Scottish Fisheries Secretary Richard Lochhead comments on excessive mackerel quotas set for 2011 by Iceland and the Faroes.

He has a neck on him criticising anyone else whilst our wasteful quota system still exists.

Scottish Government: Web page currently unavailable.

Yep, though it's not unexpected that our politicians will wh#re themselves out for roughly two dozen multi millionaire boat owners (vessels are up to about 75m long) and the same ones who have been involved in the black fish landings and prosecutions etc.

My understanding is the mackerel have altered their migration pattern and now spend more time in the Iceland/Faroese waters and they have decided to act on this by catching more.

Conversely the fish must be spending less time in other waters (mmm EU, Norway and UK perhaps?) and they should decrease their quota as a result..... but no too many vested interests for that to happen............

This is a simple problem with an easy solution, put a fisheries scientist from each country or block into a group, map the mackerel, where they spend their time and how much they spend there, calculate the total allowable quota and divide it up per country dependant on the % of their life they spend in each area.

Problem solved..........

Well it would be but both Norway and the EU/UK would have a far less allowable catch........


p.s. remember when we catch mackerel in the UK it is just as they shoal for spawning, i.e when the shoals are in shallow water and just about to give birth to the next generation, not very sustainable really................

p.s.s. Mackerel used to be 10- 20 time more abundant than they are now and it wasn't the Icelanders and faroese that decimated the stocks..... need to look closer to home for that one......

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Just My Tuppenceworth!!

Oh I don't know, it is an EU system and bye-catch wasteage is being addressed, following recent bad publicity.

Mr Lochhead, who has a point over allowing huge - presumably Russian Federation - foreign owned vessels to operate in Faroese waters, actually said:

"I welcome the joint statement from the EU and Norway, which echoes what I have repeatedly been calling for; that action is needed to address the irresponsible and damaging overfishing of the mackerel stock.
Once again, I raised this with Commissioner Damanaki when I met with her earlier this month.

"The excessive mackerel quota declared by the Faroes is so large that their own fleet don't even have the capacity to meet it, so they are allowing large foreign-owned vessels to operate in Faroese waters.
I'm pleased that the Commission and Norway share my concerns over this worrying development.

Also:

For 2011 the Faroe Islands have unilaterally set themselves a of mackerel catch of 150,000 tonnes,
up 75 per cent on 2010 and more than five times their internationally agreed share in 2009

Scots especially, note:

Figures for 2010 indicate that the value of mackerel to the Scottish economy was £109 million
- the fleet's most valuable stock.

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Save the softmouth trout

Has this got anything to do with the 45 year presence in waters near Ullapool of Russian Mother ships actively buying a large proportion of the UK catch ?

Answers on a lot of postcards please !

Steve P

First the herring went , then the Cod , Bass,assorted flats and finally Mackerel are in trouble - will anybody ever learn ?

Not if there is major money to be made....

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Knowledge is Power
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"The nice thing about getting old, is that you realize what a madhouse it all is. Instead of a young person's view, which is that the world must be sane, with occasional pockets of insanity, you come around to my position, in which the world seems to be a complete madhouse - with occasional pockets of sanity" (John Cleese 1988)
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Not a chance Steve, not a chance.

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It is in truth not glory,nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting,but for freedom - for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with his life.(Declaration of Arbroath, 1320)

Has been a good while since the shops in Ullapool had to stock up with electrical goods!
regards
bert

Never in a million years, greed and over population will see to that..

Regs V..

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"Perfection will do"

Further back in the food chain is the great lack of Sandeel/Launce, due to them being netted in vast numbers for the animal feed market.. These make up a large part of the Mackeral's food...
This, plus the the Russian ships buying huge numbers of Macks' don't help the Mackeral one little bit....

Sf....

Its been a long while since all the Klondykers were up this way ,I can remember at one time there were so many ships that there were more workers on them than in the isles.
Back to the mackerel we have had an awful lot about so far this season but there are a lot of juvenile fish amongst them.