MBM's Spot the Pot campaign

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Today on the way back home, I passed several markers which looked like round fenders. The problem was they were a foot underwater, I stopped to fish and drifted at one point and went over one. Just saw it as I went over and when I continued I saw a few more this was just after high tide off selsey.
 
It is up to harbourmasters either Southampton or Portsmouth to enforce the regulations. If every time a "improper" buoy is spotted and reported, then sooner or later they will get fed up and take action.
If props are fouled in their baileywick, it would seem about time that invoices were sent.
Having said that we often see used black bleach bottles used as markers, which are impossible to see in the dark. Not only that , no flag. In Southamton I have seen flagged buoys which may be due to the authorities taking action
 
PilotWolf said:
Have a look at a site such as Gaelforce for the price of dahns and large buoys and then at Fishing News for the price that the fishermen get for lobster/crab and you'll see why they won't change.
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I agree that there's precious little incentive - but again - another case for education, after all, fishermen are renowned for being both practical and ingenious.
I've made Dahn buoys from old fishing rods, polystyrene floats and weighted conduit. Finished product looks pretty good, is perfectly servicable, and has only cost me a couple of quid. Flags I've sourced from the 'ladies' stalls at boot sales - black for the best silhouette, and a fluorescent for high vis. If I can make 'em, so can anybody.

8-10ft garden canes can be bought for around a quid each, so I'm now looking at a method of making Dhan Buoys from these. The problem working with such buoys however is their storage onboard (if the gear is taken out on each visit, as I do), especially with a small boat. My boat is only 4.5m, so space is very tight.
A modular system, where the float is easily detachable from the cane is probably the best way to go, as the canes could then be stored bundled together, with the floats stored separately. But I agree - the gear needs to be cheap to build, otherwise there's little incentive to change.
 
No Problem, no hope lol

Rum_Pirate said:
With no engine and a full length keel with the rudder on the end of the keel we have no problems whatsoever. :p

5207428426_c899f0597c.jpg
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Maybe the RNLI should follow your style of boating.
 
Who gets caught

Many fishermen get caught by their own gear or others nets/pots/rubbish. The damage to a fishing boat is usually greater than what we see on leisure boats.

As fishing boats have a large reduction ratio with high torque the weak link is often the bolts that hold the gearbox on to the engine. Fishermen are also working in the area where pots are laid day and night or returning to harbour through these areas. I know of several gearboxes that have been pulled off with debris, one poor guy in Padstow wrecked one engine (pulled gearbox off) one week and a few weeks later the other prop got caught, he thought it had cleared but the engine had been pulled aft enough to break an oil line and the engine seized on the way home. Rope cutters do help.

Many high speed motorboats don't fit rope cutters when perhaps they should as there are types available now which don't effect performance.

But I agree, legislation on standard height/colour/reflective material/boat name would help.
 
Rum_Pirate said:
One problem for pot owners is that 'others' often steal their pots.
One chap in Anguilla solved it for the most part.
He painted his pot markers in a high viz paint with certain marks.
He lays them in fairly deep water.
At different levels for different pots he wires fish hooks (eye pointing to sea bed) into the hauling line at 3" intervals for 5'0" lengths.
The ropes are generally 'overgrown' with weed/moss etc.
Most pots are hand hauled.
When a thief pulls up the pot, after say 30'0" he gets a hook in his hand.
In order to ease the pain he grabs another section of the rope further down and gets hooked in his other hand.
Thief is now in a rocking boat with a hook in each hand and a heavy pot in mid water.
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So I accidentally run over one of his lines, get it caught in the prop and whilst trying to disengage it I get snagged. Since I've gone over the side to swim under the boat to do all this the next thing that happens is I drown.

That sort of thing will get you a jail sentence in a civilised country. Quite rightly so.
 
There's an elightening thread on 'Scuttlebutt' at the moment, started by the YBW forums' resident pro' fisherman;

he is pointing to long handled pruning shears - with saw attachment - available cheap through Lidl at the moment.

Not as good as having pots intelligently marked etc, but a worthwhile line of defence...
 
Here I am. We can mark pots with a dahn, many do, made from bamboo, footballs and a bit of sash weight and a flag. As the dahn needs a hefty float with it to keep the end up it gives you two targets with a rope between. No good in the dark, and a bigger target.
We can't keep these ends up in tide, and at some point they will be just sub surface.

(On this issue, mostly, when the gear starts to stow, if it is a soft float the float starts to collapse with pressure, becomes smaller, stows further, collapses more etc etc. until it reaches the bottom. It takes much longer to come up as it will be a fraction of original size when stowed, but will expand rapidly on rising to suddenly break the surface.)

One solution is to have the stray for the dahn attached several fathoms down from the float, so you could pass between.
Personally I make sure that the rope at the top is 8mm junk, and weighted to make it tight and vertical so you may brush past without tangling, or if you do it will part readily. I want this to happen because if you pick it up and drift away with it before cutting loose you shift my gear and I can't find it.

I still came across a mark yesterday with mutiple small 'pills' connected with floaty polypropylene. Someone is clinging to the olden days, when we used sisal rope, which had to be kept up off the bottom as the tide changed, or when it stowed.

Your local Sea Fishery Officer is in constant touch with all pro fishermen, but no-one seems to open a dialogue with him to change ingrained habits, they would sooner rant on here. He is, after all, an employee of the County Council.

The bottom line is, you are going to get caught sometime, and you need to have some solution to the problem which does not involve going over the side. Hence the Lidl, or other, tree pruning shears.

Once again, here is a way to get out of being 'moored' by the prop: a length of rope with a chain in the middle. Jangle the chain down the pot rope, then walk one end round your boat to wind the chain round the potrope. Bring both ends together up forward, haul in to turn your boat to be moored by the bow, leaving the slack potrope streaming astern, where it can be cut.
 
Spot the Pot Day this Saturday

Hello everyone,

Just a reminder that this Saturday (24th September) MBM will be hosting its Spot the Pot Day at the Southampton Boat Show.

If you are going to be at the show on Saturday then please come along to our talk at the Boat Clinic in the new Solent Hall in Solent Park at 4.30pm to hear us talk about the campaign and sign our petition.

The MBM team will also be on our stand (E001) from 5pm-6pm to chat to people about the campaign.

If you can't make it to the show, join our live webchat on Facebook from 1pm-2pm or tweet us using the hashtag #spotthepot, email us, or check out our website to lend your support.
 
Properly marked pots won't help on a night passage. This is where rope cutters can help minimise damage, or if you are really lucky continue unimpaired after cutting a line. At night I usually make passage well offshore to avoid pots.
 
At night I usually make passage well offshore to avoid pots.

Well I'm sorry to tell you that there are pots 30 miles off shore in the Irish Sea, mind you they do have big orange bouys on them. Even so, when I travel at night across there I follow the ferry route in the hopes that they will have removed any potential trap for me :)

Tom
 
My solution is very simple, these float and are constantly moving, so need to be much larger than the clear pop bottle and brightly coloured for easy visibility. They could use LED technologies and kinetics. Kinetics are simply the power generated from movement like the kinetic watches now so popular, no winding, just shake, and these are cheaply and easily manufactured, and suit low consumption LED's perfectly.
 
Seeing all the potential solutions being given here, have IPC / MBM talked to Seafish regarding this issue?

I worked with them a few years ago developing lifejackets for fishermen, and have always found them very receptive. Give fishermen a solution, and they'll use it - lecture them about the inconvenience it causes you, and most will switch off.

If MBM want to contact me if they read this, I'll be happy to see if we can get the ball rolling on a lit design.
 
phantom18 said:
Anyone clever enough to post a chart of uk waters where we could drag and drop a dot at coords where we spot pots?
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Just to prove this can easily be done, an example with 2 pot locations and 1 dive location :
http://www.kidsvandamme.com/spotthepot/

Moving the cursor over the map shows the current location.
Clicking shows the clicked spot coordinates.

Obviously this still needs a lot of functionality e.g. :
- Remember last position/zoom level.
- Read data from database (instead of file) depending on zoom level (currently all data is loaded).
- Click to select a new entry, add comment and add to list.
- View page and data entry page.
- Protect data entry page with login (to avoid spamming coordinates)
- Different coordinate types eg. : pot, wreck, fish, dive, ...
- Multiple coordinates mark an area.
- Get your current location from GPS.
- Management functions (delete, download list,...)
 
Spot The Pot entry page has been modified :
- Data is stored in a MySQL database.
- Markers can be dragged/edited and modified.
- Data entry and loading is trough AJAX, so no browser refresh occurs.
- Last position/zoom level is stored in a cookie so when revisiting the page you return to your last position.
- Extra data fields have been added to remember entry datetime, last modified datetime, user id (for when a logon is required) and status (deleted items will remain in the database)

http://www.kidsvandamme.com/spotthepot/

I have a lot more things to do on my list, but it depends if the forum members aprove or disaprove.
To name a few that spring to mind :
- Data validity checks
- N/S, E/S indication.
- Import/export KML format data (e.g. usage in Google Earth)
- When the databases grows too large it would be best to only load markers depending on location and zoom level.
- Mark an area.
- Add personal data such as pictures.
- Extend the usage to include favorite haunts and so on (red dot and gold dot bay :)

Annyhow it has been great fun exploring the Google maps and it's surprising what a mere 500 lines of code can acomplish.
 
hit one of the buggers in rough sea 8th april 2012
2 lines of pots just north of walton pier going to harwich
marked with white gallon plastic bottles, start of 1 line had a blue plastic can.
getting lifted out next week as we lost one drive...
what would happen next time i pass that area and its calm if i was to lift a couple of there pots with my windless as compensation !!!!
 
Came across this yesterday evening, just west of Spit Bank Fort off Portsmouth entrance, and right in the way of leisure boats coming in avoiding the main shipping channel and on their way to enter the small boat channel. These white containers are all but invisible if there's any chop on the water. I've reported it this morning to QHM and asked if they take action when these pots with inadequate markings are reported, and which contravene their own bylaws.

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