Next time you think it seems the trip is a long one...

A single page in a Merchant Navy seaman's pass book.  When things were a little different in the 1930s.  These were the days when many sailors began their careers on wooden and steel square riggers.  Six weeks on and two weeks off was a long way off - just check out the detail from his discharge book for most of the 1930s.  

Joseph William Burnett was at home when his daughter was born. Was next at home when she was nearly two, and was next at home when she was nearly six years old.  She met her father on that occasion only when her aunt had insisted that her mother took her out of school (in South Shields) and travel to Leith where the boat was undergoing repairs in the Albert Dock. How times have changed.

Fishing: the World Bank at the helm.

"When the media, think tanks and even research funds are controlled by a small faction of the population whose interests are well identified, equality before the vote becomes a fiction"

Issues of environmental summits.

One may question the results of large masses devoted to the environment, from Rio 1992 to Rio 2012 through Johannesburg in 2002. Fishermen are virtually absent, but we realize in retrospect that these summits are important steps in a process that ensures the future of fishermen. In 1992, the Rio Summit resulted in the Convention on Biological Biodiversity, the Agreement on Straddling Stocks in 1995 and the Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries. In 2002, in Johannesburg, are signed commitments for the maximum sustainable yield (MSY) and the creation of marine protected areas and reserves. In 2012, Rio + 20 delivers a Global Partnership for Oceans (GPO) initiated by the World Bank. Under the guise of protecting the oceans, it is in fact a large program to promote the privatization of resources involving governments, companies, research institutes, foundations and ENGOs. It takes several years before the fishermen and their organizations perceive concretely the impact of choices made and driven at these summits. There may be positive effects, but the artisanal fishermen and their representatives are not associated with the guidelines implemented during such summits. It is mainly thanks to ICSF that fishworkers’ organizations are aware of the challenges of these summits and have attempted to make their voices heard. They did it in certain places such as the FAO, but it is far from the case elsewhere. In fact, when the guidelines are adopted, the forces that implement them are already working to define strategies and implement them, their documents are ready. There is no plot, the documents are public, but these are strategies with their goals, their actors, their intellectual and financial resources, Their timelines. There is no unanimity among the players either, but convergence of objectives and means

Charting a Course to Sustainable Fisheries

In July 2012, a group of California researchers published a very elaborate program of action, as we have noted in the report "Blue Charity Business." It is the action plan for implementation in fishing of the GPO World Bank. Its development has brought together the elite promoters liberalization of fisheries under the auspices of big liberal foundations that fund and steer the project. They include the Walton Family Foundation, related to Walmart, and Moore, Packard and Oak foundations. The Pew foundation is absent, it distanced itself from some liberal options and focuses on the promotion of reserves and political action at the highest level with governments and the United Nations. Pew and other foundations share the same objective of priority to the conservation and wilderness, coordinate their action in the United States within EGA (Environmental Grantmakers Association) and are frequently found to fund all programs or organizations (Oceana Ocean in 2012, Global Ocean Commission, etc.) that can clearly commit themselves to liberal options (Oceana). There is no unanimity between all these foundations, but a division of labor and the belief that conservation is the priority before human rights and imposes to put fishermen under tutelage. Alongside foundations, the Advisory Committee consists of researchers (Hilborn and Worms), the Danish Minister of Fisheries, ENGOs representatives (Environmental Defense Fund, WWF), international organizations (World Bank), representatives of Fishing Companies (Scotland, tuna), various consultants, etc. Lead authors are scientists in California (Costello) and representatives of EDF, great promoters of liberalization of fisheries in the United States. For this team, the aim is to transfer the American liberal model to the rest of the world.

Conservation through privatization.

Fishing activity is designed according to the priority of preserving habitats, biodiversity and resources. A healthy and resilient ecosystem must allow to create wealth and reduce poverty, but it is a secondary objective that must flow naturally from the first. Yet we know that this is far from always being the case. We must first pay the price of adjustment and the availability of resources is no guarantee that they actually benefit those who need it to live, especially in a liberalized system. There is even a resource curse for the poor.

The conservation objective leads to constraints that can undermine the livelihoods of coastal communities. The authors also recognize that the creation of reserves does not guarantee that the benefits outweigh the constraints. Indeed reserves lead to the loss of fishing areas, significant costs of control, a lot of money is also needed for scientific monitoring and organization of the reserve. These costs are largely borne by the coastal fishermen as the preferred solution is to allocate them territorial use rights (TURFs) on their fishing zones linked with reserves. The allocation of these collective rights - positive in itself - is therefore under the supervision of conservationists organizations (ENGOs and Scientists).

For deep sea fishing, the choice of the report is clear, it is to generalize transferable, individual or collective quotas. It is also recommended to prohibit some fishing zones, severely restrict, if not prohibit trawling, ban driftnets and to fight against all by-catches. All these objectives can be achieved through the implementation of "Policy-market dynamics". It is of course ITQs (Individual Transferable Quotas) and transferable concessions, various pressures on buyers, processors, distributors and consumers through the dissemination of lists, labels (MSC), boycott campaigns, mobilizing chefs. The questionning of subsidies and tax exemptions. The successes of management are improperly presented as the result of the implementation of ITQs while mere compliance with catch limits (TACs) or limitation of the fishing effort, without portability, would suffice to explain them. The aim is conservation, as well as reaching the Maximum Economic Yield, that is to say, even beyond the profitability of fishing, the maximum profit. This MEY involves a small number of boats and fishermen and makes it possible to privatize and get paid in full by the fishing companies all costs associated with the activity (research, monitoring, control, administration, port development, security, etc. ). The rapporteurs forget to mention that all of these costs are added to the price of quotas and usually involve lower income for the crew. Contrary to what is often claimed, these costs of control for ITQs and various constraints are also very high (estimated at 20% of the catch value). We understand why we should reach a maximum profit!

50 in 10

In November 2012, in Vancouver, 36 organizations came together for a few days workshop to finalize the implementation of the "Charting a Course". They named the project "50 in 10", which means restoring 50% of fisheries in 10 years. The plan was declined by major types of fisheries, of countris and especially for coastal fisheries. Among the organizations the big liberal foundationsare to be found : UN agencies (FAO, World Bank), researchers (Hilborn) ENGOs (WWF, Oceana, Rare, EDF, Conservation International, The Nature Conservancy, etc), Multinational Fishing companies (Nippon Suisan), fishermen's organizations from Sweden and the United States, representatives of States (The Netherlands and USAID). The workshop on coastal fisheries is particularly interesting because this sector is a headache for the Liberals, difficult to control and socially sensitive. They discussed how to attract private capital in this sector which requires large funds. ENGOs have been heavily involved in this sector by organizing reserves and MPAs and their role will grow. The introduction of ITQs is envisaged for certain resources, especially those that are shared with the deepsea fishermen. The report states « the need to do a widespread education campaign to overcome fear and initial rejection of rights-based management ». However, the most promising orientation is one that would link a company with a monopoly on the marketing of fish with a community that has territorial use rights and management of fishing areas integrating a reserve . The report, "Charting a Course" also indicated the need to change the laws to allow these traders monopolies. "The market be able to better facilitate the establishment of TURF systems if national laws are modified so as to give processors or buyers functionally exclusive access rights to certain areas." Inshore fishermen will then be completely in the hands of wholesalers and processors themselves subjects to ENGOs. This system begins to develop in Indonesia with the support of WWF. The role of ENGOs in this program is important and often central. Some also play a major role in the organization and running of the seminar, as EDF who prepared the introductory report and controlled the development of "Charting a Course". All ENGOs, whatever their orientation, are mobilized to advance the program, whether it is pressure on distributors, consumers, restaurant owners, the press, politicians and, for some,the direct implementation of projects. Thus the role of Greenpeace is widely emphasized even if this NGO is not directly associated with the project. The foundations are there to provide an abundance of the necessary funds and Greenpeace International largely benefits from them to launch campaigns towards the public and distributors.

Corporations, foundations and the United Nations.

The most recent initiative is the creation of the Global Ocean Commission, created in 2013 by the big Anglo-saxon foundations (Pew, Moore, Oak, Marisla, Waitt, etc.). It brings together high-level politicians (ministers and presidents), industrialists like Tata. Its stated goal is to develop proposals for submission to the UN in 2014 for the management and protection of international waters. So the private sector gets a position to recommend public policy in this domain. For Pew, it is mainly to promote its program of big reserves on the model of the Chagos or Palau. In Palau, a Pacific micro-state of 21,000 inhabitants, Pew got the prohibition of commercial fishing on the entire EEZ, the size of France, in exchange for a promise of tourism development. Pew is currently laying siege to the French authorities in the Pacific to advance its projects of giant reserves. Obviously, for Pew, tourism is always preferable to fishing divers admirers of corals and whales traveling by plane and staying in hotels, however, have a higher ecological footprint than fishermen, not to mention the social impacts of mass tourism .

Another clear objective of these foundations stemming from large multinationals is to control the development of all marine activities, from transport to the extraction of minerals. As on land, the creation of large reserves without fishing makes it possible to justify the development of potentially more destructive and polluting mining, even if they are highly regulated. A large meeting was held in Washington in April 2013 between the Global Ocean Commission and the World Ocean Council, an organization that brings together most of the major companies involved in international waters, oil, mining and transport companies with also, curiously the "Cape Cod Commercial Hook Fishermen's Association." These liners from New England are funded with millions of dollars by some foundations, a good excuse to show that the foundations support small-scale fishermen, but are not they bribed to be used as support for a Corporate Control of marine resources of the planet?

Very clearly the organizations of artisanal fishermen grouped in two forums, the WFF and WFFP, took a stand against the Global Partnership for Oceans and its optionsin favour of widespread privatization policies of fish resources. They complain that the fishermen have not at all been associated to the development of this policy and demand that fisheries policies be defined in the respect for human rights and to ensure the freedom, food sovereignty and dignity of fishermen. For its part, FAO has initiated a long process of meetings with artisanal fishermen throughout the world to develop a program of support for small-scale fisheries. This is an important step towards the recognition of the rights of small-scale fishermen, but what weight do they have against the financial powers that control the decision-making process with the connivance of large ENGOs who claim to represent the citizens and even the interests of fishermen, shameless?

Alain Le Sann,

secretary of « Collectif pêche & Développement » 17 April 2013

Stelissa at sea working!

Singing with Sole! Fishwives choir gets boost when Newlyn girl Hannah joins up

A NEWLYN singer whose family are steeped in the port's fishing heritage has agreed to join a national choir that hopes to replicate the success of The Fishermen's Friends and The Military Wives.

Hannah Pascoe, who sings as a soloist with the Mousehole and Holman's Climax Male Voice Choirs, Penzance Choral Society and Duchy Operatic Society, will travel up to Sussex on Thursday to join up with 40 women who have never met - and most of whom have never sung! ​

Operatic singer and fishermen's wife, sister and daugher, Hannah Pascoe has joined the Fishwives Choir They will spend two days rehearsing a newly penned fishing song none of them have heard before and then two days recording in a professional studio. The hope is that they will then go on to climb the charts - raising awareness of the work of The Fishermen's Mission as they go.

The Fishwives Choir was created by Essex fisherman's widow Jane Dolby, whose trawlerman husband Colin was lost at sea in 2008 in a freak storm. The 40 women, from as far away as Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, and are all from fishing families and many have lost men at sea. Hannah hasn't, but she felt that it was worth giving the choir a helping hand after they put out a national call for volunteers. The mother-of-one from Newlyn said: "My dad Denys is a fisherman and three of my four brothers – Andrew, David and James – are fishermen." Fishing goes back many generations in the Pascoe family and even Hannah's husband, Ryan Ladd, is an auctioneer for Stevensons', and has a boat he uses to fish for mackerel in the summer.

Hannah said: "The aim of the choir is to raise awareness for the Mission. When I was thinking about whether to join the Choir I spoke to Sue Hendricks from Perranporth who lost her husband.

"She said that without a body the authorities won't issue a death certificate and so she was in limbo with no way to get money or change bank payments. That is the same situation for many women who lose their husbands at sea and that is when The Fishermen's Mission steps in. "A lot of people see the Mission in Newlyn as a place for the older men to go and play pool, but it's an important part of the community and does a lot for fishermen, so I thought I should do my bit."

Hannah will travel up to Hastings with mother Mary who will help babysit two-year-old daughter Molly while Hannah sings. She said: "I'm not sure what to expect, it could be fantastic or it could be quite scary, but I've already met Sue and her daughter Jenny Ansell and they are both lovely and we got on straight away.

"All of the women will have something in common so I'm sure we'll all get along." Hannah is one of just three Cornish women joining the choir, and she wasn't initially sure about whether to take part either because of the travel and cost of being involved.

But she said a peculiar coincidence tipped the balance.

"When I spoke to Sue from Perranporth she said the boat her husband owned before he died was the Lamorna. That boat actually now belongs to my brothers Andrew and James and they fish her out of Newlyn. When I heard that I decided it must be some sort of sign that I had to go up there!" The Fishwives Choir are already getting TV and radio coverage and Hannah's story is due to feature on ITV in the next few days.

Learn more about the Fishwives Choir at www.facebook.com/thefishwiveschoir and follow the girls on twitter at www.twitter.com/fishwiveschoirs

Read more: 

Counting Fish!

Looking across the pond to see what we can learn from the USA.

Counting Fish 101 by Center for American Progress

Turbot charged!

The scourge of the oceans, visiting Fowey registered scalloper, Man Ranger sports new colours...

time to clear up aboard the Sea Spray happy to be back hand lining for pollack...

another messy job gets underway...

sporting a mere 6 dredges a side, as compared to the 27 a side worked by the grown-up scallopers...

cracking trip of inshore fish from skipper Nigel on the Inishallen...

prime pollack from the Sea Spray...

and a handful of sharks from the netters...

just some of the big white fish from the netter Ajax...

alongside these cracking inshore, cod, monk, turbot and ray from the Lizard boys...

yet more tallies from top merchants Ocean Fish...

sizzling suppers to be...

stacked two high, cracking turbot trip from the Gary M...

so fresh that the bleed is still fresh on the tail - turbot are bled in order to prevent the hallmark pristine white flesh from being discoloured...

just a little reminder from the harbour office over parking - you have been warned it seems!

Fishing mortality in freefall - the trend is bucked

The International Council for Exploration of the Sea (ICES)’s most recent advice has confirmed that fishing pressure across the main commercial stocks has fallen to a remarkable degree.

This graph in the ICES advice illustrates vividly how after something like 70 years of incremental increases in fishing mortality (F), the trends after the year 2000 have taken a dramatic dive. This fall in fishing pressure coincides closely with the period during which an array of “cod recovery” measures were applied to EU fleets, although many other factors are undoubtedly involved.

Fishing mortality in the demersal and benthic stocks has been halved since 2000.

The fall in fishing mortality is remarkable in that it applies to all of the three main species groups pelagic (including herring and mackerel), demersal (including cod, haddock and whiting) and benthic (the flatfish including sole and plaice). It also applies right across the whole of the North East Atlantic area, including the North Sea and Baltic and waters around the UK.

Although the development of the pelagic stocks has taken a different course from the benthic and demersal, they are now rapidly catching up.

ICES summarises the situation: Fishing Mortality for benthic stocks gradually increased over time until about year 2000 and have since reduced substantially. For demersal stocks the increase was steeper in the beginning of the time period, peaked around year 2000 and has reduced since. The pelagic stocks have had a very different development over time. F increased significantly in the late 1960s and early 1970s. This resulted in the well known collapse of several important herring and mackerel stocks. Since then, F has been quite low and stable and like for the other two types of stocks, has decreased since year 2000.

In many respects this development will come as no great news to many fishermen who have seen the fishing fleets reduced by decommissioning, consolidation and attrition, to the extent that previously busy fishing grounds are now quite deserted. But it is important to acknowledge the significance of the fact that this trend is now established in scientific opinion and also to consider its implications.

Implications

The clear shift to a lower fishing mortality rate brings with it the need rethink the way we approach both fisheries advice and fisheries management. When the overwhelming concern was to reduce fishing pressure because it was such a dominant factor, there was little need to think too deeply about multi-species interactions – they didn’t really come fully into play. But now that the impact of fishing has been reduced, the need to consider predation patterns and cannibalism becomes much more urgent. ICES' view is that stocks can become so large that they deplete their food sources and eventually eat their own kind. It is necessary therefore to think about the next steps in advice and management: It may be that it will be necessary to increase fishing pressure on some species to achieve an optimum balance. ICES has been working for 30 years on multi-species models. These can now be put to use to inform management decisions.

Another implication lies in the realm of public perceptions. “We all know that fish stocks are collapsing”, has become such an automatic media refrain that it has been difficult for the public to understand that things have changed. But changed they have. North Sea cod, the iconic fish and chips species, is rebuilding steadily to safe biological levels; many stocks are at the management goal of maximum sustainable yield and others are on the way. The recovery of some stocks like North Sea plaice is nothing short of breathtaking, with a biomass beyond anything seen within the historical record.

This is not to say that there aren’t some stocks that have yet to respond in the same way: West of Scotland and Irish Sea Cod are two examples where other factors may be impeding recovery. But the dominant downward trend is too well established, too widespread in geographical terms and across so many diverse fisheries, to be dismissed as a statistical blip.

One telling point in the scientists’s advice puts paid to a number of claims of celebrity chefs and journalists that their own heroic efforts have turned a catastrophic situation around. By the time that Johnny-Come- Latelys such as The End of the Line and Hugh’s Fish Fight turned their attention to fishing the trends discussed above were well established.

Causes

The precise reasons why fishing mortality has dropped so decisively in recent years are not straightforward to discern. Numerous management initiatives have come into play simultaneously and disentangling which worked from which didn’t simply isn’t feasible after the event.

Fleet reductions, tradable quota, increased selectivity, landing controls, effort control, an altered industry mindset, cod avoidance including real time closures have all been in the mix. Some have undoubtedly contributed, others have had perverse effects. ICES points to better control, for example in the Baltic Sea. Norway has been able to check the Russians in the Barents Sea. Other candidates include a move towards long term management plans, setting TACs in relation to maximum sustainable yield and better relations between the fishing industry and fisheries scientists. The answer lies surely in some combination of the above but the weight accorded to each is that science cannot provide.

ICES, however, does not give much credit to the theory that it is nature itself that has created this positive trend in fishing mortality. All species and ecosystems shifting in the same direction simultaneously simply sounds improbable, they conclude.

This article has borrowed freely from both ICES’ 2012 advice and a forthcoming article produced by the Danish Fishermen’s Association and the NNFO.



And here's an excellent resp[onse to the published information from Ray Hilborn

Myths

Fisheries science has been the unfortunate victim of a number of myths that have become widely accepted but are patently untrue. These myths include
we are fishing down food chains all large fish in the oceans are depleted by 90% most of the worlds fisheries are overfished all fish stocks will be collapsed by 2048 the “Ocean Health Index” assertion that France and Spain have the best managed fisheries in the world This page provides some comment on each of these
Fishing Down Food Webs

This myth was started by a paper in 1998 entitled “Fishing down marine food web” authored by Daniel Pauly and several others. The observation was that the mean trophic level of the worlds fish catch was declining as seen in the graph taken from Pauly’s paper. The authors then have gone on to argue that there is a common trend in fisheries, starting to fish at the top of the food chain, once those stocks are depleted, fishing fleets move down the food chain, and the net result is that soon nothing will be left in the ocean but jelly fish. The original paper, published in Science is one of the most commonly cited papers in fisheries and although this myth has been thoroughly debunked it continues to be widely believed, and Pauly and co-authors have an entire web site devoted to defending the idea.

Three papers have shown the errors in both the analysis and also the implications as asserted by the authors. The first paper was published by Tim Essington and co-authors in 2006. Their paper showed that the decline of mean trophic level in most marine ecosystems was not that all the high-trophic level fish were gone, but that in fact catch of high trophic level fish continued to rise. The decline was due to increased yields of lower trophic level fish. So while this paper didn’t challenge the assertion that mean trophic level in the catch was declining, it showed that the assertion that the high trophic level fish were declining in catch was wrong.

In 2010 Trevor Branch and colleagues published a paper in Nature showing that in fact, the mean trophic level in the world’s catch was rising, not falling, and that the decline Pauly had shown was due primarily to two species, the rebuilding of the Peruvian anchovetta stock (low trophic level), and the decline of catches of Atlantic cod. Worldwide the mean trophic level of the catch was rising, not falling. Branch also showed that if you look at the mean trophic level of fish in marine ecosystems, there was no overall decline in mean trophic levels. Branch pointed out that looking at any characteristic of catch, where it is total catch, or trophic level, is not necessarily a good measure of changes in the ecosystem itself since catches are rarely a random sample.

The final paper that nailed the coffin on “fishing down marine food webs” was also published in 2010 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, by Suresh Sethi, Trevor Branch and several others. Sethi began by asking a basic question — one that should have been asked by the proponents of fishing down a decade earlier. Are high trophic level species more valuable than low trophic level species? Remember the argument in support of fishing down is that fishing fleets begin with high trophic level species because they are more valuable.

What Sethi and co-authors found was that there is no relationship between trophic level and the price or value of fish. Some of the most expensive fish in a marketplace are prawns, crabs, scallops and lobsters, all relatively low trophic level species. Even among higher trophic level fishes there is no correlation between trophic level and value. The mechanism that underlies the theory of fishing down food webs simply isn’t true. Sethi found that fisheries do not begin with high trophic level species, but instead the development of fisheries in different regions of the world is largely independent of trophic level.

Fishing down food web — a Busted Myth.

Pauly, D., V. Christensen, J. Dlasgaard, R. Froese, and F. Torres Jr. 1998. Fishing down marine food webs. Science 279:860-863. Essington, T. E., A. H. Beaudreau, and J. Wiedenmann. 2006. Fishing through marine food webs. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 103:3171-3175. Branch, T. A., R. Watson, E. A. Fulton, S. Jennings, C. R. McGilliard, G. T. Pablico, D. Ricard, and S. R. Tracey. 2010. The trophic fingerprint of marine fisheries. Nature 468:431-435. Sethi, S. A., T. A. Branch, and R. Watson. 2010. Global fishery development patterns are driven by profit but not trophic level. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 107:12163-12167. ______________________________________________________________________________ All large fish in the oceans are depleted by 90% This myth began with a 2003 paper in Nature entitled “Rapid worldwide depletion of predatory fish communities” in which the authors, Ransom Myers and Boris Worm, used a large body of Japanese tuna fleet longline records to show that the catch per hook declined very rapidly when the fishery began across a range of species, and that by 1980 catch per hook around the world was roughly only 10% of what it had been in the 1950s when the fishery began. This was taken as evidence of depletion of the oceans of tunas and relatives, and is the basis for repeated statements that 90% of the fish of the ocean are gone. 

 This paper caused an enormous controversy because this decline in longline CPUE had been known for a long time by scientists working on tunas and it was widely recognized NOT to reflect changes in abundance. Rebuttals were rapid and rather vehement, Carl Walters entitled his rebuttal “Folly and fantasy in the analysis of spatial catch rate data.” In 2006 John Sibert and colleagues published a paper in Science showing that abundance of large tunas and other species in the Pacific had not declined by anything like 90% by 2000, and had hardly declined at all by 1980. Further they showed that for these species in the Pacific the stocks were generally at or above the management target levels that produce maximum sustainable yield To some extent the last word on this issue was a paper published in 2010 in PNAS by Juan-Jorda and colleagues. They showed that globally tuna stocks by 2010 were at 40-50% of their unfished abundance, still generally at or above target levels, and that in 1980, when Myers and Worm had argued tuna had declined by 90%, in fact tuna stocks had been depleted only slightly and were at 80% of their unfished abundance. 

The myth that fish stocks have been depleted to only 10 or 20% of the original abundance based on the tuna and bilfish of the high seas is another BUSTED MYTH. 


Myers, R. A. and B. Worm. 2003. Rapid worldwide depletion of predatory fish communities. Nature 423:280-283. Walters, C. J. 2003. Folly and fantasy in the analysis of spatial catch rate data. Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences 60:1433-1436. Sibert, J., J. Hampton, P. Kleiber, and M. Maunder. 2006. Biomass, Size, and Trophic Status of Top Predators in the Pacific Ocean. Science 314:1773-1776. Juan-Jorda, M. S., I. Mosqueira, A. B. Cooper, J. Freire, and N. K. Dulvy. 2011. Global population trajectories of tunas and their relatives. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 108:20650-20655.