super trawlers sail in to obliterate stocks of mackerel

[caughtnutin]

the above article appeared in thesundaytimes.ie/news it could go some way in explaining the lack of mackerel, grim reading yet again

[Donnyboy1]

any link?

[ekfish]

Here's the link http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/pub ... =on&pf=all

[caughtnutin]

Sorry lads only realised you have to subscribe to the Times, below is an abridged version for those that cannot access same



Mackerel could vanish from Britain’s fishmongers + supermarkets within 3 years because giant foreign trawlers + factory ships are allowed to strip out the entire stock,scientists have warned.Dozens of vessels including some from Russia + the far east have moved into the waters around the Faroe islands +Iceland, after the islands abandoned quota agreements to protect stocks.Instead hundreds of thousands of tonnes will be swallowed up by factory ships such as the Hong Kong controlled Lafayette,it steamed into Faroese waters recently + is processing 1360 tonnes daily.
The vessel is just one of several such ships working around the Faroes.They and Dutch owned fish processing plant in the Faroes are being supplied by 20 super trawlers.Similar operations are taking place around Iceland.”There were about 3m tonnes of adult mackerel in the northeast atlantic at the start of the year but by the end we will have removed about a third of the entire breeding stock” said Paul Fernandez, a leading fisheries researcher at Aberdeen university.”The fishery will collapse”.
Mackerel were,until last year,protected by coastal states agreement involving the EU,Norway,Iceland + the Faroes,Russia had observer status.Under the agreement about 64% of the 580,000tonnes caught each year went to EU countries. 26% to Norway + about 5% each to Russia + the Faroes.Recent years have seen a booming demand for fishmeal for which summer caught mackerel are perfect.When the Faroes + Icelandic governments asked for a larger share of the quota so they could exploit this market they were rebuffed by the other coastal states.After talks failed last year they decided to pull out of the agreement + offered their fleets a massively increased quota of about 136,000 tonnes each.As there are approx 50,000 people living in the Faroes this equates to about 2.7tonnes of mackerel a person.The EU,Norway +Russia responded by refusing to cut quotas for their fleets.The result is a stalemate that will push the likely total catch to 907,000 tonnes.Even the Faroe islands fisheries director, admitted that the mackerel fishery had become “a disaster in the making.”
Richard Benyon,Britains fisheries minister said mackerel would top the agenda when EU fisheries ministers meet this week.

[PaulOC]

would make ya sick. see it this year with the mackeral very patchy and im chartering 3 days a week .

the above article appeared in thesundaytimes.ie/news it could go some way in explaining the lack of mackerel, grim reading yet again

[ekfish]

Is there much chance of the mackeral shoals reaching east coast this summer?

[thekid]

sweet fanny adams the way it seems.sickining.........

[Qball]

http://www.fishupdate.com/news/fullstory.php/aid/15795

[flyno]

Its the beginning of the end, when they are finished with the Mackeral they will target another species and the muppets that run this country, the EU and every where else will do diddly squat about it because they only do what "Big Business" tells them to.. Imagine the bycatch from one of these super trawlers, its insane...

[Donnyboy1]

Crazy greed and short sightedness... I wonder tho what the affect of all the excess sandeels etc. will be?
Certainly all the macks Ive caught have been bigger... and there seems to be a lot more cod caught in Cork.
Bass also stayed inshore over winter... maybe other species are eating what the mackeral would have decimated?

But feck it... I want my mackeral... its just not a summer without them

[chilly123]

This is a absulute discrase something has to be done
if the wipe the macks out. that takes a link out of
the foodchain thata real BAD s**t

[Ashley Hayden]

The above is just a 21st century add on to what has been practiced since the late 1970's when Ireland was one of the leading countries in exploiting and developing the technology to extract mackerel from the North Atlantic.

Killybegs became the Klondike and mackerel millionaires became the buzzword. Yes it provided employment and Ireland became one of the leading lights in developing nets for this fishery. We also built with Norwegian bank money the largest trawler/factory ship in the world "The Atlantic Dawn" on the back of the industries success.

The down side however is obvious, intermittant shoals and lots of joey mackerel. As I have written you could fill a 16' boat with mackerel off Bray Head, Co. Wicklow thirty years ago if so inclined, and real jumbo mackerel at that. The decline was very evident through the 1980's in direct proportion to what the Russians were doing off Cornwall and we were doing in the North Atlantic every winter when the mackerel were on their spawning run and so full of oil.

Short sighted but money talks, and remember you are dealing with people whose attitude is, "I only live three score years and ten so f**k em all." Having said that sanity will prevail, it's up to us to make it happen.

[JimC]

You can get a flavour of the workings of a factory ship here: http://www.dsi-as.com/default.aspx?m=2&i=190
Frightening stuff.

[Danny M.]

You can get a flavour of the workings of a factory ship here: http://www.dsi-as.com/default.aspx?m=2&i=190
Frightening stuff.

Yeah, that is just shocking how quickly they can process the product. Its amazing how we have moved technology forward to reach this point and also amazing how we cant foresee what the end result will inevitably be .

As I often preach .... greed is a terrible thing.

[Ashley Hayden]

I see that a moderator questioned whether it was possible to fill a 16' boat with mackerel while fishing off Bray Head Co. Wicklow, well believe me you could. Back in the 1970's when I started fishing with my dad and uncles mackerel arrived in the bay north east of Greystones later then they do now and stayed for a shorter time. To say that they were prolific is an understatement. As for the size, on occasions they were huge. Consider the bench mark that we were used to, if you were born post 1970 you can't, big mackerel were very big.

In those times we used orange handlines, 6 feathers, and a one pound weight, and started trolling at two humps off the head until the shoal was found, which usually did not take long, then it was heave ho. Regular strings of six were not unusual, you just held the feathers down until they filled up.

Between Sorento Point and the back of Dalkey Island, below the fort, was the same, only this time you trolled from just north of Colliemore harbour, along up to the point and across to the island. 50 meters off the shore, we hit some whopper pollack too.

Back to the present, key in "North Atlantic Mackerel Fishery" in Google search, what comes up is not pretty, will humanity ever learn. The north sea mackerel fishery was wiped out in the 1970's and has never recovered. Mackerel are the "piggy in the middle" of a serious dispute centered around the fact that both Iceland and the Faroes have a blue whiting fleet that has no fish to catch and bills to pay. Hence it is about greed as per usual.