Sea Anglers' Conservation Network

The recent report circulated on the European study of RSA showed how on a European scale the sea anglers in west facing countries regard bass in the highest esteem as a sporting fish – I think it was something like 900,000 anglers in France preferentially target bass. Similar proportions in UK , Spain and Portugal. Surely a clear message for a European driver to designate bass management in favour of angling yet the bulk of the damage , effort and catch still accrues to the commercials. The document was cleverly worded to try to show that sea angling pressure on bass is significant. Well it might be on a cumulative scale BUT the difference is that sea anglers alone cannot easily make bass populations locally extinct as their effort is thinly spread far and wide taking a few fish here and there. Hook and line method is self limiting when using rods. Commercials on the other hand can and regularly fish local areas to the point of extinction thereby denying sea anglers access to the resource and putting themselves out of business. I do not recall the report explaining this very clearly. A few anglers might use four rods sometimes (very few) most use one or two with single or double hooks and as such the technique is effort self limiting. The length of gill net used by inshore commercials is only restricted by the size of the boat and when 8 m boats are setting up to 5000m of gill net once or twice in 24 hours there is no comparison or question about where the threat to inshore bass stocks lies. Yes sea anglers on a cumulative basis do catch a large number of bass annually. But many practice catch and release and the distribution of effort and catch is spread far and wide minimizing the potential to impact on local bass populations – far far more sustainable, a powerful economic input to local communities and providing fresh fish for the table.

(Posted on January 20, 2007, 11:06 am Mr P. Lugger)

Pan European study of the value of Marine Recreational Fishing

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