Sea fish stocks - another good article!

[John D]

Hi guys.

You've probably seen this article already - on Jim's site or even in the paper itself perhaps?!

Either way I thought you might like to read it - it's short, informative and very interesting.

Kind regards,
John D.

Here's a link to the actual paper's website version of the article:

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/environm ... -1.2324336


Once

Posted: 22 Aug 2015 10:32 AM PDT

Once it was just binoculars. Then hidden cameras and infrared video. Today, keeping an even closer eye on nature, computerised mini electronics and spies in the sky track the travels and habits of creatures great and small.
Bulky radio collars are just about tolerated by lions, tigers, wolves and bears. Miniature lightweight transmitters are stuck to the backs of birds, bats and even butterflies. Now deep-ocean animals report on their wanderings by attachments that pop up to the surface, on command, and send radio packages of data to satellites. These trace the course of long journeys, the nursery and feeding grounds, the depths of dives, the temperature and salinity of the water, and levels of light.

Around Ireland such “tags” have been fixed to basking sharks, porbeagles and blue sharks, bluefin tuna, leatherback turtles and sunfish. Some of these tags have tracked transatlantic migrations. But some species can be less accommodating. Leatherback turtles, for example, need to be captured first – often rescued from entanglement in nets or ropes – and fitted with a harness to carry the tag.
◾Eye on Nature: Your notes and queries

But how do you engineer a 50cm fish to report on its travels? This summer has seen more tracking of the movements of sea bass, Ireland’s most prized catch of inshore angling and a fish in dire need of conservation. A collaboration of the Marine Institute andUniversity College Cork mounted a study that began in Cork Harbour and has since widened to the coast of Co Wexford. Implanting the bass with tiny acoustic transmitters, it tracks their signals by receivers mounted on buoys around the southeast and retrieved, once a fortnight, by computer at UCC.

The fish are caught by the region’s many bass enthusiasts – the sort of angler found in winter braced waist deep in tables of windblown surf to cast a lure beyond the third wave. In summer, however, bass move into estuaries to chase shoals of sand eels, which makes catching them a more comfortable challenge.

Fitting the tiny transmitter involves delicate surgery, with a preliminary anaesthetic bath and fresh seawater piped through the gills. An incision in the belly implants the transmitter, the skin is stitched up, and the bass, after recovery in a bucket of oxygenated seawater, then swims strongly to freedom (so I am assured), its progress marked by electronic pings.

This silvery, muscular, but slow-growing fish – a five-kilo female might be 16 years old – was once prolific around the southern coasts of Ireland. Commercial overfishing through the later 20th century concentrated on Wexford Harbour, the estuary of the River Slaney, but was halted by government order in 1990, with a two-fish-a-day bag limit also extended to anglers.

That protection was echoed this spring by an EU ban on commercial fishing of bass around most of Ireland and Britain, and a recreational-angling limit of three bass a day from the top of the North Sea around the south to Dingle, including the Irish Sea.

The Irish conservation laws did indeed produce a local rise in bass numbers, as young females grew to maturity, and a new influx of tourist anglers to Wexford and the southeast. But the good years have not held up since 2007. Among delegates to a conference at Dublin Castle last September was the Wexford angling writer and bass enthusiast Ashley Hayden. After 24 years of conservation, he declared, “estuaries, headlands, beaches and tide races from Carnsore Point to Galway Bay should be alive with midweight bass in the four- to six-pound bracket. Sadly and mysteriously they are not.”

Source – Michael Viney – Irish Times News Review – Saturday August 22nd

[JimH]

Much could be written and discussed here.

Its probably not the right 'medium'
Its a very important article written by a conservationist working in a strong newspaper. His research is his own. He acknowledges the efforts of an 'angling enthusiast' who presented at Dublin Castle last year and quotes from Ashley Hayden “estuaries, headlands, beaches and tide races from Carnsore Point to Galway Bay should be alive with midweight bass in the four- to six-pound bracket. Sadly and mysteriously they are not.”

I worked with the Marine Institute over a series of workshops in relation to Bass and their tagging program during 2013 and 2014, both in Galway and here in Wexford - with a team of 7 people. They witnessed and experienced first hand the sentence above - in my company.

Wherever the fish are, and I'm being selfish here i'm talking bass, or have gone, whatever has happened to them, or what behavioral changes they are exhibiting - ElNino, commercial hit, forage movement, pollution, they are not present on our coasts the way they should be.

So if you are an angler, or a tackleshop keeper, or a B+B owner, or a fishing guide (not talking facebook guides mind) then you will be aware of the above too.

Surely the first step in protecting what we may have left is acknowledging there's an issue with the species.

Recognizing this seems to be particularly difficult to do.

[hugo]

There's an issue with ALL inshore fish species, not just the elitist one.

I recall last year when Mr H threatened to give up his business because of bad catches, his post generated a huge ongoing thread that attracted several thousand views and many scores of soapbox replies. A few threads further down was a plea to sign a petition calling for a curb on the massive overfishing of mackeral. This only attracted views in the low hundreds and a handful of replies, and that says a lot about the modern angling mindset. I really dont want a sea that only contains fashion-statement bass.

[JimH]

H

To be clear about these things - the post which you mention was not mine but rather Crevans, my addition to the thread was my letter to the IFI, which I felt, purely by co-incidence, contributed to the overall topic at the time.

To quote from my own letter

As a way of trying to ‘manage’ the decline I have reduced guiding days over the past few years, but now I am faced with little or no option at this time but to consider closing the business permanently at the end of this season.

The business closed at the end of 2014 - no threats involved just much consideration after a brilliant number of years spent in tourism angling!

In the lines above you'll find I have no problems with admitting to being selfish when I talk exclusively about bass - its nothing more than a reflection in relation to Michael Vineys article which happens to be about bass -about which I'm particularly passionate.

I'll leave that passion for other species to other anglers to ignite.....

[Ashley Hayden]

What is happening to bass as a species is reflective of what is happening to the marine environment full stop. On a personal level, I feel pain when I consider how our marine environment presents today, this is because I know what has been lost in my lifetime and it is a huge loss. For the record I'm 54 years of age. Knowing Jim this last 7 years I know that he feels the same, bass as a species is the conduit through which he channels his views and insight and has to be seen in that light.

As anglers we should not be questioning the approach people take or particular channel used to highlight marine decline, we should drop all opinion and ego then celebrate that someone is concerned and reach out. Websites such as this should be used to bring people of similar mind together.

As an angler passionate about the marine environment who has not posted on this site much over the last year or two but instead observed the threads, the egocentric aggression portrayed quite regularly is both uncalled for and unhelpful. we are all on the same hymn sheet here, let's not forget that.........

[John D]

Great reply Ashley. I believe that's one of the biggest reasons why nothing much is actually getting done - most of us are too concerned with what perspective different people are coming from and what opinion they have. In the meantime the stocks of most sea fish continue to decline. However in the background you can almost see us all pointing fingers at each other, giving out - you can picture it now if you try. It's almost like something out of a comic strip - if it wasn't so tragic and so serious!