Fish Shops

[Bear]

I've been doing a bit of looking around after a phone call I received from a concerned fisho last week.

Can someone tell me is shops are able to stock what is considered undersize fish for rec fishos.

Many thanks,

[panger]

I get peeved off when I go past fish shops too. Not only are they undersized, most of the time they are in crap condition. I wouldn't buy most fish from the fish shop because they aren't fresh.

Anyway, I'm not certain but I think those undersized fish get in under the pro's allowable by-catch.

[bubba]

Allowable by-catch is exactly how they get around the limits.

Bloody rediculous!!!

[Bear]

I think having fish under 200mm is just not on.

[Geoff R]

I think you'll find that the fish you have seen at the fish monger or in the deli section at your supermarket are FARMED.
I am pretty sure that if a fish is farmed you can produce it and sell it at any size.
At least I hope that's the situation:confused:

[panger]

That's true for a few species like barramundi and murray cod but others are definitely wild eg bream grow to slow to be viable farm species but you see undersized fish at the shop.

That is only half true Panger.
Bream do grow slow, but many farmers are still breeding them for farming purposes.
It wouldn't surprise me at all if the fish at the markets were undersize and fom nets though!:mad:

Dave

[scott]

dont most farmers who breed bream sell them as fingerlings, it isnt cost viable to raise them for too long

i was under the impression that mostly fast growing fish were farmed

if u havent already been to the freo aquaculture place, near the south mole, it is very cool and worthwhile....

Yeah thats true Scott. My dad works for calm and said that many southern regional farmers are building dams to breed bream in. Due to the high salinity, this is a very viable option for farmers. The professional fish farms (like Ocean Farm) have however stopped breeding bream for the fish market as you said!
For the Regional farmers, it is just another way to combat salinity!

Dave

[bubba]

My comments werent related to specific fish like Bream, but an overall.
Things like Bara, some Snapper, Bream and other "farmed" fish are certainly not counted in size limits.
Other things such as Nor-West Snapper, Emperor, Mullet etc etc are not farmed but there is still an "allowable" bycatch of small fish. These are generally classified as "Pan Sized"
We need an aquacultured society like Indonesia and Japan :o

[panger]

Out of interest what are the regional farmers do with their fish? Who would be buying fingerlings?

I'm not entirely sure what the Regional Farmers do witht heir bream. Its up to them. They can sell the fish to markets when they are big enough, breed them for fingerlings, make their dams open for impound fishing, etc.
I'm not sure. I'd say a lot would be doing it as an investment for retirement, and also to make use of the saline land which is otherwise useless!
Fingerlings are bought by the Govt for restocking purposes, and also by aquarists (like myself) who have them in their Aquariums.

[panger]

Just following the regional farmers opening their dams to impoundment fishing I wonder how bass would do in the salty water. They breed in salt after all, they'll grow faster (hopefully in salt), pull harder and take a wider variety of lures. Then you could have a WA bass tournament as well:)

I'm pretty sure Bass are also being bred in the dams, so it looks like we're in luck!!!

Dave

[dantheman]

guys i was served a 23cm snapper . in victoria.
i was wondering the same thing,,\
does any one have any hard evidence
cheers dan

[Bear]

I'd like to see a system similar to that showed on SBS last night.

I'd like the fish to be identified as farm or pro caught fish. From there I would also like them to be labelled to identify if they were caught from an area that was actively working around a sustainable industry.

To me that's a bloody good idea.

[dantheman]

Bear thats a great idea...

cheers dan:D :D

[bparker]

Bear, I saw that last night too and thought it was a terrific idea. It makes my blood boil to walk past the local fishmonger to see obviously undersize fish that I know couldn't have been farmed (eg. snapper, KG whiting etc.) .

However I'm still not convinced that fish farming as it is now is the most viable alternative. It seems that there are still some major questions to be answered surrounding pollution produced by fish pens through fish waste and uneaten fish food as well as the masses of bait fish required as feed.

FYI Kingpin ..I believe most impoundments stocked with Bass are put and take fisheries requiring a regular restocking as Bass do not reproduce in them.

That doesn't surprise me at all BParker. I wasn't sure about the bass breeding. The bream do however.
I would say that if a farmer was serious about breeding bass he could. I'm not sure though.
Most natural occurances which let the fish know its time to breed, can be copied in an impound or aquarium or whatever. Size of the living area is normally the thing that stops them breeding, and also the cost of getting the equipment which allows the farmer to simulate natural environment changes!

[TheJigJedi]

Bear,

Thats a great idea. I mean, they label eggs according to free range or battery. And they have to state on food labels wheather it is genetically modified or not. So why shouldn't fish from shops be labeled with "farmed" or "netted" with locations? Good point.

Shane.

[SWANK-E]

good luck with the labelling thing!

fishmongers don't even name their fish properly! they substitute cheaper fish and call them something more expensive and sell them as that. there is no legistration controlling this, let alone telling you where it is from!!!

[Bear]

That's the whole point though.

The only way we are going to get things fixed is to force change. What's that old sticker say, 'I Fish and I Vote.'

Some good points about marketing and labelling fish posted too as well as aquaculture points.

Fish minimum sizes is an emotional thing and not always altogether in the fishes best interests.

Our Fish size rules are about as dumbazzed as you can get IMO.
They seem to be based upon what someone once thought was a good plate sized fish to take home for a feed...and have no basis in scientific research or fish reproductive biology.

Take Pink Snapper someone mentioned in this thread.

As a general rule depending on where you are in Oz, pinkys reach sexual maturity to spawn at between 38CM (Victoria's Port Phillip Bay) & 41 CM's (Wes Oz's Shark bay).

Min legal size in WA is 41 CM. Good so far - they at least get to spawn once to replace themselves before they end up as fillets at the fish n chip shop. Every year past that first spawning their fecundity (egg recruitment) doubles the year before, so the longer they remain at large the more juvenile snapper they produce per year.

One then wonders why on earth the Minimum legal size for Pink Snapper at Walpole/Denmark, is 28 CM ???? Well before they have reached sexual maturity.

What difference if it's killed at 28 or 38 cm if it hasn't yet spawned once at least?

A typical dumbazzed rule - and IMO it's no point blaming the pro's who supply the fish shops if the rules don't make any ecological sense in the first place.

As a generalisation not taking juvenile fish makes a heck of a lot of sense, in terms of having larger speciemens to recruit more juveniles in the system & this is where slot sizes come in handy - a min size for retention as well as a max allowable size so that the big highly fecund breeders get to reproduce each year.

Nature however - is a funny thing...

Take say trout stockings, where up to 50% of fingerlings stocked don't make it to year 1 thru predation - this is why trout farmers like to sell fingerlings rather than yearlings - more biomass makes it to market = more profits.

Nature allows quite a high juvenile mortality rate without affecting stocks adversely usually - this is why fish spawn in such high numbers...

So, if nature "allows" up to 50% of juveniles to not be viable anyway - is there any great harm done if 50% of the juvenile recruitment were caught and eaten as protein at sardine size?

They are going to become bird food anyway - maybe people ought to eat them if nature has designated them surplus to requirements?

In managing a great many large populations of one species, be it fish birds sheep deer etc it has been well recognised in biological circles, that the best harvest mechanism is an even age/sex cull, taking out specimens across the broad range of age/sex classes rather than taking just big ones or just males or just females, or just young ones etc...

All these "size, weight, color, age, sex" related harvest mechanisms (includin fish minimum/maximum sizes) have their own biological implications for the stocks in terms of management recruitment, disease etc...

At best they are a poor management tool - BUT they are all we have so it's best to work with what we have and make it better rather than throw it out and have nothing.

Bye far the best system would be to know what the populaion size and recruitment rates were, what the sustainable yeild was - and to allocate "quota's" where each pro and rec alike were allowed a certain "weight/number" of a certain species, of any size/sex they catch, and once they've caught it that's it for the year.

Pro Fishers however resist "quota's" like the plague - suggesting that it penalises the better fishers overt the worse fishers - if they all have a quota...they all catch the same whereas at the moment - the "best" fisher catches the most.

Anyway - size, as a method of trying to control fishing pressure? - it's a pretty poor one at best - but it's all we got so might as well run with it. Maybe when you stop and look at whats "WRONG" with using "size alone" as the arbiter of what can be caught and kept - you realise why maybe some Fisheries inspectors aren't all that bothered bye the small obviously undersized fish they see at the fishmongers. Most of them realise that "size" limits aren't the be all end all of Fisheries management and many of the species involved arent high value or particularly threatened status....Yet!

As to the marketting & sale off falsely labelled fish, the CSIRO have released a book last year on identifying Australia's commercially sold species from the flesh of the fillet, designed to stamp out the false labelling of inferior species within the fish trade. It's available off the CSIRO web site from memory, and should allow health inspectors, seafood buyers and consumers alike to stamp out the practice.

You just make a complaint to the local council health inspector - keep some of the fish or meal as a sample - go along with your book to prove your point - and the restraunt loses it's license to operate.

Same thing - take the book into the restaurant with you - and if the fish isn't what you ordered - then don't PAY for it - whip out your CSIRO book to prove your point - and voila - a free meal!

Principally - the book was put out bye the CSIRO for chefs and the like (seafood buyers from the supermarkets) so THEY could haul up wholesalers supplying them with falsely labelled fish product and refuse delivery / payment.

If more people bought and used the book - maybe we would have a 50 / 50 chance of actually getting the fish we order and pay for at a fish restaurant.

Of course - if it was caught on a long line or in a net in an estuary, or a non dolphin friendly sein net - then we probably shouldn't be ordering it and supporting that industry anyway!

Aquaculture certainly do sell fish at sizes under legal minimums for recreationally caught fish, and for reasons it's as stated before, that it's not so viable to grow fish out in aquaculture as it is to breed the juveniles.

Aquaculture is also not without it's problems - and the mass pilchard kills on our south coasts due to viral diseases introduced in raw frozen imported aquaculture feed fish from the northern hemisphere, have been ample proof of that!

How we can still import, 20,000 tonnes a year of raw frozen north sea herring, as cray bait in WA and throw it into the ocean every day of the year for 8 months a year from 600 cray boats a day with an average of 100 pot sets a day for that time, without an ecological oceanic fish disease disaster, simply astounds me. It is an oceanic eco time bomb just waiting to go off and one day go off it will (mark my words).

Theres LOTS more to worry about in Fishing than the odd small fish at the fishmongers, or dodgey fish fillet at the fish restaurant - trust me! ;)

Cheers!

[SWANK-E]

trouty, you specialise in writing thesis, manufestos and epics?

I just got a lot to say on some topics!:D

Cheers!

[Bear]

<Theres LOTS more to worry about in Fishing than the odd small fish at the fishmongers, or dodgey fish fillet at the fish restaurant - trust me! >

I rather doubt that it is the odd one. When you look at the amount that go through some places, and the place I have been watching is a MASS suppliers, you can't seriously tell me that it doesn't make a difference.

I think that any system that helps species is a good one. While size is not the only issue, it does play a major part. Something similar has been done with Barra in the north to protect breeders.

<As to the marketting & sale off falsely labelled fish, the CSIRO have released a book last year on identifying Australia's commercially sold species from the flesh of the fillet, designed to stamp out the false labelling of inferior species within the fish trade. It's available off the CSIRO web site from memory, and should allow health inspectors, seafood buyers and consumers alike to stamp out the practice.>

Then why the hell isn't it made more obvious to the general public that it exists. To me though, it sounds more like a cop out. Why not police the people properly instead of getting everyone else to do the job for them. Sort of what fisheries have been doing with volunteers. When you need the man with the real power, he's nowhere to be seen.

<Our Fish size rules are about as dumbazzed as you can get IMO.
They seem to be based upon what someone once thought was a good plate sized fish to take home for a feed...and have no basis in scientific research or fish reproductive biology.>

I think the last thing we want is to have an escalated situation of what is occuring now. If we did things on a region\species basis, you'd need a phd to be able to know what you can catch where. There has to be a happy middle ground somewhere.

<A typical dumbazzed rule - and IMO it's no point blaming the pro's who supply the fish shops if the rules don't make any ecological sense in the first place.>

A very generalised statement don't you think. I believe, in the case of bream, that we have to blame the pros. Using excuses like by-catch just doesn't wash with me I'm afraid.

Undersized fish rouses a lot of emotions with rec anglers Bear, no denying that, often with good reason when blatant abuses occurr, moreso when they are done in a public way / place, eg the local fishmongers.

Yes - it likely has a small effect overall at the end of the day on SOME fishstocks...(haven't got to the bream yet tho) ;)

Even a BIG fish mongers shop - doesn't sell in total in one year, what ONE good sized trawler throws over the side dead as trawler trash in a week!

Then we have fish that gets turned into fishmeal, which we likely buy to feed the home goldfish - & in our burley as well as what ends up in aquaculture feeds etc.

Fisheries don't pay it much attention Bear, because in overall scheme of things, far as fish stocks go - the small mullet etc at the fishmongers are not high value fisheries, nor fishstocks under threat.

The small Snappers a good example - aquacultured in numbers now and sold at about 23 CM (plate sized) coz thats what the market wants.

See how long your local friendly fishmonger lasts if he puts a few undersized crays out in his display case - I bet he gets his sorry azz busted bye Fisheries within the first day!!!

If Fisheries dept cared about what the small fish the fishmonger buys & sells - they could bust him any day a the week they wanted - but they don't care, for the reasons I've already outlined.

Purely as a hypothetical scenario of course, It would make an "interesting excercise" Bear, if someone "anonymous" rang Fisheries and complained about heaps of undersized crays at the fishmongers, then waited around until the Fish Inspectors showed up.

I'd bet 10 bucks that once there, when they found no undersized crays, even if a passerbye voiced opinion he should be busted for the "small undersized fish" he has on display - that he wouldn't cop a fine. Maybe he'd get a written letter of admonition and told not to do it again but that would be about all. More likely he'd aget a verbal warning.

(Please don't anyone try this...hypothetical scenario means don't do it, Fisheries Inspectors are busy enough and likely it's against the law to make false accusations / mislead a fisheries inspector!)

Most major fishing ports have Fishieries inspectors working full time, they can and do make inspections, occasionally they will issue an infringement, when they think blatent abuse is evident, otherwise they use their discretion and issue a verbal warning - sometimes a written warning if they thought it serious enough. Truth is tho - they are mostly interested ONLY in high value and over exploited fisheries. Get caught with a marron, cray or abalone in breach of the rules and your dead meat...Maybe get caught busting the pink snapper rules in shark bay, likewise dead meat - but everything else is cest cera cera...

These inspectors have spent weeks at sea aboard trawlers as departmental observers - they've seen the wanton waste of fish as trawler trash first hand in tonnes per week, and then when they see Fred the fishmonger with a few small fish - they KNOW it's not Fred th' Fishmonger whos destroying our oceans fishstocks. As a result- I don't think they wan't to throw the book at him.

As for the Barra in the north - yes a slot size has helped but unfortunately - the re opening of netting of the northern rivers bye the Fish Minister means that nets don't discriminate on slot size (with the small effect that mesh size does have SOME contribution), however My best guess is barra numbers up north will sadly crash again...

Size limits is all the management tool we have so we have to make it work as best we can...but I can't see it as something for rec fishers to get 'bent outta shape about' in the overall scheme of things, when one looks at the effects of trawling as but one example...(netting rivers/estuaries is just another example).

Lets look at the recreational effect this way in as far as undersized bream goes in the Swan River.

Does anyone honestly think - that the move to catch n release ethics in recreational bream fishing has "helped the overall bream situation" in the Swan river at this point in time?.

In one way it has, it has reduced the effect that the fish kill has had - in that there were More fish left in there to escape / survive the kill - to breed and repopulate the river post algae bloom...so from that aspect, it's been a good ecological move.

Looked at another way tho - with the recent fish kill - I'd say that MORE bream are dead as a result of the kill - than every recreational bream fisherman will release in the swan river in the next 10 years!

Taken to it's "logical conclusion" that in effect means that every fish everyone heres caught and released could have been taken home filleted and lightly pan fried in flour and extra virgin olive oil, served for breakfast before the next bream outing and not made much of a difference if ANY to the total numbers of bream left in the Swan today.

I have to say however, that I'm NOT advocating that we shouldn't release our fish - I'm a strong catch and release advocate..

Part 11 follows

What I'm trying to demonstrate with trawler trash and Algal Bloom fish kills, (& virus herpes disease mass pilchard die offs) examples etc, is that in the BIG PICTURE, your average rec fisher down at the fremantle traffic bridge with a bucket of 6 or 8 undersized bread and butter fish, isn't going to make much of a difference to the overall fishstocks situation. When you consider theres seine neters in Albany (and now - with the recent issue of new licenses along the south coast as well) who net and send to the cray bait industry and fish meal industry etc thousands of tonnes a year of herring...pilch and other species.

In the big picture - the practices of rec anglers Bear don't matter a LOT to Fisheries, which is why they don't pay us a lot of attention as a rule. They usually have bigger fish to fry.

Re the policing of the wholesale fish market for species fraud, good question.Likely it's not considered a breach of the Fisheries Act so not within Fisheires WA's auspices to protect the public from fraudulent marketing of fish products.

Maybe when you suspect a dodgey fish meal at a restuarant / fish n chip shop - you should try ringing the fraud squad! :p ;) :D
When they bust in there you could shout "Book em Dano!".
:cool:

Seriously Bear - who is going to police this?.

Nah - Caveat Emptor is the law/rule that protects the fish buying public Bear, only PAY for what you ordered...you have the right to refuse to accept delivery if the goods weren't what you ordered. You order snapper at the fish n chip shop and they give you shark, open it, inspect it, hand it back uneaten, refuse to pay and walk out and buy elsewhere, that WILL supply you what you ordered.

You wouldn't accept delivery of a Ford if you ordered a new Holden, or you wouldn't acept delivery of a blue car if you ordered a new red one?..

So it is with fish - the BUYER has the right to make a fuss if he she doesn't get what they order / pay for, even in a fish restaurant.

Of course you have to be sure of your facts - but creating a scene in a restaurant, if you get substituted fish isn't likely to win the restaurant any goodwill with their dining patrons is it?

As for the CSIRO's book - I only heard about it on the web somewhere - maybe read about it in a fishing magazine i think...anyway it's available if fish substitution is a concern for anyone (and it should be..because it does go on).

Know your fish guide Book details HERE (http://www.csiro.au/index.asp?type=mediaRelease&id=KnowYourFishGuide)

Re "Difficult rec fishing rules" - I tend to agree - they should follow the Kiss principle, provided they WORK to keep the stocks fished within sustained yeild capacity.

I have here a brittish columbia (Canada) recreational Fish rules synopsis book - it's damn near as thick as my telephone book - we have a LONG way to go before our rules are as difficult as some places...but we should still try to keep them simple.
Simple is good!

In BC they have waters / lakes / rivers where only artificial fly is allowed, and no weighted flys either - you have any lead under the fly dressing to make the fly sink, faster / deeper and the fishing inspector will bust you butt! :rolleyes:

No, our rules are getting a little too complicated for my liking BUT they ain't the worst out there bye a long shot....YET!

Re: Blaming the pros for bream decline...how many tonnes of bream dead in the Swan compared to how many tonnes of bream netted bye the Augusta pro?

I've seen the Augusta pro's official catch return figures for the last ~20 years, and he hasn't landed the claimed (initially even bye me) 3 tonnes in any but ONE year of the last 20 - more often the figure averages probably somewhere around half that.

Compared to what was killed in the various algal blooms in rivers around WA this year - as well as the Race course pesticide kill a few years back - I'd say the pro's are a PART of the cause - but environmental degradation is probably the bigger concern at the moment.....

Algal blooms, Yarragidgie aquifier pumping, clearing, salinity, etc will wipe out the bream long before the pro's net em all.....that much is becomming abundantly clear.

In an ideal world - I'd like to see no netting of estuaries, rivers & inland waterways. If those waterways die however then the netting issue is a moot point - you can't net what isn't there (or catch n relase it for that matter).

The most serious threat to bream stocks is degradation of the rivers,(as the Swan R fishkill has proved) followed bye netting (both recreational and pro alike - we have to remember that recreational anglers also net the Blackwood so the "causal blame" must be fairly apportioned IMHO!!)

Big issues Bear, every little bit helps, but if we all concentrated our efforts against the biggest threats maybe we'd get a positive outcome - rather than fragmenting the effort and being sucessful in beating NONE of the threats.

The threats CAN be beaten..

IMHO we need something like this!

Ribverkeeper.org link HERE (http://www.riverkeeper.org/)

Cheers n beers!

[Bear]

<What I'm trying to demonstrate with trawler trash and Algal Bloom fish kills, (& virus herpes disease mass pilchard die offs) examples etc, is that in the BIG PICTURE, your average rec fisher down at the fremantle traffic bridge with a bucket of 6 or 8 undersized bread and butter fish, isn't going to make much of a difference to the overall fishstocks situation. >

Then why is it that successive governments have seen to it that rec anglers are punished year after year after year. Pros seem to get away free. To me, just because his average may only be 1.5 t per year makes no difference. He is part of the problem, along with all of the other environmental and rec issues as well, yet I don't see him making making any sacrifices.

1.5t is still around 3000 BREAM . To me, that is a big effect. Is that not around the figure quoted for the Ascot spill. Well, that is happening each year, non stop. And that's only an average. Larger takes during different years will have different effects to the breading stock.

<Then we have fish that gets turned into fishmeal, which we likely buy to feed the home goldfish - & in our burley as well as what ends up in aquaculture feeds etc.>

And in the case of our Salmon, in the pots of cray fisherman.

<I've seen the Augusta pro's official catch return figures for the last ~20 years, and he hasn't landed the claimed (initially even bye me) 3 tonnes in any but ONE year of the last 20 - more often the figure averages probably somewhere around half that.>

Where can WE see these figures??

<In an ideal world - I'd like to see no netting of estuaries, rivers & inland waterways. If those waterways die however then the netting issue is a moot point - you can't net what isn't there (or catch n relase it for that matter).>

But it shouldn't stop us from putting pressure on it to be banned. It IS part of the problem. Just ask Madfish. You wouldn't call the Nornalup and area effected by pollution, and yet there are occasions when the bream just seem to disappear. As was the case during our last trip.

Madfish can correct me if I've been misinformed, but I was told he went to a spot that had been firing only to come up empty handed with Davo and Skivvs. then to learn that the spot had just bee netted.

<The most serious threat to bream stocks is degradation of the rivers,(as the Swan R fishkill has proved) followed bye netting (both recreational and pro alike - we have to remember that recreational anglers also net the Blackwood so the "causal blame" must be fairly apportioned IMHO!!)>

In some areas that is true, but as a group, we can't afford to spread ourselves too thin. Many of us here have concentrated our efforts on netting while we have people like Rob Madaffari and the guys at Western Angler putting their weight behind the Swan pollution and hopefully further from there. I think that we can help each other our, but to try and do too much as a single group is suicide.

If I could win lotto and give up my day job to put my effort into both then I would, but somewhere in between all of this, I and everyone else has to live as well. I have offered my help to Rob and I'm sure many other guys will as well, but I have chosen where my efforts will go. to me it's as much a part of the big picture as anything else.

More power to us all as far as I'm concerned.

See what you're doing to me Trouty, now I'm writing novels :rolleyes: :D :cool:

I've "Lured" you into writing longer threads Bear? :D :cool:

Shame on me...:)

A Lot of us rec anglers don't bother writing to the people who count - Politicians - the Fisheries managers (decicion makers, fellers at the top of the department), because the issues are complex - the solutions sometimes complicated, and it takes a lot of words to get the message across to em..

If a few of us get it well written in forum posts - when it comes time to write emails to the decision makers, those less able to scribe something, can always cut n paste together the points that they agree with, which make up the message they would like to send from such lengthy posts I guess.

As to the Blackwood figures - WAFIC made these available to those the Fisheries Dept invited along to the consultative process meetings for management arrangements for the Hardy Inlet Estuarine Fishery.

We were allowed to look at them - but all copies had to be handed back at the end of the meeting. Under the Act, Fisheries couldn't give them to us - only the Fisher Mr Price thru his representative group WAFIC could let us "view them" for the purpose of the meeting.

Rec angler group representatives also got to see these same figures at their such meetings, I think Ira may have been at one such meeting along with Stages and Frank Prokop etc.

Theres a legal reason Fisheries can't release the figures.

They are confidential firstly - I.e. they are data owned bye the pro Fisher Mr Price and supplied in confidence under the terms of the fish resources management act to Fisheries.

It's not that long ago,that the TAX office tried to subpeona the cray fishers statistics returns from Fisheries WA in order to cross check catch returns with pro fishers tax returns to look for discrepancies.

Fisheries WA had to take it to appeal to the supreme court to head that off...as they were worrried Cray fishers might start to fudge their statitstics returns to agree with their tax returns which would mean Fisheries WA no longer had the right information to effectively manage the crayfish resource.

Fisheries WA won the court case, no doubt it cost a lot of $ to do so and set a legal precedent of some kind (making catch data confidential / private).

Thus Fisheries can't now turn around and release the info of Mr Prices catch to us.

The reason we got to see it at all - was because Mr Price wanted to correct the public claims that he was catching 3 tonnes of bream a year, so he got WAFIC to let us at the meetings "look" at the figures...(albeit only briefly).

That in a nutshell, is why joe public don't have a published copy of the figures Bear...enough of us have seen them to vouch for the fact that, with the exception of one year in the last ~20, Mr Price has caught roughly half the tonnage we've been quoting early on in the Bream netting issue.

From my point of view and many others, thats still too many of course, as we all wan't to see netting (rec and pro alike) stopped in inland waterways. The fact the minister has re opened netting in the rivers of the North doesn't appear as tho he agrees with us.

It's certainly a worthwhile objective to aim at, and one we should continue with.

In the bigger picture tho - degradation of our rivers is more serious if we had to grade the threats in descending order.

Bit like having a flat tyre and no breaks on a car...if you pump the tyre up - sure the car now works BUT it might kill you if you can't stop it.

Same with the bream - we might stop netting but to what point if the river dies?

We just need to prioritise what it is we want to achieve, and make 100% sure we do achieve the primary objective - i.e. to save the rivers.

I'd encourage everyone to read the "history link" of the river keepers web site at the lonk in my post above, - people had to put their lives on the line to save the Hudson River - hit man contracts were taken out on the early riverkeeper bye corporate industry determined to keep using the Hudson R as an industrial drain...

The program eventually worked on the Hudson - it COULD work on the rivers of Western Australia IF everyone got behind it.

What I'm proposing Bear - is that ALL of the problems of these rivers COULD be solved if mankind has the collective will, and we COULD police the polution (and netting at the same time), if we had true 'Riverkeepers' with the legal powers, not the toothless EPA, Swan River Trust tigers we have now who show up with the dumpsters for dead fish after the problems arrived. We need problem preventers - not problem cleaneruppers IMHO..

About all rec anglers have achieved thru accepting the successive catch / size reductions is to allow their share of the resource to be swung over to the pro fishing catch. Yes it demonstrates we are environmentally concerned enough to make some sacrifices for the future of the resource, BUT the pro's and management authorities have obviously seen it as a weakness and expoited it.

And in the case of our Salmon, in the pots of cray fisherman.

This ones in fact a misnomer. I've been on cray trials conducted bye Fisheries WA, and a LOT of WA cray boats conducting bait trials for private co. research.

Yes they use salmon as bait but NOT the big WA Salmon, they import NZ Salmon approx half the size (2 kilos is best).
When the small 2 kilo NZ salmon is cut in half with a knife and the two pices placed end for end (tail to head) they fit just perfect in the red slide top plastic bait baskets of a cray pot.

A WA salmon - even half of it just won't fit in a craypot bait basket, you'd need to be Edward Scissorhands with a knife to get a WA salmon to fit...

WA Salmon get canned (probably for catfood) which is just as big a crime IMHO...ONLY the heads get dried out on racks and used as hard (holding) baits in cray pots.

It's a common misconception Bear - and one that doesn't hold water as far as winning our case, since those in Fisheries know the truth.

Most concerned anglers Bear are doing all they can - and the efforts arent waisted, the mainstream press are now looking, asking questions, reporting and making a noise about it. This is good it gets the issues into the mainstream media where all Western Australians can have a stake in getting politicians to work on some results. There is an election due within the next 12 - 18 months and we need these issues to be mainstream media bye then, if we are to extract any iron clad "policies" from the major parties.

I guess it comes back to the "I fish & I vote" bumper sticker, if enough pollies realise their re election chances ride on isssues like river health and netting maybe the Kim Chances of this world wouldn't feel so smug about ignoring public opinion and keep trying stunts like re-opening the rivers of our north to netting.

When such actions = political suicide, is when we will have some collective effect Bear.

It can't come soon enough for me.

Collectively DohDohDohDohDohDohDoh and Breammasters are doing a great job so far! :cool:

Cheers!

[bubba]

Hey Trouty,
When it comes time for me to do my post grad thesis on epistemology u wana right it for me? :)

Bubba, anythings possible! ;) :D

Ahhhhh - but first what the frick is episti-whatever you called it? :confused:

(might help if i knew what i wuz writin about....although it's never stopped me before!):o

Cheers!

[Mim]

but first what the frick is episti-whatever you called it? " That branch of philosophy which deals with the origin, nature and validity of knowledge" (Chaplin, J. P. 1973. Dictionary of Psychology. Dell Publishing: New York.

For example:
The epistemological assumption in qualitative research is to do with the relationship between the researcher and what is being researched. This means that the qualitative researcher creates an understanding of the phenomena through a process of discussions, interviews and other forms of data retrieval, the researcher becomes a tool in their research.

Cheers

Mim

[Dave W]

Wow, I didn't know you were such a cunning linguist Mim :rolleyes: :D :D

[Craig_S]

Nice one Dave, been working on that all day?:)

Cop ya later:D

C

Bubba,
was disenurinating me?:D :rolleyes:

Cheers!