Pity the poor cod.

[Twister_Ken]

A report today says North Sea cod are on the verge of extinction.

(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2441113.stm)

Is it time we stopped all commercial fishing in UK waters?

(sailing related bit - think of the various berths a fishing ban would free-up!)

Or do we have to wait for the last remaining fish to hit the deep fat fryer?

 

[Guest]

I\'m mystified

I'm mystified.

This year we sailed over to Cherbourg/St Vaast/Carentan for the holiday. They have a serious fishing fleet of large trawlers which appeared to operate 24 hours a day! Every time they came into the harbour the boats were loaded so high with fish of all kinds that the fisherman were walking all over them on the decks.

Box after box after box.

And they're not very far away. So why is our fleet and indded its boats so small and why are there so few fish. Maybe there are 2 things we should do.

1. Eat more varied fish - we can be so boring.
2. Stop those foreign Johnies fishing in our waters.

Geoff W

 

[vyv_cox]

Extinction has been racing towards us for years, not just in the North Sea but worldwide. Only Canada seems to have had the sense to do anything about it. I have read that areas of the Grand Bank are patrolled by warships that will take action if any fishing occurs. Some Spanish trawlers were arrested and their ships confiscated a couple of years ago. Unless breeding grounds are placed completely off limits for fishing for the forseeable future we can forget the pleasure of eating decent fish.

 

[billmacfarlane]

There's a brilliant book on the subject by Mark Kurlansky called by the singularly unimaginative title " Cod " . It's more than a history of cod fishing , explaining such things as how the cod helped fuel the slave trade , and take you up to present times.

 

[AndrewB]

Eating our way down the food chain.

One reason the cod will never recover is that having virtually wiped them out, we are now getting stuck into all the less appetising stuff they would need for a revival (such as sand-eels).

That's why cod have never returned to Grand Banks, 10 years after extinction. You'd have thought we would have learnt from the Canadians, who now have nothing worth saving. But being tied to EC means we haven't been able to control commercial and petty nationalistic interests. Iceland is the one country to get it right.

Cod was my favourite fish. I'm glad that at least I was able to afford it in the past. You can keep the fish-farmed salmon.

 

[Guest]

Read Cod

Essential reading for fishermen, yachtsmen, politicians, eurocrats and the public:
COD by Mark Kurlansky published in the UK in 1998 by Jonathan Cape, Random House Ltd. (first published in USA in 1997).

 

[Ohdrat]

The only healthy Cod fishery now is the Icelandic one which as we remember is extraordinarily well protected.. well done Iceland.. The Cod fishery on the Grand Banks is dead... all the older cod have been fished out so if there are any young cod left they do not know the migration route and spawning ground.. (apparently Cod migrate but not instinctively like salmon.. Europe has long over-fished it's waters and postponed the action needed to protect it's fisheries.. There are experimental attempts to farm Cod .. god help us if it works looking at the damage Salmon farming does it doesn't bear thinking about.

Highly Recommend the Book Cod as mentioned above and also by the same author "The Basque History of the World"

 

[BrendanS]

Re: ..postponed again!

listened to radio4 news on way home. latest news is that the EU commissioner has bowed to pressure, and is not going to place a ban. Will instead ask for further action on protection <s>

 

[Twister_Ken]

Protected species

Why is it that farmers and fisherman are the most protected species around?

Even when they've totally knackered the land and sea, the governments still use our money to featherbed them.

 

[Jacket]

Read in the paper today that the dolphin colony in Scotland have actually started attacking people because they're so hungry. Several researchers have had chunks bitten out of them while they were swimming with the dolphins.

Not sure whether the dolphins thought that the researchers were after their fish, or if they were wondering in humans taste nice.

 

[Aja]

Enjoyed 'Salt'. 'Cod' is next on my list!

 

[TheBoatman]

Unless we place a total ban on fishing for cod we will lose them forever, and that also means that you cant fish for some other species and catch them "by accident" because the bl***dy EU will insist that they are thrown back dead. I think there has to be away of farming them and by that I mean hatch them and then release them to the sea, but it will take years for them to recover to the position they were in , in the 70's.
If we (the EU) can support wine lakes, butter mountains, more olive oil than we can use, grain bins full. then we can ask the fishermen to go away and dont come back for 5 years and support them in the meantime.
AND before any fishermen jump up and down, market forces will always apply i.e. in 5 years time if there are fish to be caught somebody will get a boat and do it!
It is totally beyond me that the fishermen say "well we need to fish or we will die" when they know that if they continue on in this way there will be NO fish left to catch and their sons/daugthers will die anyway.

 

[sailbadthesinner]

i agree
it is total madness

we/they donot learn. look at the way we over fished herring /pilchards. huge fleets getting tonnes then puff all gone.

in the southern hemispehere they are going after deeper fish whose stocks take much longer to recover

it is my beleif that we will bugger up this planet long before the sun goes supa nova taking us all out anyway. i think future generations will look at us disbelievingl that we were so stupid and so short term.
sorry but this gets me going.
Nurse!!!

Come on brain.get this over and i can go back to killing you with beer

 

[pugwash]

Nub of the problem is that EU size limits apply to the fish landed for sale, not to those that are caught. Result is that for every fish landed for sale, at least five (perhaps more) are thrown over dead because they are too small. Norway, on the other hand (and perhaps Iceland too) make it illegal to CATCH undersize fish and imposes the rule rigorously. Fishermen have to radio a report of the make-up of every haul, and when more than five percent fo the catch is under-sized the whole fleet must leave the area. Here, South-West inshore fishermen impose their own size minimums but the french and Spanish fishing the same waters sell everything they catch no matter how big it is. Trawl-nets can be designed to separate different kinds of fish, releasing those that aren't wanted. But the politicians are totally lacking in courage and won't impose rules. Now Fischer has fudged yet again. When I bought cod and chips at my local shop the other day the cod was Russian (probably pirated from Norwegian waters).