Sunfish & QLD Uni ?

[jaybee]

now i am lost krazy plz explain 1,000 log books, 800,000 fishers, damn i either need to go back to school or get some sleep, somethings not right here. or is it me. ???

[Vern_Veitch]

Thought this press release from Europe might add to the debate:
WWF Study shows cost of bycatch and discards in fishing industry


Hamburg, Germany The situation of fish stocks is critical: worldwide, 60% of stocks of fish for food are already overfished, or fished to the limit. In addition to the 85 million tonnes of fish, worldwide over 20 million tonnes of marine mammals, seabirds and fish are caught unintentionally in nets, and are mostly thrown overboard dead or dying.
This costs fishermen millions, but taxpayers have to foot the bill too. This is the conclusion of a study published today by WWF.
"Every year, millions of tonnes of fish die as bycatch, even before they have reached maturity. That means that they do not have the opportunity to reproduce, fish stocks are dwindling and fishermen can catch less and less", said Heike Vesper of WWF. The WWF calls on EU Fisheries Ministers to agree a new, environmentally sustainable fisheries policy at next week's EU Fisheries Council, to avoid more fish stocks collapsing and millions of marine creatures having to die.
The WWF study shows that:
* the value of discarded demersal species like cod, haddock or hake in the North Sea was 700 million euro up to 1994, which was approximately the same value as the quantity of fish sold;
* the quantity of landed swordfish, valued at 100 million euro, was actually below the number of swordfish thrown back;
* in 1983, in fishing for North Sea cod, over 3 million fish ended up as bycatch, which corresponds to a current market value of about 5.4 million euro;
* bycatches of sand flounders in European shrimp fisheries cause an annual loss of 12,000 tonnes of flounders, worth approximately 18 million euro.
However, not all the costs of bycatch and discards can be expressed in money terms: in the central and southern North Sea alone, over 7,500 porpoises die an agonizing death each year as bycatch in fishing for turbot and cod. Worldwide, 12 million sharks and 30,000 hawksbill turtles and green turtles also die every year as bycatch.
"The excessive bycatches in fisheries must be reduced quickly", says Heike Vesper. The WWF calls on EU Fisheries Ministers to ensure, as part of the reform of EU fisheries policy, that long-term management plans for fish stocks are introduced, and some fishing grounds are closed to protect immature and adult fish. The quota system adopted until now must be changed, so that all fish caught can also be landed and avoid a large part of catches being thrown back into the sea.
For further information: Heike Vesper, Fisheries expert, WWF Germany, Tel.: 0421/6584623, Mobile: 0173 2033348

[CHRIS_aka_GWH]

vern,
there's a very relevant article in this months (or may have been last months) Readers Digest on the decline of the Albatross. Researchers could not work out why the numbers returning to roost were dropping dramatically each year whilst their hatch rate/bird seemed constant & very few dead birds were being found anywhere etc. They were postulating all sorts of things like global warming & the like until ....

a researcher attended a long line fishing boat in the southern ocean. These things lay kms of line with thousands of hooks in a single shot. The albatross would hit the bait as it hit the water & then be dragged underneath to drown. They noted the number of birds killed on each shot of the line they observed then calculated something like 30,000 birds were being killed annually by the fleet as a whole. This in a population of birds with less than a million worldwide.

Some nations have taken steps to minimise this like only shooting the lines at night but others don't give a damn.

Gotta love bycatch eh.

chris

please forgive the figures if they are not quite correct - I'll check the article tonight at home & adjust if necessary (I think they are pretty right)

[Vern_Veitch]

I think it get's the message across Chris. The only thing signioficant about recreational bycatch is that it is INsignificant compared the what is wrought on non-tartget species by the commercial sector. In the East Coast Prawn Fishery in Queensland alone, with 10 000 tonne of prawn caught and a bycatch ratio of between 6 and 8 to 1 with bycatch reduction devices, this gives a bycatch of 60 000 to 80 000 tonnes of other marine creatures killed whilst targetting prawns. Just think about that and then realise that although not all of this is fish, nearly all of the fish that are bycatch are juveniles or small adults and weigh almost nothing individually and you will start to the the picture.
Vern

[Kerry]

I don't think anybody would have any real idea of what the rec catch was.

Always been one of those fairy figures and will probably always be just that.

Cheers, Kerry.