It's freshening! #ukstorms

Nearly hitting 50 knots, the Sevenstones Lightship shows an ever-increasing wind blasting across the Western Approaches.

Talking about fetch

Wave height in storms is influenced by many factors including the fetch - looking at this wind chart the fetch for the storm about to hit the west coast of the UK extends from the eastern seaboard of the USA - doesn't get any further than that!

More food for thought - That the langoustine fishery is the product of bottom trawling! #eatmorefish

Au contraire mes amis - on the back of the recent post about why the Government should ban trawling here is a post on the Comité de Péche Finisterre in France's web site discussing how trawling (in this instance for langoustine) has affected the sea bed - in a positive way.

The images I have added are of the Newlyn trawler, Keriolet when she was fishing for prawns (langoustine) - she was an ex-Lorient 'classic' trawler, owned and skippered by Pierre Lequillec who, when he sold the boat 'retired' and opened a bar called, what else........Le Bar Keriolet.

This title may seem a little provocative, but when you look closer this shortcut can understand.

On World Fisheries Day, November 22nd, 2013 in Saint Pierre Quiberon, Mr Tourret, president of the Maritime Prevention Institute (IMP) gave a speech on trawling and discards which goes against ideas conveyed today and promoted by the reform of the Common Fisheries Policy. Here is the transcript. « During my training at Bordeaux School of Maritime Affairs, I had an internship of 10 days aboard a ship , called « the Atlanta », from Lorient, and whose boss‘s name was Tonnerre,-a common family name - on the Isle of Groix. I had be given all the necessary recommendations, so I embarked with my oilskins, my boots, my spoon, my knife and a crate of Muscadet. I simply remind you that I was coming back from Toulon and that at this time I wasn’t very familiar with things of the Atlantic. At Toulon, there is one fish that is highly regarded : the sévereau (horse mackerel), a very good fish.

After the Atlanta's first trawl at least 500 kg of mackerel  landed on deck. The sailors then threw all mackerel overboard with great shovels. 

Scad and other small fish make up a by-catch with langoustine fishing sometimes

 I was aboard « the Atlanta », and with the first trawl at least 500 kg of horse mackerel landed on deck. Right then, with great shovels, the sailors threw the whole of it overboard. I could not understand how you could miss the chance to sell so much, as the other species were being marketed.  It was a c'classic' fishing trawler - a sidwinder', and there, I had a first perception of the risks at sea, the freeboard on these boats being 35-40 cm. 

other times the catch is almost clean with langoustine

The sailors were busy throwing the mackerel overboard, on slippery ground, making fast, because the more is removed quickly, the less you risk having a free surface, constituted by the mass of fish on deck. 

sometimes there is a bulk of scad, mackerel, whiting or argentines in the cod-end

This waste management already had a peculiar connotation of risk taking. This risk taking is now becoming routine with the European regulations on discards. Years later, in 2003, I was given a post at the IMP, and as soon as in my second year in office, I began to reflect on such questions as the evolution of the business, and the need to manage discards. In 2005-2006, we suggested that the Brittany Council should launch a special study on the social dimension of risks as well as the management of discards. At the time, the Council, was sceptical, they focussed on a speech such as « the less you speak about it, the best it is, because if we talk about it, it means that we accept the idea that we must bring waste ashore » It took about 18 months to get permission to do this study. Once conducted, this study provided a true reflection on discards at sea. While going on with it, we wondered whether bringing back the waste on land was relevant or not. Obviously, the life of a man is made up of what he is doing now and reminiscences of what had been done before, and by the intersection of his past experience and the reality that he sees. 

Let’s go back to 1967, I left the «Atlanta» keeping this in mind : « Bugger, why do we get rid of discards ?». I saw this as negative from an economic point of view. Upon returning to school in Bordeaux, I spoke with my oceanography teacher, Mr Percier, director of the Oceanographic Museum of Biarritz. I told him about my experience in Lorient and the horse mackerel being discarded at sea. He told me it wasn’t really serious and started giving me a personal tuition. He explained to me that « la grande vasière» of the Bay of Biscay, where we used to fish at the time, was not an environment that had existed since eternity, but this mudflat was a human construction. He explained that at the time of Julius Caesar, Europe was covered with forests, and referred to as «La Gaule chevelue». The clearing of Gaul was done in several stages. There were at least two periods of widespread clearing : during the Neolithic on one hand, and especially the clearings undertaken in the year 1000, when the population of Gaul increased dramatically. The once clear rivers became muddy. Several waves of mud were discharged into the Bay of Biscay and modified the geology of the sea bed. As a consequence, a special milieu developed into the pristine condition of « la grande Vasière » It’s very simple : if « La Grande Vasière»were to be left in its actual state, we would have got a forest of seapen and we would have got something that we might have had in the Landes forest if it had been left alone. Birch trees would have outweighed pines and the result would have been an impenetrable forest and finally a very limited biodiversity. He explained to me that la Grande Vasière had become productive from the moment when it had been trawled. The idea was that if we had something that had returned to the state of wasteland, this wasteland was not a biodiversity reserve, quite the contrary. With passing trawlers aerating the mudflat it made it possible for interesting fossorial decapoda to settle (not the small squat lobster in which there is hardly anything to eat, but the big langoustine). In addition, thanks to the discards, a trophic circuit was created in which benthic species to be found at the bottom feed on discarded species. There is a balance taking place on the seabed due to the action of man. 

This is a subtle story to tell. I then had the opportunity to evoke the case of the box (reserve) extending from Penmarc’h to belle Isle with André Le Berre (nicknamed Dédé). Five years ago, at a time when talks about discards were starting, I had a talk with Dédé about this, and he told me : « When the box was reopened, we discovered that there was nothing. It did not serve in any way to increase the density of fish». All these things criss-crossed, the pieces of the puzzle were met : the sailors throwing horse mackerel overboard with spades and taking risks, the conversation with professor Percier on the origin of la grande Vasière, Dédé’s remarks on of the non- productivity of the box. We are faced with complex phenomena. The point is to make people who have simple ideas understand the complexity of it, knowing that we must reduce this complexity. On the one hand, there is Michel Serre who reminds us that the world is complex and that the prerogative of science is in understanding this complexity, and on the other hand, speeches that will simplify it to a maximum…

Hard times - winter storms have kept many fishermen in port since December

From Channel 4 News: 

With an opening sequence looking across storm-bound boats in Sennen Cove where, like most of the small boat fishermen of Cornwall, they haven't been to sea since well before Christmas - this video captures thoughts from Patch Harvey, cox of the Penlee lifeboat Ivan Ellen as they go to sea from Newlyn on a training exercise...

during which they inspect Lamorna Cove and the huge damage inflicted on the 140 year old quay built to tranship granite form the quarry behind the houses.

Patch talks about the hardship felt by the fishermen who make these communities what they are - young families to support, mortgages and boat loans still to pay - and, lost fishing time can never be made up for like in a factory where you might just increase production in some way - most fishermen and their boats fish at 100% capacity when they go to sea.

Looking to the future, the storms will subside - lets hope that more land doesn't so the visitors coming to Cornwall as soon as the season gets under way can come and enjoy some of the best fresh fish in the world again!

#eatmorefish !

Fresh fish grace Tuesday's market floor - #openforbusiness

More buyers than boxes...

and at £5.80 per kilo for small codling only the buyers with bulging pockets were likely to send any fish away to their customers this morning...

even the solitary shark made good money on a market very much starved of fish since Christmas...

stacked two high, the results of a day's fishing in the Bay for the netter Ajax...

where the bulk of fish were good sized pollack caught moving across the ground...

with yet more gales forecast and another spring tide on it way none of the local businesses lining the Strand in Newlyn are taking any chances.

"Why the UK government should act on bottom trawling" or Why should the UK Government act on bottom trawling?

Your thoughts?

In a recent article, The Guardian's Robin McKie explains that bottom trawling, if allowed to continue unchecked, could leave the seas empty in the next 150 years.

Bottom trawling is the practice of dragging heavy nets along the seabed in order to catch the fish that thrive there, including cod and haddock. And, as a result of this - as proved by evidence presented in a report from the the University of York - fish stocks have decreased dramatically. "Twenty years ago, we used to get 600 or 700 a head of fish a day," says B Simpson, a line-fisherman who worked off Spurn Point, Grimsby. "Now they cannot get above 20 head, or three or four score at the outside."

But the impact does not stop there; there has also been considerable damage to the seabed, which not only triggers a further depletion of fish stocks but also wrecks reefs, sponges and shellfish, without giving any chance for recuperation.

Here is Callum Roberts giving his take on the subject:

 

We are then left, argues Callum Roberts - author of Ocean of Life - in a state where there is nothing left that is worth catching. However, the European Commission has decided that Britain can not afford to block bottom trawling, declaring, "unrestricted freedom of fishing should be permitted." And furthermore, as McKie explains, the UK government doesn't seem to be doing enough.

After arranging a consultation on the topic, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) only agreed to consult on 31 of the 127 proposed Marine Protection Zones - a number which was later reduced to 27. Furthermore, they also dropped the idea of reference areas which would have provided the opportunity to demonstrate the state of marine features when left alone while also providing a control site from which to measure the impact of human activities in other marine areas.
However, bottom trawling does not happen everywhere around the UK. Because of pressure being applied by Non-Governmental Organisations, such as the Marine Conservation Society (MSC), the practice has been banned is some Marine Protected Areas including one in Cornwall. "This point is backed by Roberts," says McKie, quoting, "there is little to be cheerful about when it comes to our marine environment, which makes recent successes with those areas protected by EU law – although limited in extent – all the more pleasing."

Posted by Grace Philip on February 11, 2014 at 11:26am in News and Blogs 

This was a recent post on the FishNet site - created by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) as part of its work on fisheries.

“Overfished” or “Depleted?” by Nils E. Stolpe

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” (William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act II, Scene II)

Contrary to what might have been true when Shakespeare had Juliet speak those words in the 1590s, how things are called is far from meaningless today. This is particularly so due to the increasingly pervasive and influential social media driven by sound bite journalism, text messages maxing out at 255 characters and Tweets at 140. When so much of contemporary communication and contemporary thought is dependent on so few words, those words, their exact meaning and their precise use have become critically important.

Thus it was with great relief that I saw that one of the amendments to the Magnuson-Stevens Fisheries Conservation and Management Act (Magnuson Act) offered by House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Doc Hastings deals with one of the most prejudicial examples of misnaming that has penalized commercial and recreational fishermen and our fish stocks for years.

This proposed amendment and a handful of others are contained in the draft Strengthening Fishing Communities and Increasing Flexibility in Fisheries Management Act (available at http://naturalresources.house.gov/magnusonstevens/). This draft legislation addresses a number of the concerns that independent fishermen – both recreational and commercial – and the businesses that depend on them have had since the original intent of the Magnuson Act has been so severely distorted by a handful of foundations, the powerful agenda-driven ENGOs that they support and the fishing organizations that have been co-opted by them.

In subsequent blogs I will be addressing some of the other draft changes.

Currently the Magnuson Act defines any stock of fish that is not at a high enough level to produce the maximum sustainable yield (msy) as being “overfished.” This is regardless of whether it is fishing that has reduced the stock to this level, or of whether cutting back on or curtailing fishing will return that stock to a “non-overfished” condition.

This law is without question the most important piece of legislation that deals with domestic fisheries management. Not only is it important because it controls the management of virtually all of the fisheries in our federal waters; it also has an overwhelming influence on the management and the managers of the fisheries in state waters (generally within 3 miles of the coast). Considering the pervasive influence of the Magnuson Act on the management of our domestic fisheries, to suggest that it’s equating “not enough fish” to “overfished” contributes to a blame-it-all-on-fishing mindset is a monumental understatement. Obviously this is an ongoing public relations nightmare for the domestic fishing industry (and an effective weapon for anti-fishing individuals and organizations). But more than that, the almost completely fishing-centric focus on marine resource management that it is responsible for has had an undue influence on federal fisheries policy for most of two decades.

Not enough fish? No matter what the underlying reason, it must be the fault of the fishermen because that fishery is classified as “overfished.” There’s no need to look any farther than that. What a gift to the anti-fishing activists.

At this point, and without Congressman Hastings’ much needed amendment, neither pollution, degraded habitat, oil well blow outs, overzealous application of Corexit, ocean temperature shifts, low egg/larval/fingerling survival nor any other factors count because the fishery is “overfished.” Obviously fishing must be to blame and just as obviously cutting back on fishing--making the fishermen who must be responsible for the “overfishing” pay for the environmental affronts of others--is the only way to restore the overfished stocks. Just as obviously the activists aren’t the only ones who benefit from this word play.

The tragic situation that the New England groundfish stocks, the New England groundfishermen, the New England fishing communities and a bunch of New England seafood lovers are facing is about as good (difficult as it is for me to use “good” to refer to anything having to do with the current groundfish debacle) an example of how off-target our fishing-centric understanding of “not enough fish” can be. In the groundfish fishery fishing effort has been cut back significantly and repeatedly and the stocks have yet to make a comeback.

Quite simply and accurately, Chairman Hastings’ draft legislation substitutes “depleted” for “overfished” wherever it appears throughout the Magnuson Act.

To what benefit? Most simply, this will take the management focus off fishing where overfishing isn’t a factor, encourage the consideration of other factors in determining why there aren’t enough fish in a particular stock and encourage the adoption when appropriate--when fishing isn’t to blame--of measures other than reducing fishing to return a stock to levels that will produce the maximum sustainable yield.

What’s the downside? If you’re not on a career track that depends on demonizing fishermen and/or fishing or if you aren’t responsible for any of the many other factors that negatively affect our fisheries, there isn’t one. Overfishing will be as unacceptable with this change as it is without it, but it will provide our fisheries managers while attempting to restore stocks to the MSY level the wherewithal to consider and, we should all hope, deal with other negative factors as well.

It’s going to be interesting to examine the “reasons” that the antis come up with for opposing this long overdue and entirely justified change.

• Note that the first hearing by Congressman Hastings on his proposed amendments to Magnuson was held on February 4. The video of the hearing and the witness testimony are available at http://naturalresources.house.gov/calendar/eventsingle.aspx?EventID=367382.

On a different subject, Sea to Table’s Weekly Fish Report dated January 26, 2014 makes the “charge” that “due to their delicate nature and short shelf life, virtually all scallops are treated with sodium tripolyphosphate which acts as a preservative as well as a water retention agent causing each scallop to weigh more.” This is a piece promoting Sea to Table scallops and the foregoing is meant to apply to virtually all scallops but theirs, of course.

The fact is that a large proportion of East coast sea scallops are sold “dry” (out of the shell, into a seawater rinse to remove sand and shell residue, into a muslin bag, packed in ice, on to the dock then off to market. With New Jersey producing a fifth of all of the sea scallops landed on the East coast, industry insiders estimate that this is how at least half of the state’s sea scallop production is sold. While the folks at From Sea to Table or any other domestic seafood dealer should rightfully tout the quality of the products they offer, that should be based on the most accurate information available.

“Overfished” or “Depleted?” Nils E. Stolpe / December 31, 2013

This was originally posted on the Fishosophy blog, which is jointly hosted on the American Fisheries Society (http://www.fisheries.org) and the American Institute of Fishery Research Biologists (http://www.aifrb.org) websites. The contents of the blog do not necessarily represent the views of the other Fishosophy bloggers, either organization or their leadership.