Saving Seafood

Historical Arctic Logbooks Provide Insights into Past Diets and Climatic Responses of Cod

September 7, 2015 — UK fisheries survey logbooks from the 1930s to 1950s have been digitised for the first time, revealing how cod responded to changing temperatures in the last century.

Scientists at the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (Cefas) and the University of Exeter found that at the time, the warm seas experienced around Norway benefitted the cod, similar to the conditions there today.

Most cod eaten by the UK comes from northern seas including the Barents Sea around Norway, because the stocks there at the moment are at record highs. Cod stocks were also big in the middle of the last century, and this new research, published in PLOS ONE, reveals that the environmental conditions at the time contributed to the change. Cod diet data reveals that their food preferences each year, between capelin, herring, crustaceans and cod cannibalism, were also affected by their environment.

Cefas holds many records from historical survey cruises, many of them in the form of paper log books. A recent programme of work concentrated on cataloguing and digitising these documents, where possible, to ensure that they are not lost and can be made freely available. More of Cefas’ data, with the exception of data owned by industry, will continue to be made available over this year.

Read the full story here

 

Fishing study reveals scallop fishing impact

August 19, 2015 — Sustainable scallop fishing within the Cardigan Bay Special Area of Conservation (SAC) could be possible, thanks to the world’s largest ever fishing impact study led by scientists from Wales’ Bangor University.

Bangor University worked together with the Welsh Fishermen’s Association, Welsh Government and Natural Resources Wales for the study, which focused on understanding the amount of scallop fishing within the SAC that would be considered sustainable and that would not damage the conservation features of the area.

“This is the first study of its kind that provides information that would enable us to advise on the amount of fishing that the seabed within the SAC can tolerate, it provides the basis for a truly ecosystem based approach to management of a potential fishery in the area,” said Professor Michel Kaiser who leads the fisheries and conservation science group at Bangor University’s School of Ocean Sciences.

Read the full story at World Fishing & Aquaculture

SCOTLAND: Media’s Fish Tales and Codology

July 22, 2015 — Back in 2012, the Daily Telegraph and Sunday Times famously screamed that there were, “just 100 cod left in the North Sea”. Even at the time, it ranked as one of the greatest howlers ever published – as the BBC pointed out a fortnight later, they were only about half a billion wrong. It would have been funny but for the impact it had on the Scottish fishing industry. Having slimmed down dramatically over the preceding decade, and after the voluntary adoption of serious practical measures to aid recovery of a depleted stock, the last thing it needed or deserved was a bunch of irresponsible journalists destroying the market for locally caught fish.

It’s a shame that you can’t catch cod in London, Edinburgh or the grim, grey streets where environmental activists come from. Unfortunately for the fishing industry, a very large proportion of the UK’s fish comes from the northern part of the North Sea, and particularly the waters around Shetland. From a part of the world that doesn’t even appear on some newspapers’ weather maps, in other words. More fish are landed in Shetland than in England, Wales and Northern Ireland combined, and to journalists in London it barely exists. Out of sight, out of mind … and from where tales of plentiful cod, not to mention a couple of dozen other commercial fish species, can be safely ignored.

And such tales! Cod everywhere, cod impossible to get away from, cod recovering too fast for vastly shrunken quotas to cope, cod of a size not seen for decades. Grinning anglers mooring up in Scalloway claiming that after a great day out the 100 cod were down to 90 or whatever.

It certainly made for a contrast with annual quota talks in Brussels, where UK and Scottish ministers had to fight year after year just to prevent already inadequate cod quotas being cut further. Whatever the scientists were doing, it didn’t tally with what fishermen were seeing every day, haul after haul, and needless to say the anti-fishing brigade were delighted with the whole process. Good news on wildlife is very bad news for environmental groups; doom, gloom and ecological catastrophe are what they need to suck in donations. From that point of view, the disappearing cod story was extremely opportune.

Read the full story at The Scotsman

 

New scallop conservation measures announced in Scotland

Scallop stocks are to be protected through new conservation measures announced by the Scottish government.

The measures, which are being put in place following a consultation, aim to improve the management of the scallop fishery in Scottish waters.

The minimum landing size of scallops will be increased from 100mm to 105mm for most of the Scottish coast.

This is expected to help protect the breeding stock of scallops and lead to greater yield and egg production.

Restrictions will also be placed on the number of dredges that scallop vessels are allowed to tow in inshore waters.

There will be no change to the current restrictions outside 12 nautical miles.

Read the full story at the BBC