Sea Fishing Licence - would you pay?

[barry luxton]

That statement might apply in your area, Steve.

 

Here, I rarely go down to my beach without a kilometre of gill net within 400m of the shoreline, when weather conditions are favourable.

 

At night, through the summer, there are 'strange' goings on as nets are set and left with flashing lights attached. They drift towards the East Winner where they appear to be gathered up and re-set again at point A. Because it's dark and they appear not to be showing fishing lights, I am unable to identify the boats. They are almost certainly bass fishing.

 

Then the inshore trawlers, particularly in the Spring (plaice??) ... then cuttles (big females of course, heavy with eggs) .... then in the Autumn it seems to be soles (and bass) as they trawl right up to the groynes, which are barely 60m out, at night.

 

Wait till our resident commercials and 'hybrids' read this and they will shout 'foul' .... unlicensed hobbyists! OK, maybe there are a few; but a mile buffer zone would keep the whole lot of them out of the delicate margins.

 

"All we are sayin', is give fish a chance!"

 

 

Go and get some photo's H A It would be nice to see what you are talking about.

[steve pitts]

Go and get some photo's H A It would be nice to see what you are talking about.

 

Some of what goes on Barry

 

A gill net set across one of the best bass marks in Dorset

Well – it used to be one of the best marks

 

Confiscated catches from nets set illegally in bass nursery areas

 

Illegally set net in the Tamar Nov 07

Courtesy - The Environment Agency

[Steve Coppolo]

That statement might apply in your area, Steve.

 

 

And that's the problem Ada. Every area is different, and that's why a blanket ban on everything, everywhere, is a daft solution and will never be taken seriously.

[H.A.]

Defra will always defer such action to SFCs which, as we know, are comprised 90% 'industry people' and councillors.

 

That's why it's so difficult to get anything through a Byelaws sub-committee and Joint Committee (in SSFD we have E and W sectors), through the SFC legal advisers, through the Defra legal advisers and civil service Coastal Policy Dept. and then to the Minister for ratification.

This takes a minimum 2 years to process.

 

That's why angling reps, angling bodies and conservationists feel the direct approach is more likely to succeed.

 

Don't forget the Bass MLS increase was within a week of being implemented had it not been for some frantic lobbying by the NFFO crew and a naive Minister who had barely got his backside behind the desk at Nobel House!

 

[barry luxton]

Defra will always defer such action to SFCs which, as we know, are comprised 90% 'industry people' and councillors.

 

That's why it's so difficult to get anything through a Byelaws sub-committee and Joint Committee (in SSFD we have E and W sectors), through the SFC legal advisers, through the Defra legal advisers and civil service Coastal Policy Dept. and then to the Minister for ratification.

This takes a minimum 2 years to process.

 

That's why angling reps, angling bodies and conservationists feel the direct approach is more likely to succeed.

 

Don't forget the Bass MLS increase was within a week of being implemented had it not been for some frantic lobbying by the NFFO crew and a naive Minister who had barely got his backside behind the desk at Nobel House!

 

 

 

You would have thought that with this very carefull, long drawn out legal approach they would get it right, a by-law that would actually acheive something for the good of conservation as is the sfc brief.

 

So when the ssfc started to warn the over ten charter boats off from fishing inside the 6 mile limit in the name of conservation points to a failed by-law that totally misses the point of conservation and the ssfc with all it's safe guards, would be the last to admit it has got it wrong.

 

The result of that is they are warning the likes of Pat Carlin who has fished out of weymouth for practiclly the life of the town to comply with a by-law that is total crap. Madness, the ssfc should be taken to court. A small amendment of this particular by-law would be a simple answer, result is, us normal guys don't appreciate how much it costs to amend one. Tos.rs abound who spend and waste the rate payers money, they should be removed. They would if it was a private industry.

Edited January 12, 2008 by barry luxton

[wurzel]

RSAs are conservative in their opinions.

The real radicals are the commercial fishermen and their merchant bosses, intent upon justifying their greedy destruction. The plain fact of the matter is that there are too many people in the world and not enough fish in the sea to continue to feed them. All non-sustainable commercial fishing activities need to be shut down to prevent massive extinctions and extirpations of dozens of species worldwide. The cod is done, the soles, haddock and perhaps plaice are finished – and now elasmobranch species like the spurdog and skate have been dangerously diminished.

 

 

Your opinions conservative!!!? some where left of Lennon I would have thought.

 

The rest of the post is just total radical untruthful crap.

[H.A.]

some where left of Lennon I would have thought.

 

and Paul and George and Ringo ...

 

[Jaffa]

The photos highlight marine habitats containing diverse epifaunal communities of sponges, tunicates, hydroids and bryozoans and corals; all part of a complex food web.

These communities are wrecked by dredges and trawls on a huge scale, such that researchers cannot easily find 'control areas' of sea bed near to these fishing areas which have not been recently dredged/trawled.

My nearby Hayling Bay used to be rich in small areas of rough ground comprising chalk and clay and shale outcrops covered in kelp, mollusc beds and crustacea. That

has been turned by inshore trawlers into 'desert' right up to the end of the groynes.

I refer the honorable gentleman to the answer I gave previously (post #91)

 

The first two pictures are taken on a scallop bed, Isle of Man (undredged - top; dredged- bottom)

The second two pictures show shallow (20m) maerl beds off W coast of Scotland (undamaged- top; trawled-bottom).

 

 

You posted two pictures. Where and when were each of them taken? I have taken the trouble to read the link, but IMHO if you put up "before" and "after" pictures as a demonstration of the effect of whatever activity, then it's obviously important that they are of the same location

 

Are the two pictures you posted of the same location?

[Jaffa]

Hi Barry,

 

You'd be surprised at how few have, even though they have strong opinions and reckon that they know all about it!

 

Hi Leon,

 

Out of the X million sea-anglers apparently out there, the ones that read this forum are i guess more likely to be among the few to have read as much as they can about it. A couple state their unease, almost everyone with experience of fisheries seems to have doubts and then the spin starts to get then classed into wee boxes Wonder if im in HA's "hybrid angler" box?

 

Anyway, having of course not read your piece on it, i would like to know why on earth you think this is a sensible way to deal with the fact that commercial fishing within a mile is of little issuse to many areas:

 

 

Rather we have in mind a principle similar to the ban on fixed nets under the Salmon & Freshwater Fisheries act whereby the placing of any fixed net is illegal unless the local Sea Fisheries Committee has made a byelaw enabling it to take place, in that area, at that time, using certain mesh sizes etc.

 

What we would envisage is that the ‘Golden Mile’ becomes an area tightly controlled by the district Sea Fisheries Committee (or by whichever authority acts as the SFC in that district) where by default all net fishing (including trawling) is banned, unless an ‘enabling byelaw’ is put in place

 

This seems stupid beyond belief. If the majority of areas do not have a problem, or those problems can be solved locally, why on earth pour more costs onto bodies that can barely manage their basic functions atm? Every SFC is going to spend the next 10 years budget on sorting out disputes instead of pouring it into lobster enhancement schemes/enforcement or whatever? Nuts

Edited January 13, 2008 by Jaffa

[ColinW]

If the majority of areas do not have a problem..

 

I'd like to know where these "majority of areas" are! The seas round my area seem pretty devoid of fish worth digging bait for and from what I read that seems to be the situation almost everywhere else. I used to catch more fish in the first year I took up the game, with jumble sale tackle and no idea, than I can ever hope to do now.