Firstly, @ pete. I'm well aware that MSC is run by Unilever (owners of Birdseye etc...). But what is your alternative? MSC stocks at least are monitored and while I'm aware that there has been some controversy over the awarding of the MSC label to Alaskan Pollack and Hoki from New Zealand, eating MSC labelled fish is still better than eating trawl caught fish from unsustainable stocks. Until all fisheries are managed completely sustainably, it's the best that we have. Unless of course that you can provide me with a better alternative (which can satisfy the huge commerical demands that MSC labelled seafood already does)?
Wozza wrote:Its a pity that the rest of the world dont feel the same when out shopping about some form of conservation on the seas.
Fishing protection by the Navy are concerned about the net size's and types of fish landed. The wrong species caught gets a fine and the fish thrown back DEAD, a bit fecking late then aint it.
A better option in my opinion would be to put up a 50 mile fishery exclusion around our shores and ban all trawlers into this area. Like Iceland did during the Cod Wars in the 70's and stop this unwarranted murder of fish stocks in the guise of quota's. perhaps a limit of 3 days at sea in every 21 would be more conservational.
Lets protect OUR heritage and protect our fish stocks, our bit of catch and release does little over the real picture of fishing but as one supermarket chain says "Every little helps !"
Only keep what you will eat until your next fishing trip in my opinion
Warren
This idea will never ever 1) be put in place and 2) work. All that you have decided to do is to move trawlers offshore - to fish for what? Extremely slow-growing deep sea species? Are you mad? Your simply shifting the problem from one area to another. You also presume that this 50 miles of 'protected' water will protect the stocks that are within it. No one tells the fish where the boundaries of these protected areas are and consequently they move freely in and out of it. When 40,000 square miles of North Sea were closed off for cod (the Cod Box) for only 75 days, the second week of it be enforced, there were twice the number of boats fishing around the sides of the box, decimating the previously unfished and vulnerable surrounding benthos (not to mention any shoals of fish which strayed outside the box). No take zones work for species with small ranges and that are endemic to an area (e.g. groupers on coral reefs) but not for shoals of cod, hake, whiting and haddock which can migrate hundreds, if not thousands of miles (and in an extreme case, a single bluefin was recorded to have crossed the Pacific Ocean 3 times in 600 days - how do you protect a fish like that? Ban fishing in the entire Pacific?).
I've heard all sides of the story - from guys who model stocks for future quotas, to people working with EU ministers (I hated him), to fishery liason officers and also from skippers (including the skipper of the Ocean Venture - from the show Trawlermen - just last week, who told me that there were plenty of cod in the North Sea and that (future) scientists like me are ruining it for them by restricting their quotas). Each has a future which depends on the existence of fish in our waters. Each wants future generations to be able to fish (although the EU guy p*ssed me rightly off - too much talking and bull****).
The way forward, I believe is not an easy, popular or cheap one but could possibly easily become a reality. Firstly, to protect our stocks, Ireland MUST leave the CFP - it has all but ruined our fish stocks. Restore our 200 mile (all the way out to the continental shelf) limit. I think the SFPA should be intergrated into the Marine Institute - that way enforcement and science can go hand in hand. Politics also needs desperately to be removed from the equation. But most of all, the fact of the matter is that ALL countries (especially the Spanish and the Japanese whose fishing fleets I loathe with an unbridled passion) need to reduce their fleet capacity. Simple as that. Buy out fishermen, decommission their boats, refuse new licences to fish and monitor and limit their days at sea and the gear that is used (with seine nets and deep-set long line favoured). The use of ITQ's and ITEQ's in Alaskan Halibut fisheries have worked extremely well - why can't they here? Giving fishermen tenure over an area means removing the 'race to fish' and means they are less likely to jepordise the future of their livelihoods by overfishing. While costly in the short term, it would reap benfits in our waters for years to come.
I'm not saying my idea is fool proof or will work without a hitch, but it is potentially a realistic one. What it will take though is massive public support (very difficult to get especially with the over-powerful fishing lobby in Ireland) and a fisheries SCIENTIST who has political (ugh I hate that word) pull and the balls to enforce it and carry it out. Within as short a period as 5 years, our stocks could be back up to their sustainable biological limits. Imagine if all countries cooperated and actually did that? Bluefin off the rocks on a chug bug in Donegal anyone?...........
Anyway, rant over
(Oh one more thing - according to the Ocean Studies Board in 2002 which is a division of ICES, there is yet to be an established link in the ocean productivity and in the state of the benthos i.e. even though trawlers destroy the ocean floor it has not been proven to result in a decrease in fish stocks. I couldn't believe it either!)
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