Anglers views to parliament

[Leon Roskilly]

Oral evidence given to the EFRA sub committee by angling organisations is now available online.

 

See: http://www.anglers-net.co.uk/sacn/latest/i...ex.php?view=212

 

Tight Lines - leon

 

[ 21. December 2004, 09:35 AM: Message edited by: Leon Roskilly ]

[spanner]

Interesting reading, especially concerning their lack of knowledge of different species, its a bit dissapointing when they say never heard of them!

 

One point that I can see needing heading off though was the intention of pushing other species onto the consumer. Once the plaice have gone taget flounder. It kind of misses the point that the plaice shouldn't go in the first place. It ignores the damage done to the ecosystem as a whole by targetting species to extinction.

 

The discussion appeared to get hung up on it not being fair for anglers to keep all these other species to themsleves, they just didn't seem to get the point that with proper management there would be plenty of regular commercial fish and these others would be effectively worthless anyway.

 

One final point, nobody mentioned the very long life and slow reproduction of some fish such as sharks and rays and why that means they need extra protection (such as redisgnation would provide) as they are so vulnerable, e.g. skate and sprurdog.

 

Equally interesting was the following discussion where the commercials viewpoint is that angling is ignorant of the complexities of commercial fishing. That angling is just one sector like beam trawling, gill-netting, pelagic pair trawling, scalloping etc are all just sectors, so 1 angler on a committe of 50 is fine! Apart from equality based on the financlial worth, the arguement we have used so far, maybe we need to point out that the commercials seem to be ignorant of the complexities of angling, we have deep sea wreck fishing and potentially offshore shark and tuna, inshore boat angling, shore angling, fly fishing, lure fishing, and a whole range of species specific angling such as mullet, conger, wrasse, bass etc. By that token we need representation for each of these 'sectors' as well.

 

Only of course we dont want that as we want to unite not fragment, but we do want an equal voice.

[Julian Fox]

Congratulations Leon - all the organisations present did us proud and made the points brilliantly.

[Guest jay_con]

I enjoyed reading that leon. That lady sounds like a mini hitler, was she serious or just playing devils advocate? Some good strong points made by you all.

Next time you meet perhaps you could inform them that

yorkshires anglers come to whitby (where the cod record is held) the countries premier port for charter fishing. Where are these places scarborough and bidlington they mention? ive never heared of them.

[stavey]

nice one leon you and the boys put the points over realy well and from their reaction on some of the answers to there questions, i realy think its starting to go in. good job well done i think. cheers andy.

[Tel]

Yep interesting and our case put across very well,

well done :cool:

 

lets hope it gave them something to think about!!!!

[captain cojones]

congratulations leon for points well made. i read the comments regarding the use of the scallop dredges with some sadness.i was working as a commercial diver in the areas that they mentioned, namely the "exeters" some 15 years ago. the destruction of the seabed that i witnesses was nothing less than criminal. if it was "on land" they would have been arrested on the spot. we tried everything to reason with the fishermen to stop the destruction that we were seeing, but to no avail. we even offered to take them underwater so they could see with their own eyes, but they werent interested.the year after when their catches were down by a huge amount, the same fishermen were in the pub one night, blaming the E.U, rod fishermen, seals, even scuba divers! anything but accept that their own mindless ignorance and stupidity was the reason.from that moment on, these shellfishermen are for me the thickest people on the planet.good luck with your work leon.best wishes dave.

[Guest jay_con]

Anglers and walkers here are reporting finding millions of broken mussel shells washed up on the shoreline, I can only assume this is the result of trawling.

 

Good point about the destruction of the sea bed. The charter skippers here are telling of visible differences/damages of the sea bed on thier fish finding equipment.

[gonefishing]

well done...

 

how can Diana seriously intimate illegal commercial fishing is part of the recreational sport's problem?

 

and how does recreational bass fishing affect the consumer market when all the bass i've seen is from foreign countries bred under the legal catch size here because the market demands smaller fish?

 

devils advocate or not, it seems we need to dangle a carrot into a closed mouth. Although the point about people wanting to know what a liscense would bring them before they were happy about buying one was true, it probably isn't a political sweetner. "oh so you want your cake and eat it"..."yes because its got that bad now".

[Ian Burrett]

Well done Leon

I really think that the ball has started rolling and will hopefully become unstoppable.

 

Do you think i ought to email Dianne and offer her a days fishing?