Where have all the Pollock gone

[Deleted User 3488]

This might help explain why the Pollock fishing on the Dingle peninsula has become so bad.


http://www.rte.ie/news/player/2014/0226 ... t-islands/

[jgraham768]

Ya the seals are very bad back there the last year! They ripped a few pollock of my rod last october. The population of them is out of control altogether!

[chuckaroo]

the pollack all looked to be in your man's boat
isn't it the fishermen that are doing all the damage..?

[JohnQ]

Gill nets have been responsible for the decimation of many species of marine fish around the world.
Pollock and seals have co-existed for thousands of years. You can make a perfectly good living fishing for pollock with "hook and line" and the seals have little or no chance to damage your catch. Gill nets offer the chance to get rich quick and bugger the future. How can you blame the seals if you have nets full of helpless pollock all over the reefs.
Back in the 70's when the Newfoundland cod stocks first started to collapse, commercial fishermen laid the blame squarely on the Northern Fur seals. Tens of thousands were culled and yes, there was a slight improvement in catches. But it was very short lived. The cod stock then completely collapsed and has not recovered to this day. It now seems likely that the fine stocks of pollock that we had on the west coast will go the same way. And just like Newfoundland the real cause of this collapse will not be dealt with until it's far too late.

[knightser]

Gill nets have been responsible for the decimation of many species of marine fish around the world.
Pollock and seals have co-existed for thousands of years. You can make a perfectly good living fishing for pollock with "hook and line" and the seals have little or no chance to damage your catch. Gill nets offer the chance to get rich quick and bugger the future. How can you blame the seals if you have nets full of helpless pollock all over the reefs.
Back in the 70's when the Newfoundland cod stocks first started to collapse, commercial fishermen laid the blame squarely on the Northern Fur seals. Tens of thousands were culled and yes, there was a slight improvement in catches. But it was very short lived. The cod stock then completely collapsed and has not recovered to this day. It now seems likely that the fine stocks of pollock that we had on the west coast will go the same way. And just like Newfoundland the real cause of this collapse will not be dealt with until it's far too late.

Seals are gready bastards

[chuckaroo]

Gill nets have been responsible for the decimation of many species of marine fish around the world.
Pollock and seals have co-existed for thousands of years. You can make a perfectly good living fishing for pollock with "hook and line" and the seals have little or no chance to damage your catch. Gill nets offer the chance to get rich quick and bugger the future. How can you blame the seals if you have nets full of helpless pollock all over the reefs.
Back in the 70's when the Newfoundland cod stocks first started to collapse, commercial fishermen laid the blame squarely on the Northern Fur seals. Tens of thousands were culled and yes, there was a slight improvement in catches. But it was very short lived. The cod stock then completely collapsed and has not recovered to this day. It now seems likely that the fine stocks of pollock that we had on the west coast will go the same way. And just like Newfoundland the real cause of this collapse will not be dealt with until it's far too late.

well said John. I'm glad someone took the time to respond here

hopefully a can of worms doesn't burst here
'nuf said


but i will add this!:
there used to be fantastic pollack fishing/angling along the Co.Antrim coastline only 15 years ago or so - i witnessed it and took part in it but i also sadly watched a lot of pollack being slaughtered and gradually the fishing declined. with the demise of salmon stocks, local gill-netters started to target the pollack along the shoreline and last summer i heard of gill-netters setting nets along the kelp shoreline, leaving the nets out for days on end, and getting NOTHING in the nets. dire circumstances indeed. a sad story. decent sized pollack (approaching and into double figures) were once plentiful but now it would take all summer to try and get one of any merit (4 or 5 lb).
in the meantime, local fishermen and anglers are shooting seals with rifles, calling them vermin, and blaming them. its insane

[chuckaroo]

Seals are gready bastards

Note:

Pollock and seals have co-existed for thousands of years..

yes, seals may be 'greedy' but they are only trying to survive. its the fishermen/us that are the greedy bast*rds

dear dear

[Deleted User 3488]

Clearly a new market has opened up for gill net caught Pollock, as a result anglers are seeing only pollock in the 2lb bracket (fish small enough to escape the nets) coming in off marks that regularly produced specimen sized fish in the past.
If this is allowed to continue our Pollock will go the way of the Whiting and will slowly evolve to breed at a smaller size.

[shortcircuit]

I can't help but think that well-intentioned people have unfortunately influenced this. You have loads of chefs etc promoting pollock as a cheap plentiful alternative to cod.
This creates a market for pollock where there once was none. Fishermen then target pollock specifically (I assume they were bycatch before). You then get fishermen putting down gill nets for them which have the ability to seriously decimate stocks.

Was I right in thinking that JimC mentioned gill netting of wrecks off the south coast has now become common? If so, it's a disaster for the charter boats here as pollock fishing is a staple of boat fishing.

I'm in a conundrum about this because I love to eat fish myself and regularly buy from the fishmonger. Hypocritical behaviour I suppose!

[jgraham768]

Was I right in thinking that JimC mentioned gill netting of wrecks off the south coast has now become common? If so, it's a disaster for the charter boats here as pollock fishing is a staple of boat fishing.

Yeah that would be correct, in the harbour there's seven or eight small 30-40ft boats netting pollock out on the blasket sound seven days a week. An acquitance of the family runs one of the boats and during the two weeks the seals were mating he was averaging 20 boxes of 6lb+ pollock, after the seals returned the nets were still full but only about 2-4 boxes of undamaged fish.

[shortcircuit]

Thats an insane amount of what to anglers would be great size fish.

And the netted pollock are just an easy target for seals who could blame the seal for an easy meal!

And the fishermen want to kill the seals!!! Madness

[jgraham768]

And he's also a terrible skipper so there's other boats catching alot more than that!

There is also no registered quota for pollock catches either i believe so they fish them all year round and catch as much as they can.

[shortcircuit]

Threads like this make me despair. Will commercial fishermen never stop until every useful resource in the sea is gone?

I suppose until the day they are forced to fish sustainably the answer will be no

[Deleted User 3488]

We teach our children as best as we can
Stick to the path of the righteous man
Treat Mother Earth with conservation
Or we better come up with a new master plan

[hugo]

Find myself wondering about the link between increased gill netting and the increase in seals. Maybe the easy pickings of the gill nets are drawing in more seals and helping more to survive. If that's case we should be resisting seal cull moves as they might eventually make gill netting uneconomic in some areas. Wouldnt begrudge them a few fish if they did that...