (as he did about me) with regard to his views that no fishery collapses have been due to overfishing when they quite plainly have.

I don't accept Wurzels thinking that no fishery collapses are due to overfishing. On the other hand, the examples you highlighted (standard text book stuff taught in fisheries classes 10 years ago) are looking increasingly dodgy now. When the herring collapsed and the boats switched to mackerel I remember many skippers saying it was just the mackerels time. Back then I thought it an ignorant idea but these days it does not look so stupid at all.

 

This from the UN Oceanatlas :

 

http://www.oceansatlas.com/fishatlas/generated/bak00101.htm

 

Within the past year or two, it is becoming recognized that the most dramatic marine fish population fluctuations tend to appear as decadal-scale "regime" changes. For example, a pattern of population increases from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s, followed by population declines after the mid-1980s, seems to have been remarkably widespread and consistent in a large number of marine ecosystems distributed over the world's oceans. During that decadal period, the ocean-atmosphere system of the Pacific Ocean basin seems to have been in an enhanced "El Niño"-type state, characterized by a relaxed dynamic situation in the equatorial Pacific (diminished trade wind circulation, etc.). This relaxed state in the tropical Pacific appears to have been countered by intensified situations in many other regions of the world. It is possible that intensified ecological situations may promote population growth of some types of fishery resources.

 

For example, the mid-1970s to mid-1980s was a period of phenomenal productivity and growth of the major groundfish populations of the sub-Arctic North Pacific which sustained the massive expansions of the fisheries of that region through the period. Conversely, since the mid-1980s these populations are in incessant decline, in spite of continuing elaborate stock assessment activities and state-of-the-art fishery management efforts. The last period appears also to have been particularly productive in the tropical central North Pacific. Total chlorophyll in the water column appears to have increased north of Hawaii. Lobsters, sea birds, seals, and coral reef fishes in the northwestern Hawaiian Islands all seem to have experienced increased production; conversely, since the period ended in the mid-1980s, lobster landings from this area have dropped by two thirds and other biological populations are in a downward trend.

 

In addition, the very large populations of anchovies and sardines that dominate the fish biomass in the major eastern ocean upwelling regions of the world, as well as the northwestern Pacific off Japan, seem to have been rising and falling in phase. Both the Californian and Japanese fisheries grew during the 1920s and early 1930s to peak in the mid to late 1930s. (There were no corresponding landings off western South America because no significant fishing occurred.) Both populations remained extremely depressed for some three decades. The sardine fisheries in both regions then commenced sudden rapid growth near the mid-1970s, the same period in which enormous numbers of sardines appeared off South America initiating a massive fishery in that region. In the period since the Japanese scientist Kawasaki originally called attention to the synchronous pattern, an additional simultaneous reversal in trend has occurred. Toward the latter part of the 1980s, sardine landings in all three systems have begun to rapidly fall.

 

Since the advent of substantial fisheries, anchovy populations have been generally out of phase with the sardine populations in the three regions. Off California, after a time lag of about a decade following the sardine collapse, the anchovy population increased with over 340 000 t being taken in 1981. Off Japan, the anchovy catches grew during low sardine abundance after the initial collapse, attaining maximum levels of nearly half a million tonnes during the late 1950s and the 1960s. The anchovy catches then gradually declined as the sardine population proceeded in its rebuilding phase. Recently, as the Japanese sardine population is declining, extremely large shoals of anchovy are reported.

 

In the Peru-Humboldt Current system off western South America, the fishery for anchovy (anchoveta) peaked in 1970 at more than 13 million t, constituting by far the largest single fishery that has ever existed on earth. It then collapsed to less than 1 million tonnes after the 1972 El Niño, rebounded briefly to about 2 million tonnes for several years, and then fell back following the 1976 El Niño to below 1 million tonnes and remained at this relatively low level to the mid-1980s. The sardine catches were low while the anchovy was abundant, but the sardine population grew during the period of anchovy collapse to the point where nearly 6 million tonnes were taken in 1985, the highest yield of any sardine fishery to date.

 

The fluctuations in the sardine fishery in the Benguela system off southwestern Africa tend to be opposite in phase to those of the three Pacific regions. Here, extensive sardine fisheries began after world war II, peaked in 1968 at about 1.5 million tonnes, and then collapsed. Anchovy catches grew as the sardine catches decreased, reaching about 600 000 t by 1974 and peaking at nearly 1 million tonnes in 1987. Recently a precipitous decline has occurred. Indications from seabird diets, etc., as well as fishery landings, indicate that sardine is now again replacing anchovy as the dominant low-trophic-level fish population of the Benguela ecosystem.

 

Previously, there had been reluctance to denote these alternations as being actual replacements of one population by the other. The question of the time lags was worrisome; sometimes the "replacement" did not begin to occur for a decade or more (i.e., at least several generation cycles) after the other population had collapsed to low levels. Moreover, in an analysis of annually-varved anaerobic sediments in the Southern California Bight, the numbers of deposited scales of sardines in samples appeared to vary in phase with those of anchovies more often than they were opposite in phase. However, as more experience of regional-scale population variations has accumulated, with anchovies and sardines seldom being at high abundance levels at the same time, the evidence for at least some degree of actual replacement has become increasingly convincing. The conclusion has been drawn that regional "regime changes" in relative abundance of sardines and anchovies were initiated in all four regions (California Current, Peru-Chile, Northwest Pacific, and Benguela Current) in the second half of the 1990s.

 

Many other examples can be found of major marine population effects occurring during this same period of the mid-1970s to mid-1980s. For example, this was a period of increasing survival of Greenland halibut, a period of dramatic growth in the lobster landings in eastern Canada, a period of large increase in Newfoundland spawning northern cod stock, etc. On the other hand, North Pacific Albacore tuna appear to have suffered a steep population decline during the period.

 

Chris

[Jaffa]

And has Steve G or yourself contacted BASS to help lobby the EU: EU Petition. The offer by the Chairman John Leballeur was carried in Fishing News in November 2005. To my knowledge despite all the protestations about 'Johnny Foreigner' not being affected by the proposals in the BMP no-one from the commercial sector has taken up that offer.

On the one hand there is an immediate danger to their incomes, followed by the possible loss of the fishery to the French, and on the other they have the "kind offer" from BASS of ;

 

With this in mind, BASS have negotiated and have been given an unprecedented opportunity to lay a petition for such measures before the EU Commission.

 

Its hard to imagine why none of them have responded right enough!

Edited February 6, 2006 by Jaffa