Post by SHARK on Apr 21, 2009 22:13:22 GMT 1
Bass was on the menu when Doctor Mike Pawson addressed a meeting of the Association of Sea Fisheries Committees in London.Some of the main interesting points on larger bass were as follows:
Adult bass are known through tagging programmes to frequent the same inshore feeding areas during the summer months, year after year, where they may be more vulnerable to capture than bass found elsewhere.
Closing coastal areas to extractive fishing would enhance survival and enable more sea bass within local populations to grow bigger.
Stakeholders in the RSA sector believe that this might be a viable option to achieve a better use of the UK bass resource and one that would fit within Defra's RSA strategy.
Consequently Defra is funding a study into whether such areas could be managed for the RSA's benefit.
For this purpose it would be necessary to reduce extractive fishing in those areas that have historically produced bigger bass by restricting the take of bass by both commercial and recreational fisheries using, for example, a combination of gear restrictions, bag limits, slot size limits and catch and release.
The effect of these controls will be monitored through tagging bass caught and released in the restricted catch areas and collecting information on catch and fishing activity over a period of two or three years to evaluate the benefits to local bass stocks and the effects on recreational and commercial fisheries.
The study will be in two phases.
The first will involve an assessment of whether this type of management measure is possible, from social, political and legal perspectives .
The second involves fishing for bass. Four inshore areas - two restricted catch text areas and two similar nearby control areas - will be monitored and an intensive tagging exercise carried out to evaluate the fate of bass caught and released.
Tagging studies around England and Wales had shown that a significant number of bass were recaptured near to their respective summer feeding areas in successive years.
For example, 14 of 29 adult bass reported within 33km of the release area in Anglesey's Cefni Estuary between 1971-1984 were recaptured by tagging teams at the original tagging site.
Seventeen fish tagged in 2000 and 2001 were recaptured at the original tagging locations in Devon, Cornwall, Dorset, Isle of Wight, Channel Island and South Wales -11 years subsequent to tagging and within two calendar months of the anniversary of the release date.
One fish in particular, tagged and released from a mark in South Wales on May 24, 2001, weighing 2.84kg was subsequently recaptured from the same location on August 21 weighing 3.18kg and again less than 40metres away on September 17 2003 when it weighed 4.2kg.
Clearly, repeated recapture had not inhibited the growth of this fish nor its propensity to feed or be caught in that particular locality.
This phenomenon of adult bass which may share the same spawning grounds segregating to specific summer feeding areas to which they show a strong propensity to return again and again offers an opportunity for spatial management of bass fisheries that might benefit RSA.
Because adult bass appear to be less susceptible to capture when they move outside their 'home' summer feeding areas, protection of the populations in such areas should enhance survivorship and lead to more and bigger bass being available to be caught there.
Adult bass are known through tagging programmes to frequent the same inshore feeding areas during the summer months, year after year, where they may be more vulnerable to capture than bass found elsewhere.
Closing coastal areas to extractive fishing would enhance survival and enable more sea bass within local populations to grow bigger.
Stakeholders in the RSA sector believe that this might be a viable option to achieve a better use of the UK bass resource and one that would fit within Defra's RSA strategy.
Consequently Defra is funding a study into whether such areas could be managed for the RSA's benefit.
For this purpose it would be necessary to reduce extractive fishing in those areas that have historically produced bigger bass by restricting the take of bass by both commercial and recreational fisheries using, for example, a combination of gear restrictions, bag limits, slot size limits and catch and release.
The effect of these controls will be monitored through tagging bass caught and released in the restricted catch areas and collecting information on catch and fishing activity over a period of two or three years to evaluate the benefits to local bass stocks and the effects on recreational and commercial fisheries.
The study will be in two phases.
The first will involve an assessment of whether this type of management measure is possible, from social, political and legal perspectives .
The second involves fishing for bass. Four inshore areas - two restricted catch text areas and two similar nearby control areas - will be monitored and an intensive tagging exercise carried out to evaluate the fate of bass caught and released.
Tagging studies around England and Wales had shown that a significant number of bass were recaptured near to their respective summer feeding areas in successive years.
For example, 14 of 29 adult bass reported within 33km of the release area in Anglesey's Cefni Estuary between 1971-1984 were recaptured by tagging teams at the original tagging site.
Seventeen fish tagged in 2000 and 2001 were recaptured at the original tagging locations in Devon, Cornwall, Dorset, Isle of Wight, Channel Island and South Wales -11 years subsequent to tagging and within two calendar months of the anniversary of the release date.
One fish in particular, tagged and released from a mark in South Wales on May 24, 2001, weighing 2.84kg was subsequently recaptured from the same location on August 21 weighing 3.18kg and again less than 40metres away on September 17 2003 when it weighed 4.2kg.
Clearly, repeated recapture had not inhibited the growth of this fish nor its propensity to feed or be caught in that particular locality.
This phenomenon of adult bass which may share the same spawning grounds segregating to specific summer feeding areas to which they show a strong propensity to return again and again offers an opportunity for spatial management of bass fisheries that might benefit RSA.
Because adult bass appear to be less susceptible to capture when they move outside their 'home' summer feeding areas, protection of the populations in such areas should enhance survivorship and lead to more and bigger bass being available to be caught there.