Guernsey Consulting on Bag Limits for Anglers

[Sharkbyte]

Would hate to see this get turned into a national issue like Steve and Sharkbyte appear to want

 

Not nearly as much as the commercials pushing the Trojan Horse. Now it's been posted on a national angling forum (not by either me or Steve) it is, like it or not.

[Jaffa]

Not nearly as much as the commercials pushing the Trojan Horse. Now it's been posted on a national angling forum (not by either me or Steve) it is, like it or not.

 

Whatever SB

[Leon Roskilly]

Consultation Response date has been put back until 30th November.

[alderneyangling]

QUOTETo get accurate stats should have been easy which is why I find the Guernsey Sea Fisheries here very puzzling. There are two paid officers in Alderney that have never boarded a boat in the time I have been here to inspect stocks (been here three years nearly) and as the boats come in to port and radio permission from the harbour office to berth the opportunitys have been there to find out exactly what is aboard these vessels.

 

How would boarding the odd charter boat be useful if the charters are highly unlikely to be breaking any laws ? (as i take it would be the case at present).

 

 

 

 

Hi Chris,

 

Not sure how to take quotes out of quotes etc but hope you get the gist of the above.

 

Exactly my point as you said, if Fisheries had boarded on a regular basis when the boats come in to Alderney everyone would know exactly what was on board instead of all the speculation. It wouldn't cost a lot of money because they are on site and talking to the skippers on the radio to permit them to berth to unload passengers. Information would have then been collated over many months, even years and landings could accurately be reported. From there you would have better working relationships, education for all etc, instead we have this awful situation of sniping, threats to business' and everybody with a pulse passing an opinion based on what they think they know.

 

Which brings me on too Steve Good's comment about being offered fish to sell. Not sure who he is, where he is based and what he does for a living but comments like that only fuel the specualtion and doesn't add to the facts. Quite clearly nothing was ever offered otherwise surely he would have the courage to offer details.

 

Regards,

 

Mark

 

Regards,

 

Mark

[Norm B]

QUOTETo get accurate stats should have been easy which is why I find the Guernsey Sea Fisheries here very puzzling. There are two paid officers in Alderney that have never boarded a boat in the time I have been here to inspect stocks (been here three years nearly) and as the boats come in to port and radio permission from the harbour office to berth the opportunitys have been there to find out exactly what is aboard these vessels.

 

How would boarding the odd charter boat be useful if the charters are highly unlikely to be breaking any laws ? (as i take it would be the case at present).

Hi Chris,

 

Not sure how to take quotes out of quotes etc but hope you get the gist of the above.

 

Exactly my point as you said, if Fisheries had boarded on a regular basis when the boats come in to Alderney everyone would know exactly what was on board instead of all the speculation. It wouldn't cost a lot of money because they are on site and talking to the skippers on the radio to permit them to berth to unload passengers. Information would have then been collated over many months, even years and landings could accurately be reported. From there you would have better working relationships, education for all etc, instead we have this awful situation of sniping, threats to business' and everybody with a pulse passing an opinion based on what they think they know.

 

Which brings me on too Steve Good's comment about being offered fish to sell. Not sure who he is, where he is based and what he does for a living but comments like that only fuel the specualtion and doesn't add to the facts. Quite clearly nothing was ever offered otherwise surely he would have the courage to offer details.

 

Regards,

 

Mark

 

Regards,

 

Mark

As I and others have said Mark, "Put up or shut up" but perhaps his whole intention is to add petrol to the fire.

[Toerag]

Sharkbyte - nice use of the search facility!

 

 

 

OK, interestingly, we have people on here condemning the bag limit proposals yet same people condemn others on here for catching shedloads of fish? What do exactly you want???? No wonder the commercial guys are beating anglers proposals when the anglers don't even know what they want!

 

Everyone knows the flatfish stock situation has got worse, the charterboats and commercials know this. Without any better explanation it's fairly obvious that angling pressure has done the damage. Now many years ago the 2 UK charterboats and local charters doing the trips were co-existing quite happily with the commercial guys, and there was enough fish for all. I think this is called a 'sustainable fishery' . Now we have the situation where

In 1998, 11 vessels visited Alderney and fished for 177 days, this increased to 20 boats and 356 days in 2004 and for 2006 there are at least 50 charter boats offering trips to Alderney.

and surprisingly enough, there's a lack of fish. Those that have done the alderney trips, how often do you see commercial boats on the banks? You might see 1 or 2, but there isn't exactly massive commercial pressure is there?

 

So what do we do about it??? Close season, bag limits, days at sea restrictions or increased size limits?

 

Increased size limits won't make that much difference in my opinion as anglers do put the small ones back, and discards by the trawlers would increase. Close season - the fish will simply be caught once the season's finished, they don't exactly disappear from the banks like the bass do.

 

Days at sea - how would you work that one out?

 

 

 

I re-iterate my point - is 2 bass, 2 pollack, 2 cod, 2 turbot, 2 brill, 2 rays and 2 bream enough for personal consumption? You can effectively remove cod and pollack from that list as they can be caught on the way back to the UK. Stoaty, Maverick & Chappers have all stated that they possibly wouldn't exceed those limits anyway even on a 5 or 7 day charter due to a lack of fish or effort to catch them, or by returning what they don't need, so where's the problem? All the aforementioned species are fairly hardy and are easily returned, and I thought the whole point about angling holidays is that you have a good time fishing away from the pressures of home and work, you catch a new species, or a good specimen, or have a good fight with a fish or few, and you get enough fish to keep the missus happy. If going home with 2x 5lb turbot, 2x 4lb brill, 2x 10lb ray, 2x 2lb bream, 2x 4lb bass and as much pollack and cod as you can catch isn't enough, then you can't call yourself a recreational angler beacuse that's way more than your family can eat. And this is what it's about, drawing the line between commercial and recreational fishing. It's very hard to complain that the commercials are taking all the fish when we're are also doing the same. I consider these proposals part of putting our house in order.

 

 

 

What if the proposals are thrown out? What will happen then is the marks will be fished out and that will be the end of that anyway.

 

 

 

As for naming and shaming - would you name someone and run the risk of finding your boat torched, or sunk? Because that's the way a lot of fishermen think, simple revenge. Steve has written letters to fishing news, and I think his vessel is fairly well known to anyone who reads the paper. I don't think I would run that risk.

Edited September 2, 2006 by Toerag

[Steve Coppolo]

Hello Toerag.

 

Did you buy that commercial licence after all?

 

Regards

Steve

[Jaffa]

QUOTETo get accurate stats should have been easy which is why I find the Guernsey Sea Fisheries here very puzzling. There are two paid officers in Alderney that have never boarded a boat in the time I have been here to inspect stocks (been here three years nearly) and as the boats come in to port and radio permission from the harbour office to berth the opportunitys have been there to find out exactly what is aboard these vessels.

 

How would boarding the odd charter boat be useful if the charters are highly unlikely to be breaking any laws ? (as i take it would be the case at present).

Hi Chris,

 

Not sure how to take quotes out of quotes etc but hope you get the gist of the above.

 

Exactly my point as you said, if Fisheries had boarded on a regular basis when the boats come in to Alderney everyone would know exactly what was on board instead of all the speculation. It wouldn't cost a lot of money because they are on site and talking to the skippers on the radio to permit them to berth to unload passengers. Information would have then been collated over many months, even years and landings could accurately be reported. From there you would have better working relationships, education for all etc, instead we have this awful situation of sniping, threats to business' and everybody with a pulse passing an opinion based on what they think they know.

 

Which brings me on too Steve Good's comment about being offered fish to sell. Not sure who he is, where he is based and what he does for a living but comments like that only fuel the specualtion and doesn't add to the facts. Quite clearly nothing was ever offered otherwise surely he would have the courage to offer details.

 

Regards,

 

Mark

 

Regards,

 

Mark

 

 

Hi Mark,

 

On the quote thing, I think it just needs a space between the "quote" bit ? No worries anyway, its quite clear.

 

I have no way of knowing if what Steve G says is true or not; zero experience or knowledge of Bass and most things that happen down your way. My outsiders viewpoint would be that the species caught in your patch are high value ones and therefore the temptation must be there. On the other hand, it would be very bad press for a charter caught doing it I would imagine?

 

Thing is, as far as i understand anyway, Steve G accusations have nothing to do with the issue and are just a red herring from someone angry about the BMP.

 

On the lack of boardings by your FO's: You are scratching your head wondering why they didn't in the past , but IME this is pretty normal. In five years as an FO i had no reason to ever board a charter; it was just not part of my duties and i would have been on very dodgy legal ground had i done so and demanded the skipper tells me what he'd caught that week.

 

I have no idea of the powers the Guernsey FO's have; how many of them there are and what their other commitments are. Do they have the power to demand catch returns from recreational vessels atm? If the charter skipper tells them "go away" can they do anything about it?

 

14 Uk charters, a small group of locally based commercials, and the ability to corner the decision makers in local streets. This issue must be solvable without being turned into the meat of a UKCommercials/ RSA politicals sandwich ?

 

Good luck with it

 

Chris.

[alderneyangling]

Hi Mark,

 

On the quote thing, I think it just needs a space between the "quote" bit ? No worries anyway, its quite clear.

 

I have no way of knowing if what Steve G says is true or not; zero experience or knowledge of Bass and most things that happen down your way. My outsiders viewpoint would be that the species caught in your patch are high value ones and therefore the temptation must be there. On the other hand, it would be very bad press for a charter caught doing it I would imagine?

 

Thing is, as far as i understand anyway, Steve G accusations have nothing to do with the issue and are just a red herring from someone angry about the BMP.

 

On the lack of boardings by your FO's: You are scratching your head wondering why they didn't in the past , but IME this is pretty normal. In five years as an FO i had no reason to ever board a charter; it was just not part of my duties and i would have been on very dodgy legal ground had i done so and demanded the skipper tells me what he'd caught that week.

 

I have no idea of the powers the Guernsey FO's have; how many of them there are and what their other commitments are. Do they have the power to demand catch returns from recreational vessels atm? If the charter skipper tells them "go away" can they do anything about it?

 

14 Uk charters, a small group of locally based commercials, and the ability to corner the decision makers in local streets. This issue must be solvable without being turned into the meat of a UKCommercials/ RSA politicals sandwich ?

 

Good luck with it

 

Chris.

 

Thanks for that Chris. With regards to power I don't know but given that investigations have been taking place for some time it seems such a logical thing to do, step on board and communicate with the skippers as to what is going on and why they are boarding. The boats do get boarded by Southern Sea Fisheries when they return to the south coast with the boats being thoroughly searched and the Fishery Officers from Guernsey do board the occasional boat at sea but these boardings aren't as regular due to the cost. So logically to me it seems for boardings to take place in Alderney is cost effective plus the communication lines are open. The skippers, given that they are already boarded, wouldn't be hostile at all and it also would have shown the anglers aboard that protection of our fish stocks here are taken seriously, all good education even if nothing untoward is happening. Unfortunately it is an opportunity missed here in Alderney.

 

Mark

[Stoaty]

Every charter boat visiting Alderney has to do a customs form with names of all the crew. Simply give each person a card to log what fish they take which they return when they leave. The odd inspection and the banning of any boat found to be fiddling should ensure the cards are filled out correctly.