Through the Gaps! - Newlyn Fishing News: fishfight Cornwall UK fish commercial fishing fish cooking and art

Published on Wednesday 20 February 2013 11:45

I have just watched Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s TV programme, Fish Fight.

Whilst I agree fundamentally with what he’s trying to do, I disagree with the way he’s going about it.

He has a few ‘facts’ wrong.

Firstly: The ground shown at the start of the show was a rocky area hardly likely ever to have been fished by scallopers.

The second ground was flat and sandy, exactly the sort of place scallopers do fish.

The flora and fauna on the first ground cannot grow on the second type of ground as most of the weed, coral and fern type animals require a rocky base for anchorage; they would not get a foothold on sand or gravel so cannot grow there.

This means that this type of ground always looks barren. It isn’t barren by any means as it is full of worms, prawns, crabs, razor-shells and small flat fish and their various predators, most of which will bury themselves as soon as they perceive a threat, such as a couple of noisy divers who are looking for them.

There is no way that the second ground would ever look like the first. That is like comparing a flat field to a rocky outcrop, totally different topology and therefore totally different ecology.

Secondly; HFW infers that scallopers and beam trawlers do this type of damage to all the seas around the coast of Britain.

This is not true as most scallop fisheries are very localised and make the most of flattish areas, not rocky coasts, which dominate the British coastline.

Scallops do not occur everywhere and the Dover soles and Plaice caught by the beam trawls are migratory and move in and out of areas according to seasonal changes and their breeding cycles. So trawlers are A) not fishing in the same areas all the time and B) not fishing absolutely everywhere at any time.

Thirdly; The circus side-show type ‘demonstration’ he performed at Weston Super-Mare was ridiculous and so unscientific as to be farcical.

But it had the effect he wanted, shock and horror! What a pity he didn’t do something more realistic, still as shocking and horrific but more true to life.

Like following a real set of scallop gear over some of the rocky terrain he wrongly claimed they fish on.

To see the gear being smashed to pieces, tow-pipes bent in half and tooth blades ripped from the frames would hopefully let the public see just how hard it is to make a living from the sea in the first place without having an ill-informed, opinionated TV star trying to gain notoriety a la Jamie Oliver and his assault on school meals!

Also; Much of the fishing happens well away from coastal areas in deeper waters where there is little light at depth and almost no flora at all, so corals and ferns do not grow there and all of the fauna is predatory upon other fauna which is unfortunate enough to be smaller.

Shoals of fish will pass over these grounds on their way to feed or spawn but none stay there all year round.

This results in large areas of the seabed having no fish at all. Many areas will only be populated by certain species at certain times as feeding and spawning grounds and they are dependent upon a supply of whatever that species of fish feeds on.

Much of the phyto- and zoo-plankton at the bottom of the food-chain is affected by run-off from the land and is very susceptible to poisoning by agricultural pesticides and fertilisers and industrial contaminants, even hundreds of miles offshore. Even if this pollution doesn’t kill the fish directly, phosphate and nitrogenous fertilisers can cause plankton to ‘bloom’ in massive clouds which clog the gills of fish and kill them that way.

Furthermore: Much of the damage done to a ground recovers fairly quickly.

His estimate of 100 years is true for some of the wildlife such as coral but not for most of the things that live in the sea. I have seen a fairly barren area of the sea bed suddenly ‘blossom’ with life a year later as a result of the activity of dredging, mainly because it stirred up a lot of the nutrients buried beneath the floor of the seabed and many species came to that area after we had left to utilise that newly available resource.

I know this because when we returned to the same ground a year later there was an abundance of diverse creatures to be found there whereas there were very few the year before. In that instance the dredging had formed a rich and diverse ecosystem where a very sparse one had existed previously.

Much of the over fishing that has occurred over the last 30-odd years has been of a particularly perverse nature.

For instance, in northern Scottish waters, Danish boats have been catching large quantities of sand-eels for many years, not to feed people but to be transformed into pig food and eventually Danish bacon for the British breakfast.

Roughly 100 tons of fish is needed to produce one ton of bacon. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that that is not a good way to go about things.

Much of the over-fishing is the result of British people eating a very small range of fish, i.e. cod and plaice.

It would certainly help with the pressures on those species if the British palate would try more of the amazing variety of tasty, nutritious fish that live around our coasts. Much of the ‘fish product’ sold in supermarkets in packages and boxes are this type of fish, mashed up and reformed and flavoured and sold as fish-cakes and similar.

Many of the boats which now fish scallops and beam-trawls were at one time fishing for round-fish but either had no licences or had them revoked in fisheries cut-backs. To keep the boats fishing, the owners were forced to start scalloping as there was very little regulation concerning the scallop fishery. Once these boats began to catch scallops the stocks were severely reduced in a very short time. So it was a knock-on effect from other poorly thought out legislation which caused so many boats to become scallopers in the first place.

The Isle of Man has always had a self-imposed off season and a 110mm size limit across the widest part of the shell. The adjacent countries have no closed season and a 100mm limit.

So the Manx fishermen have been doing more, voluntarily, than the EU or UK Govt have ever done through legislation. This is highly commendable and should be remembered in any future discussions on the subject, as the Manx fishermen have been proactive leaders, not reluctant followers.

So you see, this is not a simple problem that can be resolved simply by banning trawling and dredging. But you can bet that that is what will happen as ill-informed and worse, deliberately mis-informed people clamour to protect the seas which they actually know nothing about!

Other than that, I think it is a very good idea to have reserves for the regeneration of various species, but don’t let the idiots in Brussels or even Whitehall or Tynwald decide where or how big these reserves are as they will make a ‘vote conscious decision’, rather than a find a proper balance between the needs of an industry and the needs of the animals themselves. After all, there would be no point in preserving the fishery if it costs the livelihoods of the fishermen.

John Callister

The response to Hugh Fearnely-Whittingstall's latest TV programme, the fight sequel has highlighted the need for more education amongst both the media and the public. Seafish's Phil MacMullen gives a more balanced view than some of the press who, yet again, took much of HFW's programme at face value without appreciating the highly complex nature of managing fish stocks - after all, if it was that simple we would not be in the position we are today.

At the moment, as you are reading this fishing boats off the Cornish coast are in the process of dumping perfectly good haddock back over the side - dead.

Some of the media reports are linked here:

The Guardian

Business Green

Greenpeace

The Mirror