RSPB correspondence

I thought some FMers might be interested in correspondence on this subject I've had with the RSPB. Read on (three posts in all) if you are:

To the RSPB

The RSPB’s campaign to get a UK Marine Bill on to the statute and begin creating marine reserves is one in which I have two levels of interest.

Like all RSPB members, I am concerned about the viability of seabird colonies and other marine creatures dependent on a stable stock of sea fish. But I am also an angler (as are many RSPB members), and have witnessed theshocking decline in the species of fish I once caught.

As a child in the 1970s, I once caught perhaps 100lb of mackerel just outside of Porthleven harbour in Cornwall and then, to mylasting shame, had to dump them when I discovered on shore that I could not even give them away, such were the size of the shoals off the coast. Today, if I could catch as many, I could sell them for prices that even sea bass didn’t reach in those days.

I have a collection of sea angling magazines and books which chart the decline from the heydays of the 1960s when it was commonplace for shore anglers to catch cod by the dozen and boat anglers to come back loaded down with huge pollack and ling. Now, catches like this are unheard of. The sandeels we once caught as bait for bass have vanished from most areas. I never thought I would see the day when small 'school' bass I avoided catching would be so scarce we would buy farmed bass from Turkey, of all places, to replace them.

In later life, I wrote many times in the angling press warning of this decline, as did many others. It is galling to consider that these warnings went unheeded, and the fishing industry has been allowed to destroy stocks, almost unfettered by meaningful and effective regulation, using ever more sophisticated electronics and techniques to hunt down every last shoal of fish. It is, I think, time for birders and anglers to put aside old squabbles about lead poisoning of swans and the inland invasion by cormorants to concentrate on the bigger picture; next to the catastrophic decline of sea fish stocks, these are petty issues. We have a common cause, and the RSPB is, I hope, forging an alliance with angling to press the government for tough protection in the marine environment. Mark Williams

From the RSPB, and my reply

Thank you for your letter: I will try to use it.

Many years ago when I was still at school I used to buy Angling Times - I even had the odd letter printed in it. I haven't fished since, but I retain a great interest in fish (and read a few fishing books). I watch them now, if I can. I remember the sort of reports you refer to and often think of the items on fishing for cod and bass from the beach, as well as the freshwater hauls. Things do seem very different now.

Rob Hume

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Thanks, Rob I was a reporter/sub-editor at Angling Times for 8 years from the early 1980s onwards, and even then it was painfully obvious that the seas were becoming exhausted; within those relatively few years boat fishing went from a time when a Red Letter Day would see the skipper heading for home because anglers were too tired to catch any more, to one in which skipper after skipper went out of business because there were not enough fish to catch (and thus anglers wanting to book them).

On Sea Angler magazine, we used to get Fishing News, the trawlerman's paper. Every month it would report another MAFF warning about cod and haddock stocks becoming unsustainable, and even with the example of the Grand Banks catastrophe as reference, Governments did nothing to collectively halt the slaughter.

From my childhood in Weymouth to the present day, I have watched the Weymouth fishing fleet go from around 30 boats going out on the morning tide to six now working full-time from the harbour; not big commercial interests but family businesses which had for generations fished inshore sustainably.

It's a tragedy for everyone that we have treated the sea so shoddily. Our attempts to close the gap of supply and demand by farming fish have led to still worse over-exploitation of 'industrial' fishing for sandeel, sprats and capelin; if you have a conscience, the only course of action which seems effective is to stop eating fish altogether.

In the recent TV series 'Trawlermen' a film crew shadowed a huge, new fishing boat on her maiden voyage. After several days of searching, her sonar located a shoal of mackerel: "This shoal is about half a mile long," said the skipper. "It's on its way to spawn. We can catch them all." And he was good to his word, every ton swept up by vast nets with micrometer precision before those adult mackerel could breed. This is just insanity.

Mark Williams

Second reply from RSPB

Dear Mark

Just to add to the very appropriate points you raised in your two emails to Rob (sorry for delay in replying - I've been abroad).

Firstly, I agree that the picture offshore dwarfs any issues we are having on inland waters and to say that we have more contact with anglers these days than we used to have. I sit on the North Sea Regional Advisory Council (NSRAC) - a committee of stakeholders which gives advice to the European Commission on fisheries issues, and the sea anglers are there as an active force and we can find common agendas on some (e.g. sandeels) if not all issues.

Secondly, I do agree with you about the 'Trawlermen' series. At one level, especially as an Aberdonian, I found it hugely entertaining and it invoked a respect for these guys out there in all weathers doing a dangerous job - still so despite all the high tech (though not so hard as when my grandfather was a trawl skipper out of Aberdeen on the steam trawlers). However, like you I despaired of seeing any conservation message, and you just wondered if the viewers were questioning why these vessels were often having to steam from one barren ground to another in search of a profitable haul.

However, I am also coming across a more serious fisherman these days in the NSRAC (which is dominated by fishermen - two-thirds) - they know the problem and are beginning to do some of the right things, though not as fast as they know they should - as an Ethiopian tribesman once said; "You can't wake a man who's pretending to be asleep."

Many thanks for your support for the campaign and your interest in what we do.

Best wishes

Euan

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Dr Euan Dunn

Head of Marine Policy

RSPB

The Lodge

Sandy

Beds

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With apologies for the coding which has pasted too.

Refreshing to see a sympathetic ear from the RSPB.

I reckon the RSPB has got an outdated picture of anglers, as a group we are far more conservation and environmentally minded than we ever were in years gone by, so much so that our thoughts & actions on matters of conservation & the natural environment now exceed those of 'Joe Public'

It is high time for the RSPB to acknowledge that as a whole (barr the few clowns) we have changed for the better and would now make a credible, useful and maybe powerful ally.


PS
Reading KA's bit in the AT this week, the decline of cod seems to be in the interest of our fisherman, who now reap the rewards proffered by shellfish.