It doesn’t take much to get sea fishermen going on the grandiosely titled forum, worldseafishing.com. Apparently a rather large (foreign-owned) trawler has been doing a spot of fishing off the British coast. This has roused the ire of those anglers with, er, strong views on the matter. A couple of posts threw some abuse at Caroline Lucas, the Green Party MP for Brighton Pavilion, because she could do nothing about a boat legally fishing in British waters, just as British boats can legally fish continental waters. These have happily been deleted by the site —some forums accept their responsibilities.
But there’s always something foreign to complain about. The following appeared today.
This charmer has obviously had his head in the shingle. The ban was instituted some time ago. Subsequent posts advise him to ignore the ban, showing the limit of their authors’ conservation credentials. Below also illustrates their lack of appreciation of fish numbers taken by anglers.
Using the estimate of about one million sea anglers in Britain, and assuming each takes a modest 1kg of fish each year, this would equate to an annual catch of 1000 tonnes of fish, coincidentally the weight of commercial bass landings. Even if this is an overestimate I think we can at least expect the total recreational fishing take to be a significant proportion of the total catch. Estimates by ICES suggest these figures are not out of the way. More than ‘a handful of people taking one for the pot’.
The jokers above are never going to contribute to the salvation of marine fisheries. Let’s round off with some good news on WSF. Reg Phillips tirelessly promotes the Sussex Sea Fishing Forum and others, often in the face of the sort of stupid comments above. Good that someone is doing something to improve our marine environment.
The Secret Angler 