South Coast What a difference a few years makes!

[concrete]

Doesn’t seem like a lot of regard paid to the future. Probably a mentality of if I don’t catch it then someone else will so I might as well catch it. And the totally inappropriate quotas and lack of enforcement hasn’t helped. Most I’d expect have made a good living out of it for some years. Ex charter skipper I fished with turned commercial running several boats will have done well if their returns were as indicated, see picture attached. And who can blame them! Should be sitting very comfortably on a nice big nest egg. Just using the quotas that they bought with the boats. Not sure how easy it will be to maintain that sort of income in coming years with dwindling fish stocks.

Many charter skippers have proper jobs and the trips are more like a paid hobby. More rules and regs keep adding to the costs.

 

[fishybuisness]

Some really interesting thoughts from a wealth of experience. It will be interesting to see how the next couple of years pan out. As someone said the crab and lobster fishing has failed. The rays are few and far between, a lot of rays are being used for pots that are not producing so a double whack just to
Make sure the deal is sealed. Its the inshore under 11 boats that have the most amount of pressure applied. The off shore beamers have been setting record trips the last couple of years due to buying up the quota of the failing smaller inshore boats. Like I said to Pete the turbot will be arriving soon and a week or two ago, then a record amount of turbot and brill was landed in brixham “Non quota species open TAC” week before last.
The industry is scraping the barrel alongside bad operations of by catch.
Its worth a look and researching our overall fisheries agenda and getting an idea of the whole picture. If you have the time to do so it will be worth more people to gain knowledge and be able to voice your opinions. Currently the stocks for haddock and cod have failed in the west ices and all but one ices has failed in the east. They have just signed off TAC’s bigger than the stocks available for this year. Hopefully the boys on the offshore boats in the north east fishing dogger have more brains and dont wipe it out. When the fishery is governed in a reactive state the stocks have to be fully depleted with unfulfilled quota on season end for data to be listened to. The failed pollock fishery proves this. Currently with zero TAC the hake netters are having it off with huge numbers of by catch. These are crushed dead fish that can't be landed so the impending doom is neigh.
The biggest issue is the sheer value of the Industry, meaning some bureaucratthat has no idea what a fish is decides what to hand out and where to gain maximum profit for the country. An even more frustrating part of this is 98% of everything we catch in our waters gets sent abroad after market. So we are depleting our stocks for pure economic gain! To then import farmed fish that's of a very low quality (to low for most of Europe to consume) to sell in plastic packaging for high prices in supermarkets.

Surely if more people understood the whole picture change could be made. But unfortunately the British have learnt a new found skill and turn their backs on issues than need attention.

We used to be strong and stood our ground, now as a country we are cowards!

 

[Leginfisher]

To me it seems as with a lot of businesses commercial fishing is just out to make as much as they can with no regard to the future. The quotas allow them to do this and aren’t generally enforced either. It will at some point come crashing down and that will be it. Probably try to seek further subsidies from the govt! I had an exchange with an inshore fisherman in the SW on an FB post where he was saying it was all the fault of the larger commercial boats. I said to me it doesn’t matter the size of the commercial boat, there are just too many and it isn’t sustainable. Then he said the warmer waters meant the fish stock are still healthy but are moving North. To a degree I’d accept some fish are moving north with water temps increasing. But I have’t heard of bonanza catches of different species further north. Does that also mean that when the flat fish get bigger they too move north as there aren’t many big turbot brill or plaice on the south coast now? Or might it just possibly be because they are caught in the nets and don’t have a chance to get big. I know which option I believe.