Overfishing of Cod predates trawlers

[Leon Roskilly]

wurzel:

I am not sure what has happened to the log books for fish merchants,it's in the bin I hope

It first crops up as a consultation here:

 

http://www.defra.gov.uk/corporate/consult/fishsales/

 

Like most changes in the pipeline, it seems to have been rolled into the DEFRA 'Sustainable Fisheries Programme', which is the project that has bought together all stakeholders to discuss the implementation of the Net Benefits report.

 

In this document: http://www.defra.gov.uk/fish/sea/sfp/trans...transparent.pdf

 

It states:

 

"3.4. The possible way forward Fisheries Departments have already developed plans for the registration of buyers and sellers and have recently issued those plans for consultation. The Commission is currently undertaking pilot projects to test the reliability of electronic logbook reporting systems. If successful they will introduce a proposal for the introduction of such systems to the EU fleet."

 

There are a lot of changes being discussed under the 'Sustainable Fisheries Programme'

 

See http://www.defra.gov.uk/fish/sea/sfp/

 

Details of the various work groups, and the minutes of the work groups are available here:

 

http://www.defra.gov.uk/fish/sea/sfp/meeti...tings/index.htm

 

(It's worth reading through that lot, there are a lot of new ideas being tossed around which are quite likely to be implemented)

 

In the minutes of the 2nd round of the Fishing Industry Reform Working Group

 

http://www.defra.gov.uk/fish/sea/sfp/meeti.../050119-min.pdf

 

It states:

 

"28. The Strategy Unit had concluded that the focus of enforcement should shift from the sea to the land, principally through the introduction of the registration of buyers and sellers but also through other techniques such as forensic accounting and risk profiling. The Fisheries Departments were already taking this forward."

 

The response that has been prepared is now with Ben Bradshaw with a possible release scheduled for April.

 

However, if a General Election is announced, the government has to go into 'purdah' and will not make any major announcements until after the election (if they win!), and may then be delayed further if a new Fisheries Minister is announced in a post election re-shuffle.

 

Once the minister has released the report, work will start on implementing the recommendations.

 

Tight Lines - leon

 

[ 10. March 2005, 10:50 PM: Message edited by: Leon Roskilly ]

[Guest stevie cop]

I don't have any doubt that fish will out survive us as a species. It's seems amazing to me though, just how much we have been able to upset the balance in such a short space of time.

 

What are your thoughts on a Cod moratorium? They say that the fishing was better than ever after the end of world war two due to the fact that the fish were largely left alone for 6 years. It would be interesting to see what effect a 5 year moratorium would have on Cod stocks. Then we would know for sure whether their declining numbers are down to global warmimg or p*ss poor management. If they did recover, with what's left of the British fleet, it could probably become a sustainable fishery if managed properly this time around.

[wurzel]

Hello Jaffa

Cris I think you are getting a little mixed up here with the deep water fishery,the vaga

Was not a deep as in off the continental shelf deep water fisher,a fishery of which I know nothing.I am not even sure if they catch monk fish with the scabberd and other strange fish.

 

The vaga was a successful boat and along side the quay looked huge, but 200 miles off Scotland in a gale of wind she would be just a tiny speck on a huge ocean.

 

As for the monk fish, I read in the fishing news

that fishermen were having big problems with the small quota because of so much fish on the grounds, usall story they either have to dump it over the side or smuggle it ashore, also I met a Shetlander at a meeting reasently and he told me that they were finding monks every where and he had never seen the like before.I think they are finding the same on the south west grounds as well.

[Jaffa]

Sorry Peter, did jump around a bit from deep water nets to trawling for monk!

 

I have no problem with the Vega and good luck to the guys that took the huge risk and chance to try her. I remember her being bought after she'd laid idle for years because the company system could not make her pay. That bunch of Shetlanders bought her and many laughed and just waited for it to be a disaster. They proved them wrong and through skill and hard work made it pay, doing a lot for the local economy at the same time.

 

The anglers myth of a corporate scottish fishing fleet is not yet true; so far they can't compete with the share system!

 

I remember that New Years gale in 1992; I was going from house to house in Lerwick, as you do, and my girlfriend was picked up off the ground by the wind and moved a fair old way, houses lost their leeside windows as they were sucked out by the vacumn caused by the windspeed. It was something else and I'll bet the Vega was a bloody frightening place to be that night.....

 

They did open up a lot of new grounds though, along with a host of other new high powered trawlers. Monkfish (and squid at Rockall) were a prime drive for that as they were non quota and I'd assumed its those grounds the boats opened up that most the monk are being found on now; the figures I've seen from the marine lab (2004) seem to back that up. I still suspect thats the case.

 

Its years since i've been involved though so time to do some digging.

 

Shetland's North Atlantic college has been producing some interesting stuff. Monks tagged and released off Shetland have turned up in Faroe and Iceland suggesting this is possibly one huge stock that is quite happy to move from the continental shelf, down into the deep ocean and up again. On the minus side they are slow to mature, their body shape hardly helps in avoiding catching the immature ones and they are now worth a lot of cash.

 

Whats the story with the SW stock? I saw a reference to it in a parlimentary debate where the Shetland MP asked Bradshaw what had gone wrong with the scientific assessment. What was wrong?

 

If monks are either increasing in number, or coming up the shelf in increasing numbers, what do you believe or suspect is going on?

 

 

Cheers, Chris

[wurzel]

Hello Steve (I just had to look up moratorium)

It didn't do any good at the grand banks.

I think most of the cod fishing after the war was done at Iceland, I know of reports of huge amounts of haddock in the north sea at that time though.

I am pretty sure there was little commercial cod fishing on the south east coast,A couple of old timers (Wiskers was one of them) I have spoken to say they never caught many cod angling localy before the 60's.I should emagine there was always cod on the rough ground at Whitby but in what quantity I don't know, Pahaps sombody else has some info on cod fishing around the coast just after the war.

 

It would be dificult to stop just cod fishing.

[Leon Roskilly]

Steve Coppolo:

They say that the fishing was better than ever after the end of world war two due to the fact that the fish were largely left alone for 6 years.  It would be interesting to see what effect a 5 year moratorium would have on Cod stocks.  Then we would know for sure whether their declining numbers are down to global warmimg or p*ss poor management.

A few things to remember Steve.

 

When the oceans were in a 'pristine' state there were vastly more fish, in fact vastly more sea creatures, than we could ever possibly imagine today.

 

As soon as man started to harvest shellfish and turtles etc from around the shores, he began to change the marine ecosystem.

 

First fish spears, then with nets he made more of an impact.

 

But when he was able to go afloat, the damage really started, even with primitive boats and a technology consisting of fisherman's luck.

 

By the time that we went to war, a huge amount of damage had already been done, but what you really have to remember is that fish stocks then were no where near as bad as they are now.

 

By today's standard it was more of a boom than a recovery.

 

But that boom has made an impression on our beliefs.

 

That no matter how low you fish a stock, if you leave it for a while it will recover.

 

That is a very dangerous belief which gives a comfort zone to those who choose to ignore scientific advice.

 

'If we're wrong, well it won't be the end of it'

 

The Grand Banks have shook the faith of everyone in that theory.

 

Ten years plus on, there's still no sign of a recovery. What is going on?

 

Well there is no one simple answer.

 

We have already discussed how a spawning biomass consisting of mainly juvenile fish is not nearly as valuable as a spawning biomass with all ages represented.

 

Or how the gene pool is depleted once you are relying on a small number of mature individuals to produce all the fry for the recriuitment fishery, and a reduced gene pool destroys the ability of a species to adapt to environmental change.

 

Or Jaffa's point that things may be worse than that when you are dealing not with one stock, but several stocks that are fished when they have intermingled.

 

Then there is the 'ecosystem' effect.

 

Squirrels need trees. They bury nuts and forget where they are buried so new trees are encouraged to grow, and the range of the forest is extended.

 

Rabbits need grassy plains, so they nibble away at any saplings, holding back the spread of new forest.

 

So, in effect they are species at war over territory. If something happens to either population for long enough, the ecosystem on which they depend is changed, and it will be a long, long time before they can recover, if ever.

 

One of the reasons why the Grand Banks failed to recover is polar cod. These are small gadoids of just a few inches.

 

Atlantic cod eat them, and they in turn eat the eggs and fry of Atlantic cod.

 

So long as Atlantic cod are able to eat sufficient polar cod, their spawn and fry are protected, but once their numbers drop below a certain threshold, the polar cod take over and the Atlantic cod cannot get back on top.

 

In the North Sea, substitute whiting etc for polar cod and you can see why, once cod have been fished below a certain limit, they may never recover.

 

But then other species thrive, with cod removed as a predator, and the food that the cod biomass would have consumed available, other species thrive. Haddock, Nephrops?

 

But what is clear is that a process called 'fishing down the food chain' begins.

 

First one species then another is fished down below a point where real recovery, in a realistic time frame, becomes impossible.

 

And if the knock on effects of overfishing was not enough of a pressure, there are other environmental changes taking place that only worsen the situation.

 

It's not just one stock that is in jeopardy, its the whole ecosystem.

 

Now to fishermen, the disappearance of a species is not such a tragedy.

 

There are other species to move onto, and they are used to the natural fluctation of different stocks, as natural short term and long cycles in climate and ocean currents take effect, as el Nino jostles with el Nina.

 

If cod disappears, then there's a living to be made from haddock, if they are allowed.

 

(And if they are not, they will anyway. Rules are there to be ignored and broken, and fishermen with their familiarity with the sea and the fish believe that they are the ones qualified to say what rules they need to obey and which ones they need to break to maintain their profitability)

 

But now environmentalists and fishery scientists are beginning to understand that no stock exists as simply an 'island'.

 

It affects and is affected by other stocks, by other non-commercial creatures and the very environment itself, in a complex web of interaction and dependency.

 

The virtual disappearance of such a dominant predatory creature from the ecology and environment of the North Sea, is going to have effects far beyond the profits to be made from fishing, although ultimately they too will be detrimentally affected.

 

(and for a relatively short while, fishermen have become the dominant predator, bringing about all kinds of ecological responses, not in a stable way, as nature is able to respond to, but in a destabilising manner, because of the relative speed and continuation of their adaptation as the technology available increases)

 

Now the phrase 'ecology based fisheries management' is beginning to creep in, often used, but not widely understood.

 

What it means is that no stock can be managed in isolation (as everyone is now used to), but the entire ecological effects of the whole fishery must be considered.

 

So, cod is not just an economic resource for the fishermen, but an important biological asset, performing an ecosystem function, perhaps a cornerstone species.

 

Lose it and it's not just a question of switching effort to another species, but the crumbling of the whole pack of cards could be accelerated.

 

Can we save North Sea cod?

 

Maybe.

 

And it's the terrible long term consequences of what can follow if we don't that worries ecologists, not the short term profits to be made from fishing haddock.

 

As Wurzel says, you can't leave cod alone and fish for something else, at least not on the same grounds as cod swim. You still end up catching (and dumping) cod.

 

The only protection is to close the area where cod are trying to recover completely.

 

That means denying fishermen the opportunity to get at those plentiful and profitable haddock.

 

And unless overall fishing effort is reduced, which means fishermen finding other investments and other jobs, effort is simply displaced onto other species and into other areas, perhaps hastening the process of 'fishing down the food chain'.

 

Is it worth it to save cod that may now be doomed anyway (whoever is to blame)?

 

Can we take the terrible risks associated with the consequences of writing off North Sea cod?

 

Fishermen needing to make profits, environmentalists are trying to stop an environmental tragedy.

 

Who will have the loudest voice and most influence.

 

And if we don't get it right, unforgiving and ruthless nature waits to take the matter out of our hands.

 

Tight Lines - leon

[Guest jay_con]

Thing is guy's you cant really compare post war to now.

 

The figures for now must be a mile out due to all the black fish, and who knows what was in the see all those years back. If science is lacking now what would it have been like 60 years ago?. The boats diddnt have the same technologies at hand back then either.

 

If they went to sea in 1945 with 1 of todays supertrawlers they probably would have sunk the boat with all the fish - It wouldnt have lasted long though. Pair trawling would have emptied the see in a few years as it has now.

[Leon Roskilly]

@winter@:

The figures for now must be a mile out due to all the black fish

There is a tendency to rubbish statistics, especially when they are used as a basis for imposing restrictions, often on the basis of "they are based on data that we supply and we know how much fiddling goes on, so we know those stats are rubbish"

 

Which indicates a regrettable lack of understanding of statistical theory.

 

Very little management data, either in fishereies, or elsewhere is based on a single dataset, which is good considering that most sources of data are flawed, and often manipulated by those with an interest in them coming out a certain way.

 

Statiticians involved in compiling fish stock assesments are not simple dunderheads who believe what fishermen tell them.

 

There are various tools that can be used to work out the variance in the figures supplied and what the actual position is. Often quite sophisticated tools that allow for correction by species, locality time of year etc.

 

Want to know what the detection rate for drug crime is?

 

You look at the returns made by chief constables don't you?

 

But aren't they inclined to massage the figures?

 

OK, look at the street price of drugs. From that you can work out how much illegal substance is available. Then you look at how much is seized. Now you know the percentage of drugs confiscated as a percentage of what's on the street, which gives you another clue to detection rates.

 

Now you can work out where the chief constables' returns need adjusting to give the true picture.

 

Of course it's all a lot more complicated than that, but you can see that there are ways to validate and adjust supplied datasets and by validating each set against the others you can narrow the variance until you get a figure on which you have a variance + or -, which is suitable to be used for management decisions.

 

And it doesn't stop there.

 

Having made a management decision based on the corrected data, you can forecast results and careful monitoring shows whether you are moving toward the result or not and at which rate.

 

Any variance here can uncover further factors which allow you to re-correct the base data, or adjust the degree of mangement action to move towards the intended management objective.

 

So even fishermen putting in false returns does supply a useable data set when weighed together with sampling, the price of fish, testing against models, etc etc!

 

(I'm not a staticitian, but I have worked with them and been amazed at what they can do!)

 

So, next time a fisherman says 'the figures are b*****ks, because I supplied them' remember that those who perform the assesments have a fair idea about the validity of the information that fisherman supply and can still use it, and it's the fisherman who is uncomprehendingly talking 'b*****ks!

 

Tight Lines - leon

[Tom Pinborough]

Hi all

received my copy of the charting Progress from Defra

 

below are a few extracts from section 4

 

 

The Fishery Agencies contribution to

Charting Progress - an Integrated Assessment

of the State of UK Seas

(The 4th of 5 Reports)

 

 

Fishing has had the major impact on fish stocks over the past 50-100 years. In most regions, the level of fishing on demersal stocks remains too high and if maintained, will continue to lead to unsustainable fisheries in the long term. In key pelagic stocks, management action has been successful in reducing fishing mortality and these stocks have increased substantially over the past decade.

 

 

Once stocks become depleted, then other sources of mortality such as predation and environmental factors including climate change may become more important. In these situations, it may be necessary to reduce fishing mortality even more severely in order to ensure that stocks can rebuild to safe biological levels.

 

Over the past decade the stock status of some key demersal species has deteriorated.

 

During the past 10 years the state of the stocks for most demersal roundfish and flatfish species in the North Sea (Regions 1 and 2) has deteriorated. Only three of the eight main commercial stocks are within safe biological limits. The cod stock remains at historically low levels and is subject to emergency management measures and a recovery plan from 2005.

 

Fishing affects non-target species caught as by-catch, and has caused reductions in large bodied and vulnerable species such as skates and rays.

 

4.1 NORTH SEA

“In the past 10 years, the state of the stock for most demersal roundfish and flatfish species in the North Sea has deteriorated”. (ICES ACFM 2004 [www.ices.dk/committe/acfm/comwork/ report/2004/oct/alloct.pdf]). In most cases, spawning stock biomass (SSB) has declined over the past 10-20 years to historically low levels while the level of fishing pressure has remained high.

One consequence of the high level of exploitation has been a reduction in the number of old fish in the stock. This has severely reduced the proportion of mature fish in the stock as well as making the fishery highly dependent on the success of recruitment of juveniles to the stock.

In 2004, out of 8 demersal species assessed by ICES, 4 were considered to be harvested unsustainably or at risk of being harvested unsustainably.

 

Cod has been particularly severely affected largely as a result of high fishing mortality over a long period. In recent years recruitment has been among the poorest on record and despite some reduction in fishing pressure, the stock has remained at historically low levels and is suffering reduced reproductive capacity

 

4.2). Cod is subject to emergency management measures, including mesh regulations and effort controls, and will be under a recovery plan from 2004. Whiting has declined continuously over the time period but its status in 2003 is regarded as uncertain. Strong recruitment has increased the stock of haddock to full reproductive capacity but the fishing mortality remains unsustainable and the stock is expected to decline rapidly.

Both plaice and sole stocks have shown steep decreases in abundance since the early 1990s and remain at about a quarter of their peak biomass in the 1960s. Both stocks are harvested outside precautionary limits. In the eastern English Channel sole stocks are considered to be harvested sustainably, but the plaice stock was considered to be at increased risk of suffering reduced reproductive capacity. The status of the herring stock in the North Sea is at full reproductive capacity. SSB has increased following some strong recruitment and is expected to reach over 2 million tonnes, the highest biomass since the 1960s. The North Sea mackerel stock has failed to recover since its collapse in the 1970s. The status of the sandeel stock is uncertain but with poor recruitment in 2002, the SSB is expected to decline and the fishery in 2003 was one of the poorest on record. Similarly, Norway pout has declined since 2002 and is now thought to

be at risk of reduced reproductive capacity. The majority of the North Sea Nephrops stocks are harvested sustaintably

 

cheers

Tom

 

Tom Pinborough

NFSA Conservation Group

http://www.Nfsa.org.uk

BASS Restoration Project Team

http://www.Ukbass.com

Sea Anglers Conservation Network (SACN)

http://www.anglersnet.co.uk/sacn

[wurzel]

Hello Tom, I wondered when you might climb aboard.

Please don't believe every thing you read, espsally from ICES

 

I'll be glad when this poxy weather changes and I can get back to depleteing a few more endangered fish stocks.

 

Leon,Blimey, and I thought I could waffle,mind you A little of what you say makes sence, I think!

 

The problem with most very educated people is they only know what they are taught, they have no experience.

 

I have no faith in ICES Scientist what so ever,

they have been proved wrong so many times,

 

Cris

ICES said the monk fish stocks were in serious decline and cut quotas to the bone, fishermen could not avoid monk fish there are more than any one had ever known, eventually fishermen were allowed to go aboard the reserch vessel, show them how to alter the trawl net and alter the speed they trawled at so as the trawl actuly touched the bottom and hey presto! up comes tons of monk fish, this is not the fist time ICES have cocked things up, in fact I think it happens more often than not.

 

I think Cod stocks are lower than we've ever experienced, but no lower than they have been at some time over the last 10,000 years, So far nobody has convinced me its not a natural turn of events the same as all the other stocks, they come and go some we might make a bit of differance but not over all.

 

I have not experienced the ecosystem effect that Leon mentions and I try to keep to what I know as fact not theory, what I have experienced is a shortage of cold water speciese and a increace in warm water speciese, it's as simple as that and no amount of jargon will alter that fact.