I know there are a lot of words involved in my posts in this and the wrong wrong wrong thread and some of them are big - like collapse, overfished, spooked and pointless. There are probably even more words than used by The Sunday Mail to describe the Wallabies' loss to the Lions which really only requires 2 words.
So for all those struggling with the lots of and big words, here's a summary of my posts in these 2 threads (and the countless bloody things before now) in a language you'll hopefully understand.
If you feel I am insulting your intelligence by writing in this way because you do understand what I've been writing about, then I'm probably not. But I probably am insulting your apathetic approach to extremely serious issues which directly affect you, your family and future generations of you.
"Nightmare in Paradise"
The bad nets are pulling pregnant fishies out of the water before they have babies
The lucky pregnant fishies and their sex crazed partners that run from the bad nets have to feed themselves on the run and eat shit like maccas in places where there is no 24hr drive thru
The shit food, the lack of it and the stress of being on the run causes mummy and daddy fishies to become feral and have weak babies and many of these babies die
The surviving babies are born in like ghettos where there are evil big fishies that have invaded the ghetto that scare the babies and sometimes even kill them
The baby fishies try to run from the evil fishies but it's just too far to the cosy warmth of their home estuary and they die as well
All the while the mummy and daddy fishies are still on the run, looking for somewhere with a 24hr drive thru and dodging the nasty drag net that the authorities have set for them
As we all know, it's only a matter of time before they are caught
But the costs of the operation to the authorities to catch these fleeing absconders is becoming higher each year with searching and imprisonment costs exceeding the bounty and sooner or later the authorities discover that it is no longer viable to keep trying
Society collapses, the tourists stay away and go to places that they never would have considered before in a fit - like NEW SOUTH WALES
The poor uninformed souls that hang in there in cane toad land decide that this is all ok cause they can dig big holes in the ground and bury their heads in it
The End
The point:
Recreational fishing in Qld is slowly becoming completely rooted and if you think otherwise you are off with the fairies. We know that net free regions can fix many of the problems that we are encountering yet we can't pull our fingers out of our asses and demand that the people that WE elected do something about it. They spin us absolute crap that this or that fishery is sustainable when we know they're not and our practices are such that they can't fng be.
I put up a post that challenges FQ to go through an exercise of proving that spooking which causes fisheries to collapse rec fishing pointless and which costs f all and they are going to ignore it because there is no insistence by us to make them do it. It just went through to the keeper and not one of you could be bothered, or switched on enough to recognise the circumstances that I've created for you all. Why do I fckng bother??
If you want to catch more and bigger fish. If you want your children and their children to catch a fish. If you want our marine ecosystems to be able to survive climate change and increasing human population pressures. Get off your collective asses and demand that the people who manage our fisheries do better. Write to your local member and express your desire for net free regions. Post here that you want FQ to go through the exercise of assessing shot data and spooking - because their watching and if you don't then they can ignore me on my own til there's no fckng fish left. As I have said - I know what I'm talking about and I can support every tincy wincy bit of it with strong and irrefutable evidence.
I'd love to see fisheries go through the exercise Lindsay, but sadly the deafening silence with which your original posts were met with indicate just how piss poor they really are, it's too hard and will raise too many questions. Being in the public service seems to be all about saving face unfortunately, because there always has to be some one to blame. I doubt they will even reply to this thread let alone commence the research you suggest. I know for a fact that people within FQ are aware of your theories as I have spoken to Robert Prosser's research teams up at Fraser over the last few years and they are well aware of who you are and what you do, but sadly I think they are still of the opinion that the rec's take more tailor than the commercial sector, they just don't seem to catch on to the fact that you're theories & proposals reach far beyond tailor alone.
Thanks for what you do Lindsay, regardless of what the keyboard warriors on Internet forums have to say, I appreciate your efforts. I sincerely hope the time and effort you have invested start to pay some dividends soon as I would hate to see you give up thinking no one else cares.
Cheers Kev - I agree with your comments and you have highlighted a couple of basic flaws in the system that ensure that the objectives are all that much harder to achieve. And I don't imagine that spooking is something that FQ would like to be exposing as a fact when the implications to their understaffed organisation are not pleasant from a commercial perspective.
I also agree that recs would have taken more tailor than nets, although I wonder whether the ratio is the same now when bag limits are never attained as has been assessed in the past when bag limits didn't exist and there was open slather on a still relatively healthy biomass and hyperstability an increasing factor. However, this is the very aspect that is at the core of why net free regions are known to have more and bigger fish.
Recs don't spook fish so that they alter migrations and feed and breed in locations that aren't ideal. Only nets cause this to occur and according to research, the mortality rate and/or reduced 'birth' rate that result from displacement can be as high as the harvest rate itself. Then there is natural mortality on top of that which is exacerbated by invasive species and altered growth rates (CSIRO - Feb 2013). This isn't at all surprising and was the very reason why I began this project in the first place. It was blatantly obvious to me once it became obvious that the fish were being spooked away from where they wished to be - they then had to be in locations that they didn't wish to be which meant away from food and away from locations that have provided high recruitment rates for millions of years and allowed the species to still be here now. All perfectly logical - once spooking has been accepted as a reality.
So when FQ refuse to address a situation that they do have some awareness of and that can be a factor as significant as the harvest itself, then they are effectively refusing to manage our fisheries effectively. It is very much head in the sand sort of stuff - that isn't unique to FQ in their defence. But I spose if they believe that everything is fine despite catch rates falling ever lower, then what chance is there that they'll open their eyes to spooking.
However - irrespective of whether I personally eventually succeed in having spooking investigated in Australian waters, there are any number of marine scientists around the world that are investigating this very thing. They have been to various degrees since the 80s, but this is now the 'new frontier' of marine science in all sorts of aquatic species and the focus is far more intense and results are coming through. Proof itself of the entire scenario is imminent and I guess FQ won't be able to ignore spooking then.
My frustration, as evidenced in my last post, is the same frustration experienced by a number of people in Australia, who like myself wish to improve the lot of anglers and marine ecosystems. None of us are able to harness the 20% or so of our population who fish recreationally to assist in achieving the goal of reducing netting pressure and establishing net free regions, or more net free regions. We turn out in numbers to oppose green zones which are going to happen anyway, but we don't feel as passionate about net free regions because I'm assuming we don't understand why they are necessary. So that is why I write about all the various factors in order to educate people as to the necessity. I'm not saying that it is wrong to oppose green zones as this ensures, or hopefully does, that green zones are appropriately designated.
As a point of interest - some may have read in the papers a few weeks ago about the new phone app where users can play a recording of bird vocalisations which attracts bird species to the user. I've see this at work and it is amazing how effectively it does work - which btw has been used in a fish scenario for many years. The newspaper articles were focused on a warning from experts that the use of this app can take birds away from their day to day activities of feeding and breeding and be harmful to their survival. This is no different to scaring fish away from their day to day activities but apparently doesn't matter with fish.
One thing that I can assure you of Kev - I won't be giving up. But it would be a whole lot easier to achieve the objectives if there was a higher level of support for net free regions from some of the 800000 or so anglers in Qld. Any individual who cares about angling or marine conservation and has 15 minutes to spare to write that they would like net free regions in Qld, should be doing just that whether they understand the science behind it all or not. Send it to the Minister or their local member or send it to me as I am accumulating such letters as we speak - Lindsay Dines - ldines@bigpond.net.au
Took the dogs for a run between Woorim & Skirmish point yesterday arvo at Bribie. The net crews had three boats at the ready on the beach waiting for the mullet to come through. There was a fair school of something about 200m offshore getting stuck into bait. Not sure what it was, I don't think it was the tuna that are usually prevalent at this time of year as they didn't leap, could have been small mac tuna or even tailor. Regardless of what it was I expect the surfside of Bribie to not fish too well in the near future.
Hey Just Chips, that gathering of Netters have been there for at least 3 Weeks. 3 Boats half a dozen Vehicles and a Large Flat Top Truck with a Crane. Don't Waste Your Time.
Reply With Quote
Post here that you want FQ to go through the exercise of assessing shot data and spooking - because their watching and if you don't then they can ignore me on my own til there's no fckng fish left. As I have said - I know what I'm talking about and I can support every tincy wincy bit of it with strong and irrefutable evidence.
