By Johnny Woodlock
Catching Big Fish
The author with a nice tope off Dublin
E
veryone wants to catch a big fish. I don’t know if it’s a ‘manly’ thing or what, but ever since I started fishing it’s been the bigger the better. And of course the three biggest salmon in the British Isles were caught by women. Salmon remain the ultimate freshwater fish. At sea things get complicated. As humans, we have almost fished the big fish to extinction to feed ourselves or produce other foodstuffs such as fishmeal. Big fish were and are the most valuable, and not just to commercial fishermen who get the best prices for the bigger fish of most species. Big fish are the most valuable to the whole ecosystem, as they produce the best quality and most numbers of eggs to continue the survival of the species. Scientists call these fish ‘big fertile females’. Unfortunately there are not many of these left in many species. We have eaten them. Speaking to older fishermen they describe catching ‘buffalo cod’ in the Irish Sea and one or two of them would fill a box. Now relatively small cod are the norm with a double figure fish a rarity. In fact, there has been a Cod Recovery Plan in the Irish Sea since the turn of the century, but they are still
scarce in the area , and buffalo cod almost non existent. Fish stocks, when fished hard, tend to reproduce at a younger age so while there are lots of whiting in the Irish Sea they are all very small. I remember when the herring fleet used to follow the vast shoals down the Irish coast each summer. When prices crashed the herring were fished for their roe alone, which was then exported. The bulk of Irish Sea stock collapsed, but there is still a small stock in the north Irish Sea and we know that fish stocks have a remarkable ability to recover if allowed.It may take some time, but they can recover. To compound matters, commercial fishing has also targeted the food of fish such as sprat. Juvenile herring are also a valuable food source for predatory fish and most of what we eat is predatory, fish which eat other fish. The exploitation of so called ‘fodder fish” has a devastating effect on the whole marine ecosystem as they provide food for birds, seals and whales along with larger fish. In the USA when fodder fish (manheden) was fished out in certain areas, they discovered that the predatory fish such as Striped Bass and Bluefish turned to other more valuable fish
species to eat, salmon smolts included. The manhedan is reduced for oil and fishmeal. I find it amazing that fishing for fodder fish is still allowed, the nets used are small meshed to target small fish and they also catch small commercially valuable fish along with other bycatch as known fish nursery areas are where the sprat live. These fish are not for human consumption, but rather are reduced to fishmeal and then fed to pigs, chickens and in the past number of years increasingly to be turned into fish pellets to feed the fish farming industry. Of course before they are fed to farmed salmon, and they have medications and colours added so the salmon flesh is the right colour. If not added the meat is an ugly grey colour. And medication must be added because you cannot treat one hundred sick fish in a cage of fifty thousand. Despite this, the expected mortality in each cage is around 20%.
Excluding fishing from certain areas would lead to fishing pressure in other areas To many people, Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are the answer and indeed would serve as a sanctuary for vulnerable stocks and habitats such as
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