Pair Trawling in the Channel

[big_cod]

jaffa old mate when i was a boy the drift netters came down from up north good catches of herring were the norm, plenty of fish for every body then the big boats started the herring fisherie vanished in a short period of time, mackerel you could have walked on them in summer knee deep as you would say,but oh dear the mackerel have in a lot of respecks gone the same way nothing to what there used to be, let me look in my crystal ball and see why yes i see pair sceners wiping a total shoal out jaffa, seen the videos bragging about the catch caperbilites boats working of rockall i still stick to my point pair trawling in any state of is form is to efficent, the carry on with bass that fisherie will go the same way in time its not if its when

[Guest jay_con]

Pair trawling ? Will eventually finish off all stocks of fish - Cod -whiting - Haddock - and yes your beloved bass. Pair trwling with the powerfull boats they have today is just too efficient. Go back to a single Trawl, its the only answer.

[Jaffa]

Big Cod, when I was a boy they were pair trawling for mackeral and herring. They still do and those stocks are now in good health and the fishery well managed.

 

The biggest pelagic catchers are still the purse seiners as far as I know. Last time I took any notice, and its been a while fair enough, the Shetland purser "Altaire" could carry over 2000 tonnes. There were several others close.

 

The pair teams were small time compared to the pursers.

[Jaffa]

Winter, Big Cod, have you ever considered that the "Whitby experience" may not be true everywhere?

 

Pair trawl, single boat trawl, purse seine, whatever the method, its only as safe as the management and enforcement. There are single boat trawlers that could have devastated your inshore grounds as easily as the pair teams did.

[Ken Davison South Wales]

Hi Jaffa,

 

When land like areas to be utilised as building land are cleared what ever grows is irrelevant as it has no long term future.

 

If we refer to woodlands which are cropped and and then allowed to regrow then the trees which follow are from the seeds of those cut, but this is a managed situation and easily controled by selective cutting.

 

If we refer to farm pasture and cropping this is conducted on a rotation basis usually four or five years. On the last year where the field is fallow again what grows is of little consequence as it will be ploughed in to form compost. Leave a managed field like this to lay fallow for two or three years then you will have a major problem. On certain land it will grow rushes, on other land gorse or nettles, the bio-diversity will change but not for the better.

 

In order to set-aside land one has to plant it with suitable plants preferably plants indigenous to that area prior to land management. The set-aside grants are not just paid to leave the ground and walk away.

 

I can see no management in ploughing up a sea bed and hoping for the best, you may well get a bio-mass but is that going to be good for the area. I have seen ponds with a bio-mass which is totaly self destructive.

 

I look at the big picture and all I can see is man exploiting the oceans and hoping it will survive.

[Guest stevie cop]

Jaffa, you say the Herring stocks are now healthy. That wasn't always the case, was it? I seem to remember that it was necessary to enforce a ban on Herring fishing because the stocks became so low. Five years I think it was. Of course the commercials all went mad because they had to stop fishing for herring, but the ban worked wonders, obviously, because the stocks are now healthy again.

[Jaffa]

Your right Steve, the herring were brought to a really low level by overfishing following a sudden leap in technology (purse seine and the triplex winch). Can you imagine how unprepared DAFS were when first 200 Norwegian pursers arrived, then the Scots rapidly converted to the same method? It was anarchy and chaos and there was no way an organisation like DAFS could move as quickly as the commercials.

 

A lot of people learnt a lessons from that though and now things are much better. Given what the pelagic fleet are capable of doing if they chose too I think that for once the commercials deserve some credit.

[Jaffa]

Ken, I need to think about what you have said. Instant thoughts are its not irrelevant to the species that grow on those bits of temporary land and Who says what is the better biodiversity? Given the times we are in I want maximum choice.

 

and, Why do you assume ,that because no one plans or manages how many times a year a seabed is disturbed, that the effect is not in the end the same as a "managed" area?

[Ken Davison South Wales]

Hi Jaffa,

Perhaps managed is not the term I should use,marine reserve is probably more correct.

 

I can only go on what I have seen, as an example I was conducting and underwater survey of the supporting piles to North pier on the Ras Tanora refinery (one of my best jobs, I manage to stretch it out to three whole weeks)

 

On the outside of the pier was a dredged channel, redredge every three years approx. This area was totally devoid of life, maybe the odd gobie or sand shrimp.

 

Then you had the pier structure a man made enviroment which housed snapper/grouper family, a few green morays and some large parrot fish.

 

Between the pier and the shore line was an area that had never been disturb infact the coast guard never allowed diving in this area (security and all that rubbish)but as I was conducting a survey I got access to this area along with my buddy. This area was absolutey teeming with a wide range of soft and hard corals and all of the natural species you would find in this type of water approx 25' deep. I could have spent my life down there watching how this natural system inter-acted, the whole thing was bonded together by creatures finding their niche in this area.

 

There is absolutely no way you can recreate this type of enviroment and it was a wonderful privilege to be able to dive on such a virgin area.

 

The thing that struck me was the demarcation lines between the three areas. I was chatting about it to Larry a friend I used to dive with and I described it to him as an area man had destroyed, an area that man had created and a paradise created by nature.

 

Later on whilst working for ABV I was again able thanks to our sponsor Prince Ala Moodi able to dive on virgin shore reefs on the Red Sea north of Jeddah and it was unbelievable to see how it all worked so well.

[Jaffa]

Ken, I'll get my serious head on later but I know what you mean. Im all in favour of the stupid simplistic marine reserves because IME they work.

 

I've dived in Sullom Voe a few times and the piles on the oil loading piers are amazing; its wall to wall wildlife. The voe (Loch) itself is also pristine and fantastic.

 

From what I know it is that way because the Shetlanders were doing well from fishing and so were able to say to the oil companies "you do it our way or we are not interested". A healthy community got to demand the terms.

 

They really would have told the oil companies to go XXXX themselves had they not got the safety they wanted.

 

I wonder how many of the "dolphin loving", overly sentimental comunities in the rest of the UK could have achieved the deal they did?

 

[ 19. March 2005, 11:22 PM: Message edited by: Jaffa ]