Time to ban the Trawl ?

[Guest]

Trawling for fish has been around for some time now. It has to be the most ugly form of catching fish.

Should we as fellow users of the sea support fisherman doing this or not ?

 

[Mirelle]

Whilst we are at it, can we ban seine netting - far more destructive of fish.

PS can I keep my little beam trawl if I only use it under sail?

 

[Guest]

All fishing should be done under sail !

I believe there are places in the UK where fishing under sail is obligatory ( anyone know where ).

p.s Permission to mini trawl granted !
Only under sail though ,with a proviso that you bugger up as many lobster pots as possible.

 

[Guest]

Commercial fishing is one of those conundrums sent to tease us in life.

Plenty of fish equals plenty of people out fishing. They make lots of money and buy bigger boats and bigger nets.

This reduces the number of fish.

Other people decide that they can also make a good living from fishing so they buy up the smaller boats and work longer hours to compete.

This reduces the number of fish.

The bigger boats also have to work longer hours to catch less fish - but they persevere.

This reduces the number of fish.

The government legislates on net sizes. The fishermen fish for even longer hours and remove the breeding stock by removing the larger fish.

This reduces the number of fish (and the speed at which they can recover).

The government legislates to reduce the weight of fish being landed. The fishermen land fish illegally.

This reduces the number of fish.

The government legislates on the size of boats that can be used. The designers come up with some of the ugliest boats ever seen so that they can catch the same number of fish.

This reduces the number of fish.

There is only one of two logical endings:

1. Ban commercial fishing altogether (AND DO IT NOW) until fish stocks recover.

2. Wait until all of the fish have been removed and the fishermen follow the path of the buggy whip manufacturer and all go out of business.

OK so I am a pessimist - but one with a good memory.

In the 1950's I used to put out 20 hooks on a longline every weekend tide during January and February on Skegness Beach.

From these 20 hooks I could catch enough weight of cod to keep my Mum's 10 bedroom Boarding House supplied with fish for the whole of the next season!!

I dread to think how many hooks it would take to catch that amount of cod off Skegness Beach this coming winter!!

Best regards ((

Ian D

 

[mtb]

Re: To late

The wash and local area's are not producing fish now, this morning while listening to my scanner two boats were swearing none stop re nothing to catch.

While talking to some who is interested in one of my boats today , he said the Bass are not running as they normaly do along the shelf ( so to speak ) but 7 miles back into the wash. This information came from some one out there Saterday with a fish finder .

Things are getting worse much worse an old fella that used to run up to Skeg and leave his long lines out over the night's tide did not go out once to try this winter , and further along the Norfolk coast nout was being caught as all I'd hear on the Vhf was swearing re no fish .

N.wales the same two weeks ago day fishing boats coming back in with hardly any thing .
DOOM AND GLOOM

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/boats
I want a big steel ex trawler / tug v / cheap or swap for tug

 

[Twister_Ken]

Goodbye, and thanks for all the fish.

All the evidence suggests that commercial fishing is a dying industry (except - maybe* - for the farmed fish business). If fishing will inevitably disappear, surely we should bite the bullet and ban it now (more realistically, run it down over, say, a 10 year period to allow those involved the time to transition to something else). By banning it now rather than letting it die, at least we'll keep some fish in the seas. If we allow commercial fishing to continue ad infinitum, it won't die out until the last fish has been landed.

The problem - of course - is that fishing is an international business and even if one country or group of countries banned it, 'pirates' from other countries would carry on pursuing pisces.

*I heard on R4 at the weekend that to produce a kilo of farmed salmon requires 4 kg of other fish to be caught (usually in the Pacific) and processed into food pellets, so the long term viability of fish farming might also be in question.

 

[halcyon]

Re: All fishing should be done under sail !

Not fishing, but in Falmouth all Oyster dredging in Carrick Roads must be under sail. Think this is the only 100% sail fleet I think.

Each winter we have up to 20 Gaff rigged working boats out there, in the Summer they race, avoid at all costs, 28 foot plus bow sprit.

It does conserve Oyster stocks, but is very hard work. Up the Fal river you are allowed to dredge under oars only.


Brian

 

[maris]

Re: All fishing should be done under sail !

If we ban trawling where would we get enough fish to feed us all?

 

[dickh]

Re: All fishing should be done under sail !

I thought there was some fishing still done under sail from West Mersea? Not absolutely certain though...

dickh
I'd rather be sailing...

 

[iangrant]

I had a day out with an Emsworth Fisherman last year, just as he was about to give it all up. We laid out a trawl in Chichester Harbour and caught about 10 fish in a half hour. Two bass were big enough to eat, the rest we threw back, thankfully still alive.
He was saying that 10 years ago leaving the trawl that long would have burst the net with the weight of fish.

Sadly the local fishing "industry" is about to die altogether, along with it the skills and knowledge of the locals.

Local fishermen have an understanding of seasons what to catch when, that I fear knowlege will be soon gone.

Observations from the Fisherman:

1: The channel trawlers take all the fish - large and small so there is nothing left to come into the harbours to breed.
2: "Bloody yotties pumpin' crap and antifouling into the harbour killing the remainder" (oops)
3: The MoD spraying DDT onto Thorney Island for years (see orders banning shelfish catches hanging on the gates of Thorney, in Chichester Harbour).

As for the fix - It's about time we told the EU to get lost, get the Spanish/French/anyone away from our shores and support our own fishing fleet.

The quota system fails so badly, the fish that are protected get thrown back, shame is they died in the netting process - Too many desk bound decisions I wonder?

Ian

 

[jimi]

Take the herring industry ... remember it? Lasted for hundreds of years with boats drift netting. Then boats started pair trawling & purse seining ... fish stocks & industry wiped out in 10 years. Also extremely worrying is the industrial fishing whereby boats hoover the sea bed for sand eels thus destroying a low level in the food chain.

Jim

 

[longjohnsilver]

Some good points Ian.

Another alternative would be to not only ban all the foreign trawlers from our shores but also to allow only day boats ie smaller vessels to trawl.

Also the Iceland fishing industry is booming because they actively open and close areas depending on the size of fish caught there. The fish they catch are all landed and used rather than the small undersize ones being thrown back dead. This also enables them to control the fishing areas based on actual sizes caught.

The type of fishing that causes most harm to the seabed and hence the environment for all fish is scallop dredging. This effectively ploughs up the natural habitat for all species of fish, takes away much of their food and shelter and kills anything that happens to be in the way. We would have many beautiful coral reefs in our waters were it not for this most destructive way of fishing.

No government really cares about what happens on the seabed because out of sight is out of mind. They wouldn't be pleased if all the national parks were ploughed up and then reploughed every few weeks so that nothing could grow.

Ban it I say, and ban it now!

 

[iangrant]

So how do we take it further?Ian.

We can all twitter on here all we like, but that 'aint gonna get the baby a new hat as they say!
Perhaps our board host can take up with us to "Save our small boat fishing fleet"
I, for one would like to see our locals employed fishing and conserving instead of mixing cement and carrying bricks.
Why can't Government support our fishermen as conservationists, it's working for the farmers!

Ian

 

[Twister_Ken]

Re: So how do we take it further?Ian.

FIshermen as conservationists?

Not even Alistair Campbell could have come up with that one!

 

[iangrant]

fair point NM.

*

 

[sailbadthesinner]

I would agree with alot of the other posts it is a conundrum
but what happens when they come after YOUR livleyhood?

I am in an industry that is periodically under the spot light to be controlled and banned. Problem is a vast majority of the population use and want our end product.
We have to work towards sustainable fisheries. That probably means only a fraction of the current catch until stocks have recovered enough for v low impact fishing. problem is will there be an industry left.
How come the french and spanish fleets manage to thrive???

...It was like that when i found it!

 

[Twister_Ken]

>I would agree with alot of the other posts it is a conundrum
but what happens when they come after YOUR livleyhood?<

Sh*t happens. My father used to run a door-to-door greengrocery van. Rising car ownership and supermarkets made him into a chicken farmer.

 

[sailbadthesinner]

totally fair point
however he was a victim of new technology/market forces
he wasn't put out of business by an outside lobby who arbitrarily called for his business to banned
i know the effect is the same. market forces i can accept, however there must be some good fisherman out there whose methods are worthy of retention???
it is one hell of a conundrum
one i fear mr blair isn't up to
he can't even make his mind up over hunting

...It was like that when i found it!

 

[billmacfarlane]

Re: So how do we take it further?Ian.

Ian , I'm all for fish conservation , not only for food , but for the simple reason that with the seas being ruthlessly emptied we don't have a clue what will happen to the oceans without them and how it will affect the whole world. The seas are a huge , delicately balanced , ecosystem that affects the whole planet including weather systems and that balance is being affected by humans emptying the oceans. We don't know the far reaching results as yet. Fishermen as conservationists ? Fisherman have proven in the past that they're incapable of such a thing. Who's emptying the seas and killing the fish ? Antifoul and yotties ? Never in a milion years. There's simply too many fish being caught by a group of people who'll go on trying to do the same until there's none left - then complain it's all out own fault for wanting to eat them. I'm all for external regulation of what's left and yes I think we should guard our shores first. How you control the high seas I don't know but the conservation of whales has been a success so there's hope.

 

[davel]

>> I am in an industry that is periodically under the spot light to be controlled and banned. Problem is a vast majority of the population use and want our end product.

Just looked at your profile which lists you as a surveyor. I find it hard to reconcile that with the description provided above !

Come clean now. You're a porn star aren't you

Dave L.