Scott Mann supports a petition to seek an end to netting in all estuaries and close to shore waters inside the ten metre depth contour (per chart datum) within the Cornwall IFCA district.
Please see below statement from the Cornish Federation of Sea Anglers:
To Members of the Cornwall Inshore Fisheries Conservation Authority.
This Federation seeks an end to netting in all estuaries and close to shore waters inside the ten metre depth contour (per chart datum) within the Cornwall IFCA district.
In support of our request, we have collected over 2500 signatures, mainly from recreational anglers, commercial fishermen, conservationists, divers and bird watchers.
Mono netting materials started to become available during the mid 1970’s. Their arrival and use, immediately resulted in increased landings with a consequential bonanza mentality celebrated with record landings of species such as spurdog and pollack/ling from wrecks.
The additional pressure which mono gear places on fishery resources is comprehensively documented in at least two CEFAS publications: Defra Laboratory Leaflet no. 69 published 1991 and Technical Report No 116 on Coastal Fisheries of England & Wales published 2002. The additional catching power of mono gear was recognised far earlier by the Chief Fisheries Officer of Cornwall Sea Fisheries Committee in his report to the Committee in 1983 and by him and fishermen on a Channel 4 (TV) documentary produced by Martyn Melzak.
It is frequently assumed that the under ten metre fleet is largely ‘artisanal’ (whatever that means) and that its impacts on fishery resources are negligible. However, inshore boats are quite capable of deploying many kilometres of mono gill nets. If anyone harbours doubts about the increase in ‘fishing power’ of the under ten metre fleet over recent years, even the National Federation of Fishermen’s Organisations (NFFO) published a statement at the end of July 2013 which powerfully confirms the point.
At http://www.nffo.org.uk/news/nffo_under10_2013.html the NFFO state:
"The fishing power of an under-10m vessel can be many times greater than its counterpart 20 years ago. As with the fleet of larger vessels, technology has not stood still.”
The evidence that modern gill netting has had a massive impact on marine fishery resources, especially inshore, is overwhelming. This indisputable fact must form the very basis of any consideration of changes to current legislation.
A fisheries official once said that a dead fish = a dead fish, and it matters not one jot whether the fish was caught by a seal, gill net, trawl, sea bird or hook and line. In so far as a biological scientist ONLY requires accurate fishing mortality data, the official was technically correct. However, the statement was disingenuous and mischievously avoided the crucial issue of which method has the most potential to exert the greatest damage to fish stocks. Whether one tonne of mackerel is taken by the hand line fleet or a pelagic trawler, it still represents one tonne of dead mackerel. But such a naïve statement overlooks the fact that given the right circumstances, with a large aggregation of mackerel (and fish have a habit of shoaling!) the quantity of mackerel that can be removed by a pelagic trawler exceeds that which a fleet of hand liners can take, by a mind numbing margin! And so it is with mono netting. Where an aggregation of fish occur, mono netting has the capability of removing far larger catches than hook and line. There have been numerous instances of individual vessel hauls of 1000+ bass in mono gear. Such catches greatly exceed the most fortuitous days of one fishing with hook and line whether a commercial hand liner or recreational angler.
Bass are the favourite species for recreational sea anglers (RSA) and are therefore a crucially important species for the £200 million RSA expenditure across the South West, a third of which derives from tourism angling (Nautilus Consultants report Motivation, Demographics and Views of South West RSA and their Socio-economic Impacts available at: http://resources.anglingresearch.org.uk/sites/resources.anglingresearch.org.uk/files/The_Motivation,_Demographics_&_Views_of_SW_Recreational_Sea_Anglers.pdf). This expenditure supports thousands of livelihoods across a wide range of businesses supplying the goods and services consumed by anglers. Recreational sea anglers, as direct user stakeholders of a number of fishery resources, know only too well of the contribution to overfishing that mono netting gears have made and wish to see far greater restrictions applied to their use in our estuaries and shallow close to shore waters.
Members of the Cornish Federation of Sea Anglers (CFSA) have attended most recent Statutory IFCA meetings and have witnessed a recurring debate about inshore and estuary netting in relation to the IFCA review of all bylaws inherited from the previous SFC and EA. It seems to us that a key issue that requires addressing is the ‘complexity’ of existing legislation. Currently, fixed nets in estuaries are prohibited whilst splash nets and drift nets are allowed. Removal of bass captured by boat from Bass Nursery Areas (BNA) is prohibited but netting that inevitably captures bass is allowed in BNA for other species. Determining precisely where a catch of bass in an estuary was made or determining whether nets were deployed ‘fixed’ or otherwise is inherently difficult.
We submit that simple legislation, and it gets no simpler than ‘zero netting’, will be better understood by all fishers and the public. As a result, illegal activities will become easier to identify and enforcement with public support will become increasingly effective. Within Devon and Severn IFCA district, the River Exe already enjoys a zero netting bylaw with certain exemptions including netting for research/scientific purposes, licensed netting of salmonids, and sandeel netting with maximum mesh size of 20mm. Our proposals for no netting in estuaries across the Cornwall IFCA District are made with similar exemptions in mind. Our understanding of existing bylaws is that any netting of sea fish in the Tamar is also currently prohibited so what we seek is not without precedent.
The overwhelming majority of netting in estuaries and in shallow close to shore waters is targeting bass. Bass stocks are in serious decline and the latest ICES advice is that catches should be reduced by at least 30% in 2014. http://www.ices.dk/sites/pub/Publication%20Reports/Advice/2013/2013/bss-47.pdf
We believe our proposals, if implemented will contribute to securing long term ‘best return’ from the County’s bass fishery resource from a mixture of recreational and commercial exploitation and particularly by shifting the profile of fishing mortality away from netting towards increased hook and line fishing. The Principal Enforcement Officer’s report to the IFCA in December 2012 refers to line caught bass making three times the price of netted bass so prioritising hook and line fishing complies with Government policy (see Fisheries 2027 at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/fisheries-2027-a-long-term-vision-for-sustainable-fisheries ) which identifies an overarching aim of fisheries management is to maximise the socio-economic return from public fishery resources.
To summarise:
Shifting the profile of bass exploitation away from gill netting towards hook and line will maximise social and economic ‘value’ to Cornwall plc from bass resource.
A significant number of commercial fishermen have shown their support for our proposals by signing our petition.
Eliminating gill netting in estuaries and inside the ten metre depth contour will provide substantial benefits for diving birds. http://www.fishnewseu.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=10429:gillnet-peril-revealed&catid=46:world&Itemid=145 and cetaceans. http://www.cornwallifca.gov.uk/sitedata/Misc/CoP_for_cetacean_bycatch_i.pdf
Gill nets that are placed across coves and bays prevent fish from becoming available to shore anglers and are frequently deployed so close to the shore that shore anglers are physically prevented from fishing as to do so results in entanglement and lost gear.
The existing bylaw Mesh of Nets in Parts of District (Page 14 at: http://www.cornwall-ifca.gov.uk/sitedata/Misc/CIFCA_byelaws_A5_booklet.pdf ) confirms the competence of the IFCA to prohibit a method of fishing in specified areas within its district.
Simplification of inshore netting legislation will be easier for fishers to determine what is allowed and what isn’t AND will also facilitate effective enforcement. The ten metre depth contour is clearly delineated on all electronic GPS charts that we have researched and a boat operator can see at a glance where the vessel is in relation to the chart datum.