Bass anglers urge action
THE association representing UK sea bass anglers has written to fisheries minister Jonathan Shaw demanding urgent action to protect inshore sea bass stocks from being destroyed, and urging that enforcement agencies are properly funded to provide more robust enforcement.
The Bass Anglers’ Sportfishing Society (BASS) says the decline of bass stocks threatens the valuable recreational bass fishery along with thousands of jobs in the recreational sea fishing sector.
The society cites a legal minimum landing size “set far below spawning age”, and said “because there is no quota for bass, commercial fishermen are free to help themselves to bass stocks almost without restriction. And with little available quota for other species, many more fishermen are increasingly turning to bass to maintain their profits”.
BASS complains that DEFRA “simply has no idea of the number of boats now targeting bass, nor the amount of netting that is being deployed (which can be up to 20 miles of net from one small vessel), and so are completely unable to manage the fishery.”
BASS said: “The fuel crisis too is playing its part, as fishermen turn from making longer sea journeys and concentrate on exploiting local inshore stocks.
“They are also turning away from fuel-hungry
fishing methods such as bottom-trawling to setting static gear such as gill-nets for bass, with a huge increase in the numbers of marine mammals and birds becoming entangled in nets set for bass.”
