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happening, but can also see it happening, and at pace. Then, as with the plight of the European bass,
with the exception of the usual vocal minority, we all throw our hands up in the air under a blanket of
general apathy and say “what the hell”.
Modern humans were forced to leave Africa around 60,000 years ago when dry arid conditions had
their numbers down to around 2,000, and our own extinction was on the cards. Some took a route up
into Europe, while others followed the coast around to Asia, eventually reaching Australia some 40,000
years ago, and via a land bridge from Siberia, the America's less than 20,000 years ago, all of which
dates just happen to coincide with the loss of all the large animal species which had previously thrived
at those locations when left to their own devices.
New Zealand followed, and in more recent times, the colonisation of smaller islands, many of whose
long standing indigenous inhabitants were also quickly lost, the most recent and certainly most famous
of which being Mauritius, where Portuguese and later Dutch sailors saw off the dodo through the
predators they introduced, and by eating it themselves. The first sailors landed there in 1598. By 1755
the dodo was extinct.
So with total disregard, as a species, we instinctively exploit the environment and it's other inhabitants
to destruction with a live for today sod the future arrogance. It's what we've always done, and no doubt
it's what we will continue to do, despite the best scientific evidence saying that it simply cannot continue
in this manner. And never more so than in the oceans of the world where we literally can't see what's
going on, and as such, most people simply don't give a damn.
Fishery ministers ignoring warnings from the experts they
employ to advise them, typifies the way in which a strong
vocal minority in the shape of the commercial fishing
industry run the show. Yet using the government’s own
statistics generated by their Sea Angling 2012 survey, in hard
cash terms, it seems that commercial fishing contributes
considerably less to the wealth of the nation than angling
does, but still has the ear of government, both at home, and
more importantly, at European level where the real damage
is being done.
As has already been said, by definition, mass extinction
events are extensive and sudden, though not so sudden as to
be observed within an individual life-time. Yet I can look
back over my 50 years of sea angling, which doesn't even
qualify as the blink of an eye on a geological time-scale, and
confidently point a finger at several examples of change,
most of which, though not all, fall into the negative category.
What I've tried to do in Part One which looks at home waters
species, is wherever possible, include some flavour of the
About to sort the catch history of species and fisheries according to my experience
of them, some of which makes very stark reading indeed.
And while my wanting the plunder to stop might fly in the face of my earlier jibe at the 'lets save
everything' conservations, from an angling perspective, something needs to be done and fast.
In terms of losers, inshore cod fishing in the Clyde sea lochs, along Lancashire's Fylde Coast, and off
Balcary immediately come to mind. Offshore cod fishing in the North Sea out from Whitby is another
example, not to mention the common skate which was once regularly found in many parts of the UK
and is now struggling to forge a come-back along Scotland's west coast, plus of course the well
documented plight of the bass.
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