Guernsey SFC Release 2005 Stats

[Grant]

Andy- has there been any other follow up to these figures? Might be interesting to see these in the local papers, especially given the online survey about people visiting Guernsey to fish!

[FishingGuernsey]

Hi Grant, nothing at all in the local press yet, but I intend to change that once I have had a chance to write somehting. Been a bit busy of late... Any help appreciated...!! It's all a bit overwhelming with attacks from all sides on several issues but then that's exactly what the commercials want isn't it!! Confusion to scupper the disorganised and the commercials, I have to hand it to them, are very well organised and work as a team with this sort of thing.

[FishingGuernsey]

The report has been shrunk down in size if anyone had trouble downloading it, please try again.

 

Cheers

 

Andy

 

http://www.fishing-guernsey.co.uk/SACN/2005report.pdf

[Puffin]

Also of interest is the 2004 Guernsey Sea Fisheries report, which can be viewed at

 

http://www.gov.gg/ccm/commerce-and-employm...l-reprt-2004.en

 

Look at bass and black bream figures for 2002. 43.8 tonnes of bass, 28.9 tonnes of bream. Compare that to 2005 at 173 tonnes of bass and bream at 158.8

 

Commercial kill of bass has quadrupled within 3 years and commercial kill of bream has gone up by nearly 5.5 times.

 

So it's charter anglers who are decimating stocks? Yeah right!

[FishingGuernsey]

Quite right Puffin. When will the commercials look to their own futures and see they are killing their own income in the future as well as other peoples for a quick buck today.

[Toerag]

Puffin - The bass and bream catches have rocketed because of one thing - an increase in effort due to 2 things - BB being discovered, and pair-trawling for bream starting. Unfortunately we cannot really tell what damage is being done on the bream as this is one team's results, the French also trawl in the area for bream and they're running quite a few 20m boats compared to the 10 & 14m local team. Local trawl effort is miniscule compared to the French effort. That is the problem with these reports, 'catch per unit effort' is not mentioned, so virtually all changes in landings are due to increases or decreases in effort. It would be very interesting to see the CPUE for the longliners. It must say something when the longliners change to target tope, huss & conger (low value fish) and having to land in France rather than fish for turbot and bass and land locally? As quoted earlier, the report only concerns the activities of the local licensed boats and not the French or recreational sector, so the offshore bream fishery is difficult to measure.

Given the current scale of the 'recreational' charter fishery it could well be doing serious damage to the stocks. So what do we do? Undergo 3 years of recording catches and run the risk of wiping out the stocks if the theory of high catches is true; or if catches aren't really that high, then surely bag limits are acceptable in the meantime??

Again, it all boils down to what is acceptable for a man to take home to feed his family. As stated on the 'go east for cod' thread, if you really need to keep a shedload of flatties then use a commercially licensed boat, there's plenty of choice. Bear in mind that's what the Jersey authorities have done, they have forced the charterboats to be commecially licensed to get round the problem.

In reality there is a massive amount of potential fishing power that is currently unrestricted, and that's got to be bad news for everybody. The only fair solution is to regulate it, either by bag limits, or licensing. Given that stark choice, it would be interesting to see what the UK skippers would do.

Bass on the banks - yes, there is a summer fishery on the banks for bass, and yes, it is a shadow of it's former self. You can still go out and catch bass, but there's not the quantities of big ones that there used to be on the marks. You might see pictures of 13lb bass in the mags from the Alderney banks, or the Portland race, but these are the exception these days, as opposed to the norm when the marks were first discovered.

[Andrew Syvret]

Afternoon,

 

been lurking for a while, enjoying reading fertile & instructive discussions like this one

 

this my first post (I think) on Anglers Net so please be gentle with me

 

Toerag wrote in his :

 

"Bear in mind that's what the Jersey authorities have done, they have forced the charterboats to be commecially licensed to get round the problem."

 

to coin a phrase I'm want to use elsewhere, "for what it's worth", adding a new twist to our interisland scenario:

 

Fresh news that I guess Toerag isn't aware of yet - as of a couple of weeks ago this is no longer the case ~ Jersey's Harbour and Fisheries Authorities sought further legal opinion and the situation has been corrected ~ to reflect the situation elsewhere ~ licenses are required by those who wish to trade in fish, but not by those who wish to sell the fishing experience.

 

So I guess a Jersey Charter vessel is now "free to fish the other Bailiwick's waters," as a pleasure boat would be?

 

Hope this of some interest...

 

Andrew

 

A.N. Other Jersey Charter Skipper (imminent)

 

PS Black bream abundance fluctuated dramatically on and off through the tail end of the 20th (and likely prior) Century ~ with records of both glut and absence (collapse? ), even since the 1960's...

[Andrew Syvret]

Afternoon,

 

been lurking for a while, enjoying reading fertile & instructive discussions like this one

 

this my first post (I think) on Anglers Net so please be gentle with me

 

Toerag wrote in his :

 

"Bear in mind that's what the Jersey authorities have done, they have forced the charterboats to be commecially licensed to get round the problem."

 

to coin a phrase I'm want to use elsewhere, "for what it's worth", adding a new twist to our interisland scenario:

 

Fresh news that I guess Toerag isn't aware of yet - as of a couple of weeks ago this is no longer the case ~ Jersey's Harbour and Fisheries Authorities sought further legal opinion and the situation has been corrected ~ to reflect the situation elsewhere ~ licenses are required by those who wish to trade in fish, but not by those who wish to sell the fishing experience.

 

So I guess a Jersey Charter vessel is now "free to fish the other Bailiwick's waters," as a pleasure boat would be?

 

Hope this of some interest...

 

Andrew

 

A.N. Other Jersey Charter Skipper (imminent)

 

PS Black bream abundance fluctuated dramatically on and off through the tail end of the 20th (and likely prior) Century ~ with records of both glut and absence (collapse? ), even since the 1960's...

[Puffin]

It would be very interesting to see the CPUE for the longliners. It must say something when the longliners change to target tope, huss & conger (low value fish) and having to land in France rather than fish for turbot and bass and land locally? As quoted earlier, the report only concerns the activities of the local licensed boats and not the French or recreational sector, so the offshore bream fishery is difficult to measure.

Given the current scale of the 'recreational' charter fishery it could well be doing serious damage to the stocks. So what do we do? Undergo 3 years of recording catches and run the risk of wiping out the stocks if the theory of high catches is true; or if catches aren't really that high, then surely bag limits are acceptable in the meantime??

 

You are right, it would be interesting to see the CPUE for longlining, as it would for all commercial effort.

 

 

Tope, huss and conger are low value locally but fetch a good price in Cherbourg, where they are landed. The French are less picky than the British when it comes to fish. Some longliners may have switched species but there is still plenty of longline activity on the Schole Bank, presumably targetting those turbot and bass you mention.

 

The "scale" of the recreational fishery has changed very little in recent years, despite the misleading figures quoted by Guernsey sea Fisheries. There is only so much accommodation in Alderney and it limits the maximum number of boats at any one time to around a dozen, equating to around 100 or so anglers of varying degrees of skill and experience. Some will catch more than others. Some will put more back alive than others. However, even if you accept these figures they are still less than the commercial take. I used bass and bream as the two largest examples of increase in take between 2002 and 2005. Turbot landings also increased each year throughout that period from 3.5 tonnes in 2002 to 8.1 tonnes in 2005. Brill landings went up from 10.6 tonnes to 13.8 tonnes over the same period.

 

If there is a depletion of stocks,and Sea fisheries officers are on record as saying there is not, it doesn't matter what the CPUE is and whether the fish are pair-trawled or not. The fact is that the majority of fish are taken commercially and more are taken commercially each year. If conservation measures are needed they have got to include of a reduction in commercial landings if they are to have any effect.

[Jaffa]

Hi Puffin,

 

sorry, but this makes little sense to me:

 

The "scale" of the recreational fishery has changed very little in recent years, despite the misleading figures quoted by Guernsey sea Fisheries. There is only so much accommodation in Alderney and it limits the maximum number of boats at any one time to around a dozen, equating to around 100 or so anglers of varying degrees of skill and experience. Some will catch more than others. Some will put more back alive than others. However, even if you accept these figures they are still less than the commercial take. I used bass and bream as the two largest examples of increase in take between 2002 and 2005. Turbot landings also increased each year throughout that period from 3.5 tonnes in 2002 to 8.1 tonnes in 2005. Brill landings went up from 10.6 tonnes to 13.8 tonnes over the same period.

 

If there is a depletion of stocks,and Sea fisheries officers are on record as saying there is not, it doesn't matter what the CPUE is and whether the fish are pair-trawled or not. The fact is that the majority of fish are taken commercially and more are taken commercially each year. If conservation measures are needed they have got to include of a reduction in commercial landings if they are to have any effect.

You believe the SFC figures are wrong; fair enough. I have to take you word on what effect Alderney accomadation has on those figures and the ability of individual visiting anglers. All the same to me, but how will the SFC view that kind of "evidence" ?

 

They have the figures for the increases in commercial catch, hence your freedom to quote them and make a few points. They lack accurate figures for RSA hence your freedom to just ignore that.

 

In what way does the fact that the commercials take "X" absolve RSA of providing data, or remove them from the responsibility of doing so for stock management?

 

For us non islanders, where are SFC officers "on record" as saying:

 

it doesn't matter what the CPUE is and whether the fish are pair-trawled or not."