So Much for Conservation !!

[diverdave]

Why do we bother with catch and release ?

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7103363.stm

 

 

Mr Shaw said it was an "absolute waste" to throw good quality fish back into the sea.

 

He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme he would be pushing for an EU cod quota increase as well as looking at technological solutions, such as nets that would catch only certain kinds of fish.

 

Just put a sign on the ground chain NO COD, NO PLAICE, NO BRILL, NO TURBOT, NO SHRIMPS, NO PRAWNS !!

 

& NO POLITICIANS !

[great white]

What happened to ideas like square mesh nets to try and let the small ones live?

 

Probably cut into the profit too much so its cheaper to slaughter and dump the small ones.

 

The about turn on the new Bass sizes show who has the voice and the power

 

But we must try and get the message across somehow

 

Charlie

[duncan]

if they are bye-catching cod/haddock etc in prawn nets then they aren't going to stop doing so even if they also go fishing for cod with 'cod' nets!

[Maverick Martin]

I heard an interview on radio 4 this morning where John Humphries ripped into fisheries minister Mr Shaw about the state of fish stocks and his plans to combat discards. John showed a good understanding of fisheries and made Mr Shaw look rather silly to say the least. All Mr Shaw could come up with was allow fishermen to take more fish (cod). This he says would alleviate the bye catches/discard problem and preserve stocks? Who the hell has brain washed him, since when can you keep more fish and preserve stocks at the same time.....muppet.

 

I have a better solution Mr Shaw, let commercial fishermen take all the cod then we wont have to worry about discards ever again...sorted oh and bye the bye you would be out of a job because there wont be anything left to manage

 

That seems to be the mentality we are up against. Ministers ignore scientists, anglers, greenpeace and even other government and EU departments and side with fishermen...WHY!....probably because we are to placid and commercials are vocal and well organised, this needs to change.

 

Vote with your feet boys its all they understand

 

Martin

 

[djredrupp]

i think what has been said (on the news tonight) is being heavily misinterpreted by many!

 

what the commercial lads are trying to say is that they catch all of the 'over quota' fish, i.e. cod when fishing for prawns, and due to the poor arrangement of the fishing quota, they have to discard dead fish.

 

I agree that methods of capture could be altered (such as larger net hole sizes), however surely the entire quota system needs to be rethought about, as it is not conversation throwing back dead fish, for more to be caught when the quota is due!

 

how about only returning live unquoated fish, rather than the live AND dead ones,,, or perhaps adapting fishing methods to reduce the number of unwanted catches? such as different profile prawn skimmers etc.

(okay this is only sketchy and would need regulation etc.. but you get the point!)

 

This is just my point of view, but hey!

Dan

[Swainiac]

Its worth a peep on the Deep Sea web site.....Chris Caines et al are advocating a new scheme to show that the RSA sector are backing conservation, perhaps the club might like to discuss this at the forthcoming meeting in Dec, and maybe place its weight behind this? I appreciate that the Dec meeting will be a full one agenda wise, but guys come on, we need to do something to support conservation openly, the club Open would be a good platform to get rid of seatbox/window stickers to show support.

The clubs own conservation policy speaks for itself, and I personally think that an open gesture such as this is a step in the right direction.

 

Rich

[Maverick Martin]

Quotas are not the best way to manage fish we all know that but at the moment its all there is. Back a system of quotas with penalties for discards, limit days at sea, be more specific on what equipment can be dragged for what species, limit areas allowed to be trawled, police any rules vigorously then watch fishermen alter their practices.

 

Whilst we have a lets be nice to commercial fishermen policy rather than lets preserve fish stock policy we are stuck with what there is. Personally with mindsets as they are I cannot see things altering until its to late

 

 

[great white]

I can not see how a bigger quota is a solution to this

 

They will just catch more fish and dump even more dead undersize ones in the process

 

At least they have to try fishing for other species once they reach their limit

 

Tighter policing is the only real answer

 

 

Have you seen deadliest catch on the TV?, those Crab fisherman do not keep females or undersize crabs [well not on camera] because of the size of the fine they get. and they do not go over quota ether.

I am sure they would if they could with the money those things fetch, but losing licenses and fines are the real deterent

 

Charlie

[Paul D]

Dan,

 

No misinterpretation here. I also heard the interview with Jonathan Shaw and I heard John Humphries rightly say to him that the decision ( to ask for a larger quota ) was "breathtakingly short-sighted".

 

The example given was one of the reporters was on an inshore fishing boat fishing for prawns within sight of Hartlepool. Blow me down they caught a large bycatch of cod, turbot etc. and had to throw it back.

 

The answer is to not fish there - as it is obvious the intention was to catch a large number of unwanted fish to demonstrate the "discard problems".

 

The interview, to me, confirmed that the commercial sector has the minister in their pocket. On THREE occasions Jonathon Shaw mentioned consulting with fisherman and scientists - NO MENTION of recreational sea angling at all.

 

I so wanted John Humphries to question him on the MLS for bass decision.

 

A better solution would be to close off areas and allow the stocks to properly recover and to pay fisherman to tie up their boats. - Iceland are doing exactly that and their cod stocks are in a far better state than ours.

 

 

[duncan]

Rich

 

I think you will find PaulJ is already contacting CC about this........

 

As mentioned on an earlier thread about this there is a certain irony in doing this in association with the open but I am sure we all feel comfortable that we are serving the wider community interests as far as possible for the other 364 days of the year!

[Mike Fox]

The only solution I can see to the dead by-catch issue is to use a combination of carrot and stick:

 

- Make it mandatory to land all sizeable by-catch fish;

- Massive fines for dumping sizeable dead by-catch fish;

- All over-quota fish to be sold and registered as over-quota at the time;

- All over-quota fish sold to be for the benefit of the taxman, with funding diverted to fisheries protection/enforcement etc;

- The boat/skipper of over-quota fish to be given a fraction of the market price - say 10% as a nominal compensation for fuel etc.

- Skipper therefore incentivised to avoid by-catch;

- Recorded landings will trend towards actual fish deaths, so better measure of stocks viability;

- All actual landings, whether over a boat's quota or not, to count towards national targets;

- Fisheries closed entirely to commercial vessels when collective quota exceeded.

 

Oh, and you might get less fat seagulls.

 

Mike

 

[diverdave]

Mike Fox for fisheries minister !!

 

Vote Now

[gaffa]

You've got my vote Mike

 

Some very good suggestions put forward.

 

I'm loathe to add my own comments to the thread in case they are considered too radical and not in the public (governments)interest.

 

 

Peteg

[diverdave]

The true value of fishing !!

From just 3 ports & note the total number of registered vessels in Scotland alone.

This takes no account of what goes through the back doors of chippy's & restaurants !!

 

http://www.aboutaberdeen.com/trawlermen.php

 

Extract from above.

 

2006 Landing Catches Figures

 

In 2006 there were five new registered trawlers in the North East of Scotland. This meant there were now 101 registered fishing trawlers in Fraserburgh, 99 trawlers in Peterhead and 93 at Aberdeen. Looking at the overall numbers of trawler fishing boats in Scotland this figure was 2,224 vessels which was down in 2005 by 62 vessels.

 

The 2006 landing catches figures for Aberdeenshire were 16,700 tonnes of fish for Aberdeen, 138,100 tonnes at Peterhead, 1,700 tonnes for Buckie and 3,200 tonnes for Aberdeen, These catches were worth

[Gruffy]

Who the hell has brain washed him, since when can you keep more fish and preserve stocks at the same time.....muppet.

That seems to be the mentality we are up against. Ministers ignore scientists, anglers, greenpeace and even other government and EU departments and side with fishermen...WHY!....probably because we are to placid and commercials are vocal and well organised, this needs to change.

 

Martin

I like the cut of your jib Martin.....if we had like minded people at the helm of every other angling club in the country we might be able to do something about this mess.

 

There is absolutely no doubt that the commercial sector fully intend to try to use this isue of by-catch for their own benefits. They already have in fact, successfully. Their argument is so totally wrong it makes you want to vomit. Over-fishing reduces stocks, even a five year old could grasp that concept. There are so few fish left because we are taking them from the sea faster than they can replenish themselves....Doh!

 

The stocks that are left before the fishery collapses are going to be juveniles, those fish that entered the stock mass in the last year, so eventually catching under-sized fish is an unavoidable and totally predictable natural consequence of over-fishing....particularly if nets are cast at whatever shows up on the sounder. Even more likely to happen if you think that displaying masses of dead fish being thrown over-board will help strengthen support from Joe public, who in the main knows diddly squit about what's going on. They have managed to turn what is the greatest evidence of their own greed into a publicity stunt that bizzarly, gets the public on their side. Who wants to see dead fish being thrown overboard...nobody. So don't deliberately catch them! Morals? Spare me please.

 

This could back - fire of course.........if only the public were more informed that this is a deliberate tactic to further the financial interests of the relatively few commercial owners of these fishing vessels/ fleets. The recent debacle over the bass MLS is a great example - if the MLS had been raised to just 40cm from 36cm, the commercials were organizing a mass culling and discarding of juvenile fish which would have been filmed for public consumption. You think I'm joking? Ill informed Joe public would have been outraged. This is what the commercials threatened to do and it scared away the ounce of courage from the new (totally incompetent, ill informed, spinelss snivelling useless excuse of a ) Fisheries Minister Jonathan Shaw. Heshould be sacked for his display of total and utter incompetence, then used as pot bait.

 

Unless we see some co-ordinated effort put in by representatives of our angling communities very shortly, we are in for a very tough ride ahead. Most people have absolutely no idea what we have coming our way in the very near future. There are plans affoot that will so dramatically threaten the future of our sport, and the prospects of our kids having the chance to do what we love doing....and we are so fragmented, disorganized, ill informed and downright lazy we will not be able to stop it happening. No take zones. Bag limits. Licences. And all these things will be implemented to do what do you think? I'll tell you - to protect the interests of our commercial fishing industry. Laughable isn't it?

 

No, not really.

 

[great white]

What we need is an honest politician with balls

 

Rarer than Cod

 

Charlie

[Paul D]

The true value of fishing !!

From just 3 ports & note the total number of registered vessels in Scotland alone.

This takes no account of what goes through the back doors of chippy's & restaurants !!

 

http://www.aboutaberdeen.com/trawlermen.php

 

Extract from above.

 

2006 Landing Catches Figures

 

In 2006 there were five new registered trawlers in the North East of Scotland. This meant there were now 101 registered fishing trawlers in Fraserburgh, 99 trawlers in Peterhead and 93 at Aberdeen. Looking at the overall numbers of trawler fishing boats in Scotland this figure was 2,224 vessels which was down in 2005 by 62 vessels.

 

The 2006 landing catches figures for Aberdeenshire were 16,700 tonnes of fish for Aberdeen, 138,100 tonnes at Peterhead, 1,700 tonnes for Buckie and 3,200 tonnes for Aberdeen, These catches were worth

[Gruffy]

Commons debate on Bass MLS decision

 

 

 

 

Take a look at this....our well briefed MP Martin Slater who represents anglers challenging the new Fisheries Minister over his decision to renage on the Governemnts promise to increase the bass MLS.

Edited November 23, 2007 by Gruffy

[alderneyangling]

With regards to the bycatch thrown back to sea, Steve Souter was quite strong in his views and opinions on SKY Sports Tightlines last night saying how much of a set up it was. He made Joe Public aware of the fact that fishfinders are so far advanced now you can pick out the sizes of the fish/prawns and there is no need to drop your nets down till you find some prawns. Hopefully that will go some way to reversing peoples thoughts who were swaying towards the'plight' of the commercials.