Any1 watch this programme 2nite on channel 4, quite interesting

__________________
www.jedforest-angling.co.uk

it was like watching a doomsday film for anglers

I kinda got the feeling being an angler how anglers could ever reach that sort of devastation, one of those big boats catches looked imposible for us anglers to fill.

We are victims of our own success.

Alan

I missed the film yesterday but judging by the excerpts I've seen from it and the reviews I’ve read it could have provided the explanation for cod from the local chipper commanding a heady £3.20 a portion – a situation threatening the extinction of cod in our house. At least “The Unnatural History of the Sea” helps to remove some of the guilt, apparently it was those b@stards from the 11th century who started to make deciding on whether to buy a curry, rather than fish and chips a moral decision.

"Humanity can make short work of the oceans' creatures. In 1741, hungry explorers discovered herds of Steller's sea cow in the Bering Strait, and in less than thirty years, the amiable beast had been harpooned into extinction. It's a classic story, but a key fact is often omitted. Bering Island was the last redoubt of a species that had been decimated by hunting and habitat loss years before the explorers set sail.


As Callum Roberts reveals in The Unnatural History of the Sea, the oceans' bounty didn't disappear overnight. While today's fishing industry is ruthlessly efficient, intense exploitation began not in the modern era, or even with the dawn of industrialization, but in the eleventh century in medieval Europe. Roberts explores this long and colourful history of commercial fishing and hunting, taking readers around the world and through the centuries to witness the transformation of the seas.

Drawing on firsthand accounts of early explorers, pirates, merchants, fishers, and travellers, the book recreates the oceans of the past: waters teeming with whales, sea lions, sea otters, turtles, and giant fish. The abundance of marine life described by fifteenth century seafarers is almost unimaginable today, but Roberts both brings it alive and artfully traces its depletion. Collapsing fisheries, he shows, are simply the latest chapter in a long history of unfettered commercialisation of the seas.



The story does not end with an empty ocean. Instead, Roberts describes how we might restore the splendour and prosperity of the seas through smarter management of our resources and some simple restraint. From the coasts of Florida to New Zealand, marine reserves have fostered spectacular recovery of plants and animals to levels not seen in a century. They prove that history need not repeat itself: we can leave the oceans richer than we found them."

__________________
Musha rig um du rum da

SEVEN MILLION TONS THROWN BACK DEAD EVERY YEAR !!!!!!!!!!

and 5kg of anchovies to make 1kg of farmed salmon

we need to stop and realise that the supply is not inexhaustable

__________________
Trout fishermen revere the trout; trout, on the other hand, unaware of their sublime standing in man's world, revere nothing, including man, a creature they seem to view with special contempt. Nihilism is a rare trait in fish but trout are full of it. The old men liked that.

Not to mention farmed trout
And I seem to recall reading somewhere they use sand eels in pig food.

Whose going to be big enough to stand up and get things done though. Big business greed rules.

You only have to look at the Scottish fish farm situation to see that in the face of massive evidence to the contrary they still support this industry and no one in authority has the b@@ls to say enough is enough. Direct action gets their attention however -perhaps a blockade of a fish farming site or two might just get thier attention!

It was a sobering programme alright.

What is particularly disturbing is the total disregard our EU friends have towards conservation. The episode with the blue-fin tuna exemplifies that and it appears that fish is rapidly going the way of the cod off Newfoundland in that stocks get so decimated they cannot recover.
In addition companies like Mitsubishi who send out larger boats and freeze stocks in anticipation of higher prices are in it purely to maximise profit.
Nevertheless if we can get more areas converted into marine parks and/or conservation zones there will be a future.Actions speak louder then words.

Well, you can't blame me. Blobby blobby catches more in one session than I do in a season

__________________
*
How poor a thing, sometimes I find,
Will captivate a greedy mind - Isaac Walton.

~~*~~~~~
*****©(