Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall & Fish Discards

Katie-Kat-Kins

It isn't just about numbers it is about the time in their life that you catch them too. If you catch a shedload of young cod then they won't have time to mature and you won't have enough large cod to catch or enough left to reproduce.

Cod may be plentiful but if they are all immature then they shouldn't all be caught.

At the end of the day the focus needs to change, fishermen need to become "farmers of the sea" rather than just doing a smash and grab raid on the seas plundering it for all its worth and forget the future.

jackieb

Katie-Kat-Kins wrote: »

It isn't just about numbers it is about the time in their life that you catch them too. If you catch a shedload of young cod then they won't have time to mature and you won't have enough large cod to catch or enough left to reproduce.

Cod may be plentiful but if they are all immature then they shouldn't all be caught.

At the end of the day the focus needs to change, fishermen need to become "farmers of the sea" rather than just doing a smash and grab raid on the seas plundering it for all its worth and forget the future.

For that reason they have smaller meshes in their nets, to stop this happening. In fact, it's called the cod end. There are already strict regulations for this.

Primrose

I didn't see gordon Ramsey's programme on shark finning in this series which I gather was pretty shocking, but somebody has just given me the link for a petition to have this practice banned in the EU if anybody is interested.
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/a-public-plea-to-ban-shark-finning-in-the-eu/

Equaliser123

Ken68 wrote: »

We shouldn't be sea fishing( or fresh water fishing for pleasure), anymore than we should be hunting.
Don't suppose it will ever happen, but all it needs is one country to ban it in their waters to start a revolution.

Angling has an absolutely negligible effect on fish stocks. It is also extremely selective as most anglers I know would not take undersized or endangered fish.

Katie-Kat-Kins

Equaliser123 wrote: »

Angling has an absolutely negligible effect on fish stocks. It is also extremely selective as most anglers I know would not take undersized or endangered fish.

I think most fox hunters would say that they don't take young foxes, and that their method is selective as they pick off the old/lame/sick first which helps to keep the general population healthy (it is the mangy ones that take chickens etc normally because they struggle to hunt), and they would also say that their method reduces the risk of an incomplete kill compared to shooting. They would also say that fox hunting serves a useful purpose as a form of pest control and is not just a sport.

But the labour government still banned it!

Anyway that's off topic!

Equaliser123

Katie-Kat-Kins wrote: »

I think most fox hunters would say that they don't take young foxes, and that their method is selective as they pick off the old/lame/sick first which helps to keep the general population healthy (it is the mangy ones that take chickens etc normally because they struggle to hunt), and they would also say that their method reduces the risk of an incomplete kill compared to shooting. They would also say that fox hunting serves a useful purpose as a form of pest control and is not just a sport.

But the labour government still banned it!

Anyway that's off topic!

Not sure that hunting for foxes and fishing can really be compared.

My point in respect of angling is that anglers do not trawl up seabeds, they fish generally inshore away from spawning grounds, there is no by-catch and, generally, the fish can be returned to fight another day as they are not hauled hundreds of feet through the depths.

Katie-Kat-Kins

Completely agree that angling is better than trawling, I was just responding to the point about it being banned. Many people feared that angling would be next if the hunting ban went through.

Jojo_the_Tightfisted

If the fish harvesting companies (NB: not fishermen, because that creates cosy images of rugged men in sou'westers) were time limited, they'd just invest so that they could strip the ocean bare in half the amount of time it usually takes.

I agree that the quotas should be on weight caught, not species landed, thus making it impossible to slip under the radar by dumping it all at sea. That's on a par with a scorched earth policy. But trawling is insanely destructive, anyway.

The nets' mesh needs redesigning to make it much easier for fish to escape - the ones that stay open rather than close up are useful (but still not compulsory) - and the 'make do with what we've got' seems perfectly reasonable, as I watch programmes that encourage us to buy Gurnard or coley and cringe, thinking 'oh well, the price is going to quadruple when the supermarkets hear of this AND that's the last we see of either species' as I can remember when Coley was more than 10p cheaper a portion than salmon and John Dory and Anglerfish (Monkfish) weren't hideously expensive dinner party fare.

TV food programmes and supermarkets did for them, just as these well intentioned programmes are going to do for everything else, too.


I also heard that one of the recommendations was to ask for Rock and chips instead. NOOOO! Roc Salmon is a disguise for the fact that they are serving up our indigenous shark population - tope, spotted dogfish and the like - and anyone who watched the shark fin soup programme (I didn't because I already knew about it) knows how endangered shark species are.


[BTW - killing a fox by having it torn to pieces by hounds after chasing it around for hours by loads of people on horseback is considerably different to sitting by a lake stocked with healthy fish with a little red maggot wriggling on a No. 14 barbless hook. Especially when the single fish that is caught is treated gently, has any bird attack wounds treated, and returned to the water gently so as to ensure its healthy survival]