End of the Tope?

[Leon Roskilly]

See NFSA Press Release at:

 

http://www.anglers-net.co.uk/sacn/latest/i...ex.php?view=327

 

Tight Lines - leon

[Guest stevie cop]

I thought that any fishery had to be sustainable. A sustainable Tope fishery won't be possible. Surely on these grounds alone, this plan should not be allowed to go ahead?

[Ian Burrett]

dale:

have the boat skippers not got an association. they could start the ball rolling.

it is their livelyhood their trying to protect formost.

 

anglers could be asked to jump on the back of that ?

Hi Dale

 

I was a member of the National Federation of charter skippers for ten years. Last year i approached the secretary on a conservation issue and was told bluntly "We are far to busy to get involved in things like that"

 

For £30 a year i got a glossy A3 mag offering to sell me cheap insurance that wasn't and a list of members. Basically it was as much use as a chocolate teapot.

[sam-cox]

my dad has spoken to john rawel. terry batt and dave weeving, sound like they aint going to do anything, so one of the best products they have will be gone for good.

[sam-cox]

people on hear should be contacting charter skippers who target tope by phone or on their wed site, see sea angling press for their details.

[sam-cox]

SMALL PRIVATE ANGLING BOATS NEED TO SPREED the word about this through their VHF boat radios, only public opinion can stand a chance of stopping this.

[Norm B]

Ian Burrett:

I recieved this email from Stuart Cresswell today

 

The reason for contacting you is to warn you about the dire story on the front page of this weeks fishing news (commercial paper)… in short some bunch of hard up fishermen in Lowestoft are highlighting the fact that they are in the process of setting up a commercial operation for long lining tope!! They are also asking commercial fishermen from other parts of the country to contact them with a view to setting up a nationwide buying operation.

 

In short I cant think of a worse scenario for our sport fishing…… and it strikes me that the Shark trust, the UK Shark tagging scheme and the WWF would all be similarly aghast at what is being suggested….. as I understand it you possibly have an existing relationship with these bodies and perhaps could give them a call? :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad:

 

This can't be allowed to happen. I will contact Ken Collins at the UK shark tagging scheme. Hopefully Davey Benson will read this and contact the Shark trust. Has anyone got a comtact with WWF.

 

In 1988 when i started Spur dog where a pest with shoals over 5 miles across, I caught my last spurdog in Luce Bay in 1993. In just 5 years they had wiped the whole lot out apart from odd pockets in the deep locks up North. This will happen to the Tope.

 

Help

:cool: Maybe we should look a bit deeper into this. Maybe, just maybe this is a red herring, excuse the pun. The commercials know that they will have to give someting to RSA, so maybe this is a bargaining chip, we leave the tope alone and you let us keep some ?????. Maybe there never was/is a plan to target tope but we've fallen for it, what are we prepared to let the commercials keep in exchange for our tope? Think about it.

[Ian Burrett]

Maximo

 

As you rightly pointed out about my previous threads, I have nothing against any sort of commercial fishing providing it is sustainable. The question was asked can any fishing be sustainable? The simple answer is Yes providing more, or as many fish are allowed to reach sexual maturity as are being Killed.

There are certain areas where the Tope gather in huge numbers for copulation. These will be the areas targetted by the longliners. The problem is, this is the breeding stock.

 

The spurdog we use to catch were all mature females and would give birth to live young on the deck of the boat. By killing one fish you were killing 9 or ten fish or the next generation.

 

A Tope doesn't reach sexual maturity untill they are 11 or 12 years old; by this stage they are 25 to 30 pounds. At first they will produce approx 6-10 young pups. A fifty pound tope can produce up to 50 live pups. A female will breed every two years and have a nine month gestation period

 

My question is, How can longliners target fish that have had their chance to breed? The simple is; they can't, as a immature 20 pound tope is just as likely to pick up the bait as a fully fledged mature fish

 

Once the commercials have got their act together they will target the breeding grounds because that is where the fish are most highly concentrated with fully automated vessels that can shoot 60 miles of line with a snood every 3 ft. No species can sustain that sort of pressure.

 

We had small local inshore boats from Port Patrick that used to shoot 13,000 hooks a day and regularly catch 2-3000 spurdog a day. The French and Belguim longliners are capable of catching 10 times that a day.

If this goes ahead Tope will be a thing off the past in 5 years.

[Leon Roskilly]

Norm, this is a business plan developed by a fish merchants, not something put forward by the NFFO

 

ps (Nice to see that Barry Deas has been rewarded with an OBE)

 

Tight Lines - leon

[sam-cox]

IAN YOU ARE TOTALY RIGHT MATE.