Waldo's Bycatch Photos

[finding_time]

My view is that ,you,the trawlerman are personally responsable for the environmental damage your activity causes and the best way to change the damage is to make you personally accountable.

Thats why I ask the question.

How much damage are you personally prepared to do???

Rando

Before i say this i again state that i'm not all that keen on trawling as an occupation and have problems with the damage they cause.

But what do you expect them to do they probably have families to support ,loans to repay should they just give up there vocation and default on there loans and go bankrupt?? What they do is work very hard to make a living and as long as they abide by the set regulations they are not to blame!

Your issue is with the government if they want to save the seagrass beds let them buy out the licences of these fishermen and compensate them for there loss then your problem would be solved .

As long as the government profits from the fishermen by way of taxes , licence fees and levies they are the ones to blame.

[rando]

Hi finding time.
I disagree. No one made these blokes enter the profession, they made a decision and they are accountable for the consequences of their decisions. It is they the trawlermen you should apply pressure to because that is where the most change can be affected, and yes, they are to blame , they are fully aware of what they do.

The legality of the enterprise is not the issue. I am simply concerned with cause and effect.
Yes they have families and mortgages, everyone does, at some time in their lives, again a seperate issue.
If you want to see a change demand that the individuals causing the damage are accountable. AND demand they change the way they do things.

[waldo35]

i wonder sometimes how u come to the conclusions u arrive at rando. noone forced trawlermen to become so..... what about people who come from fishing families.....and again u blame us for ur inability to catch a fish and yet others of ur persausion talk of netters unloading heaps of fish make ur mind up theres either fish or not.
and yet again we get down to slagging of fishermen presented as sum form of arguemnt against pro fishing.... ive gone into wot i do to minimize our impacts.....if u cant present any factual evidence please try and limit ur slandering of hard working honest australians.
but hey thanks for ur imput as misguided and misinformed as it may be.

[rando]

Did someone hold a gun to your head Waldo & tell you to be a trawlerman.????

As to your claim of there being an inconsistancy in argument about availability of fish. I think that is not so.
There are a finite number of fish available at any location. If a netter takes a heap of fish it stands to reason the are fewer/none to be taken by other means. I dont think even you could argue against a net being a more efficient tool for removing fish than a line!.That ,I think is what the other chap was alluding to.

As to me slagging off anyone. Also not true . I have stated that activities of trawlermen ,makes me angry and upset and why that is. Further i have called for them to be personally responsable for thier activity and decisions .
If you are experiencing discomfort because of this perhaps you should examine why you feel like that rather than attempt to discredit my rationality.

Let me assure you I am completely rational.

I believe I have presented a sound debate, and reiterate, your attempts to paint the progress made in bycatch reduction as a magnificent achievement are underwhelming. TOO LITTLE TOO LATE

The 43% reduction in bycatch claimed by you is only significant if you disassociate it from the starting point, which was wholesale slaughter. Further it was largely achieved by a reduction in effort and a resultant reduction in swept area, a product of the RAP process

The report Dinga tabled as a supporting document is scant on information about the effects on the ecosystem of current bycatch disciplines and the authors will not know till 2007 if the current levels are sustainable.

In other words it is a guess. and therefore the 40% reduction target is also a guess. An arbitary figure set by a government department . In fact the report calls them "precautionary management measures"

Your statement that I am misguided and misinformed is another attempt at shifting the focus of the argument and is unsupported.

rando

[waldo35]

we get back to the basic selfishness behind all ur arguments rando. nwhilst a profishers harvests to provide access to the whole community u wish that this access is limited to recco fishers only....75 % of people surveyed bt chris web staed fishing only once per year......where does their seafood come from for the rest of the year???
give it up rando ur personal attacks on me are becoming tiring and boring and ur argument present only anecdotal and emotive evidence.

[rando]

Waldo
Your argument is going around in circles,We have already discussed altruism and your motivation. And noboby I know believes profishers are acting on behalf of the community. It is a contradiction in terms to suggest so.

I have not attacked you personally in any way, merely refuted the arguments you have put forward.

The evidence I have used in my posts is directly from the report Dinga posted.
do you want me to quote the relevant pages and paragraphs??

rando

[waldo35]

i dunno rando asking me if sum1 put a gun to my head to force me to be a fisherman.... i take that as a personal attack. and the same info that u r quoting to back ur argument is the same info i use to back mine .....seems to be a matter of interpretation but hey thanx again for ur discourse.

[Derek_Bullock]

[warnyel]

Rando and Waldo35 are both warned about making the debate personal. Debate the issue by all means but stop the attacks on each other.

There will be no further warning to either of you.


[/warnyel]

[rando]

You dont need to be an academic or do a formal study to know that taking prawns ,and bycatch( lower order taxa) from the foodchain in large amounts over a long period will cause a decline in fishstocks, thats their food, take it away and feed it to the sharks birds and dolphins and you will have fewer fish. end of story.
You can argue other causes till you are blue in the face but the bottom line is, too much product is coming out of the food chain
The prawn fishery could very well be sustainable but at what cost to the rest of the bays inhabitants

[roz]

You dont need to be an academic or do a formal study to know that taking prawns ,and bycatch( lower order taxa) from the foodchain in large amounts over a long period will cause a decline in fishstocks, thats their food, take it away and feed it to the sharks birds and dolphins and you will have fewer fish. end of story.
You can argue other causes till you are blue in the face but the bottom line is, too much product is coming out of the food chain
The prawn fishery could very well be sustainable but at what cost to the rest of the bays inhabitants

I am going to have to agree with rando here, sorry Waldo but it is the bottom line.

As I posted earlier....I've seen huge amounts of by-catch first hand, one thing I didn't mention was the skippers comment that "it was once the other way around"..... almost all prawns.

You have pointed out many other factors contributing to the decline in fish/prawn stocks, and you are absolutely right Waldo, but I think you are in denial regarding the bleeding obvious.

BTW I am enjoying this debate very much.

Cheers Roz.

[bidkev]

[quote author=rando link=1142788387/75#83 date=1145434401]<snip>


BTW I am enjoying this debate very much.

Cheers Roz.

That's 'cause you like a bit of aggro!

I'm staying out of it........I've got enough on my plate atm..............pity it's all mullet

kev

It is far better to be alone, than to wish you were.

[bidkev]

could an increase in bycatch indicate the the communities in these areas are actually flourishing???

if you catch more fish doesnt that mean more are there to be caught???

Not neccessarily. Increased effort and changes of venue can produce that result. Also, the type of by-catch isn't recorded......it could consist in the main of only one species which would indicate an increase in that species at the cost to other species. It is documented that in the inshore fishery there is likely to be an increase of predators such as catfish, (at the expense of other species) due to the easy pickings of not only escapees from the net, but also discards (unwanted by-catch)

kev

It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.

[waldo35]

Although many fish captured by anglers are released (approaching 100 percent for some species), there can be substantial postrelease mortality (Muoneke and Childress 1994, Cooke and Suski forthcoming) as well as more subtle sublethal effects on growth and fitness (Cooke et al. 2002). Release mortality in recreational fisheries is analogous to bycatch discards in commercial fisheries, an internationally recognized conservation problem (Alverson et al. 1994).

In addition to contributing directly to global fishery declines through harvest or mortality, recreational fisheries can contribute to alterations in system function and quality. Harvest or postrelease mortality can act as a selective force in recreational fisheries (Policansky 1993), as it has been observed to do in commercial fisheries (Heino and Godo 2003). Although fewer examples exist in recreational fisheries, trophic or ecosystem-level effects can also be observed (McPhee et al. 2002). Environmental degradation from fishing was once attributed primarily to commercial activities (Dayton et al. 1995), but the recreational sector is now understood to have its fair share of responsibility (Cryer et al. 1987). Discarded fishing line and hooks can foul birds, marine mammals, corals, and other marine life, resulting in substantial injury and mortality (Cowx 2002, McPhee et al. 2002 ). Also, the accumulation of lead sinkers can result in mortality of waterbirds and have effects at higher trophic levels (Cowx 2002). Anglers may disturb wildlife, trample riparian vegetation to gain access to the water, and increase nutrient loading through ground baiting (distribution of organic bait to attract fish). Recreational boat traffic and the associated noise pollution, waves, erosion, and scarring also contribute to environmental degradation (Cowx 2002, McPhee et al. 2002).

Recreational fisheries are also responsible for an as yet undetermined degree of degradation offish stocks through fishery enhancement practices (Cowx 1998) or introductions (Cambray 2003). Notwithstanding these issues, the position of recreational fisheries must be balanced against the huge value (billions of dollars) of the sector to regional and local economies (Cowx 2002).

Recreational fishing and global fish crises

Several factors may explain the lack of attention to recreational fisheries in the consideration of global fishery crises. Collapses induced by recreational fishing may be difficult to detect (Post et al. 2002). Few long-term monitoring programs exist that could be used to detect declines in a global context. Furthermore, anglers exhibit complex behavior, and fisheries respond dynamically to exploitation (Post et al. 2002). Also, because recreational anglers represent a vocal and effective constituent group, the standard response to perceived or actual decline or alteration in population structure is supplementation (Cowx 1998). Hence, the impact of recreational fishing is typically addressed by curing symptoms rather than by addressing underlying causes.

like to hightlight the sector that says
release mortality in recco fisheries analogous to bycatch discards is commercial fisheries.
had to look up analogous;similar,paralell [oxford concise]
mmmmmmmm
sumthing about clean fingers and pointing......

[dinga1]

But if those fish you are taking out have the opportunity to spawn once or probably several times then isnt what gets taken out being replaced at a rate higher than the rate of removal (assuming standard natural mortality and limited effects of trawling given that juvenile bycatch species may not occur on trawl grounds). In theory a historical increase in bycatch catch rates (accounting for effort)could potentially mean that bycatch species are increasing in abundance??? Would this in turn mean they are threatened?? The species that are threatened could be the rarer ones located only on trawl grounds, how many of these there are who knows??

prawns are highly fecund and their biology means that they are not very susceptible to trawling eg burying (from a population perspective) ekp catches have been stable over a number of years but it is believed they are harvested at their maximun sustainable yield. this is based on stock assessment using catch rates from commercial data and sizes of prawns caught. i dont know enough about this process yet to comment any further

i am not convinced the "fishstocks" feed heavily on bycatch species(river fisheries may be different), sure some may be prime food items but on the whole the majority of bycatch species are spiny, leathery and generally dont look like good bait! They are returned to the water anyway so the fish stocks can still eat them potentially. dolphins only eat certain species in the bycatch and the sharks often ignore evrything you throw to them, as for birds i would think in offshore areas at night their impact would be minimal.

As for dettermining a baseline for comparison of bycatch reduvtions to then this is impossible as no historical data exists on bycatch quantities or composition. All that can be done is to compare from now(or from whenever bycatch was quantified for a fishery). There may be anecdotal evidence to suggest that current levels are in excess of years gone by but no government is going to base management changes on this i wouldnt think.

cheers

[GBC]

Damm I'm back again....

Just on the license buyback issue -

I have it on good authority that the EPA had a budget of $A9.5 million to buyback licenses in sandy straights as part of the recently launched policy in that area. Premier's knocked it on the head, and pros still now have full access to this area including netting creek mouths. This is the sort of damage in areas that breed juvenile fish that affects more rec fishers than any other type of fishing.
The govt is also looking at large scale fish farming off the Bargara/mon repos area. During harvesting even pros will be shut out of massive tracts of water for up to 3 months so be warned.