1
00:00:08,960 --> 00:00:12,880
Speaker 1: Hello everyone, and thank you for joining us again on

2
00:00:13,080 --> 00:00:18,079
seafood matter. To day, I'm joined by doctor Colin Banister,

3
00:00:18,760 --> 00:00:21,800
a man who has spent decades at the faulk Lane

4
00:00:21,920 --> 00:00:27,199
between fishermen and fishery science. He's worked on deck with

5
00:00:27,359 --> 00:00:32,359
skippers and his satin rooms where policy is shaped. He's

6
00:00:32,439 --> 00:00:35,840
seen trust built and he's seen it strained.

7
00:00:36,799 --> 00:00:38,039
Speaker 2: He also goes.

8
00:00:37,840 --> 00:00:41,840
Speaker 1: On to reflect on what he learned early in his

9
00:00:42,000 --> 00:00:46,679
career about a fishermen really views science and what science

10
00:00:47,399 --> 00:00:51,920
sometimes gets wrong about fishermen. To day, I began by

11
00:00:52,039 --> 00:00:56,679
asking Colin about his experience in the world of shellfish.

12
00:00:58,200 --> 00:01:03,479
What you'll hear today testifies to a distinguished career.

13
00:01:05,519 --> 00:01:10,040
Speaker 3: In the twenty years that I ran the Shelfish team,

14
00:01:10,599 --> 00:01:15,040
I had a combination of personal involvement with individual projects

15
00:01:15,480 --> 00:01:19,920
and also the supervisory role. But I was mainly in

16
00:01:20,040 --> 00:01:24,640
charge of the relationships with London, and at that stage

17
00:01:24,680 --> 00:01:29,560
I was dealing predominantly with middle ranking math staff grade

18
00:01:29,599 --> 00:01:33,959
sevens occasionally Grade fives, the big boss as it were.

19
00:01:34,400 --> 00:01:36,680
There was not a lot of interest from the grade

20
00:01:36,760 --> 00:01:40,879
fives because they were basically dealing all the time with

21
00:01:41,319 --> 00:01:45,560
the fish stock crises, and of course in that period

22
00:01:45,640 --> 00:01:50,079
there was embryonic eu connections and all the rest of it.

23
00:01:50,959 --> 00:01:54,239
But the first problem I had was an oyster. The

24
00:01:54,319 --> 00:01:59,480
Foul survey for native oysters. My team man went down there,

25
00:01:59,599 --> 00:02:02,719
Dennis Key, and he phoned me on the Tuesday or

26
00:02:02,719 --> 00:02:04,879
the Wednesday, and he said, and I said, oh, how

27
00:02:04,879 --> 00:02:07,319
are you getting on, Dennis, because I was completely green,

28
00:02:07,840 --> 00:02:10,000
And he said, they're all dead. I said, what do

29
00:02:10,039 --> 00:02:12,680
you mean, they're all dead? He said, they're all dead.

30
00:02:12,840 --> 00:02:17,319
All the native oysters are dead plus or minus in

31
00:02:17,400 --> 00:02:21,319
the main two rivers that run off the Foul Estuary,

32
00:02:21,360 --> 00:02:24,919
the Peculiar River, and I can't remember the name of

33
00:02:24,960 --> 00:02:26,599
the other one now, but it was on the other

34
00:02:26,639 --> 00:02:32,080
side of the estuary and the main channel where the

35
00:02:32,560 --> 00:02:36,599
oyster dredge, the sailing dredge fishery was also taking place,

36
00:02:36,840 --> 00:02:39,680
was fetching up dead oysters. And it turned out to

37
00:02:39,759 --> 00:02:46,360
be this highly contagious sort of viral thing, Banamia. And

38
00:02:46,680 --> 00:02:50,680
the reason it had arrived was because some of the

39
00:02:50,719 --> 00:02:54,680
oyster growers had bought what they didn't know at the time,

40
00:02:54,759 --> 00:02:59,120
and nobody knew at the time, infected stock young oysters

41
00:02:59,360 --> 00:03:03,680
from front and it turned out that they were cheaper

42
00:03:03,719 --> 00:03:06,240
than normal and so the guys thought they were onto

43
00:03:06,240 --> 00:03:08,879
a good thing. And then of course later the following

44
00:03:08,919 --> 00:03:12,199
summer they were laid in the autumn because they were

45
00:03:12,240 --> 00:03:17,879
the generations of oysters which, under normal circumstances were on

46
00:03:18,039 --> 00:03:22,680
growing in the fowl and then picked and distributed to

47
00:03:22,840 --> 00:03:26,039
Essex and the Essex Rivers and in some cases to

48
00:03:26,120 --> 00:03:30,039
the solent. So if you had a source of a

49
00:03:30,080 --> 00:03:35,159
disease oyster disease, oyster sources in the fowl, the first

50
00:03:35,159 --> 00:03:37,680
thing you had to do was to close that fishery

51
00:03:38,080 --> 00:03:40,879
and say, well, if there are any oysters left, you're

52
00:03:40,919 --> 00:03:43,199
not damn well exporting them to the other parts of

53
00:03:43,439 --> 00:03:47,159
oyster fraternity. So I had to go down to places

54
00:03:47,199 --> 00:03:51,039
like West Mersey and explain all this and they would say,

55
00:03:51,039 --> 00:03:52,919
who the hell are you, What the hell do you

56
00:03:53,000 --> 00:03:56,960
know about oysters? Don't tell us. We can't do what

57
00:03:57,000 --> 00:03:59,919
we normally do. This is our living, et cetera, et cetera.

58
00:04:00,319 --> 00:04:03,199
So we had to introduce what was the controller deposit

59
00:04:03,360 --> 00:04:05,719
order and all that sort of stuff. So that was

60
00:04:05,759 --> 00:04:09,360
the first thing that was crisis management of the banamea disease.

61
00:04:10,759 --> 00:04:13,960
But I also had a lobster team, small lobster team

62
00:04:14,000 --> 00:04:18,240
and a small crab team, and I realized that we

63
00:04:18,600 --> 00:04:22,800
needed to develop the assessment methodology for those species. There

64
00:04:22,800 --> 00:04:26,800
were assessments. There had been some tagging of mature crabs,

65
00:04:26,839 --> 00:04:32,600
particularly in the Channel, but people tend to think of

66
00:04:32,639 --> 00:04:35,000
Crustacea as being the same. But there's a world of

67
00:04:35,040 --> 00:04:38,839
difference between the lobsters and the crabs. The crabs are

68
00:04:38,879 --> 00:04:42,839
relatively abundant, much more abundant than oysters.

69
00:04:42,959 --> 00:04:43,439
Speaker 2: Naturally.

70
00:04:44,240 --> 00:04:46,839
Speaker 3: It turned out that as I learned over the years,

71
00:04:46,920 --> 00:04:52,000
and certainly talking to American scientists, because the American oyster

72
00:04:52,120 --> 00:04:55,160
is not that different. Sorry, the American lobster is not

73
00:04:55,279 --> 00:04:58,800
that different, but it is much more abundant and lick

74
00:04:58,839 --> 00:05:07,120
cohabits in much high densities. But oysters are low for kundity,

75
00:05:07,360 --> 00:05:11,319
relatively low numbers of progeny, and you can take larval

76
00:05:11,560 --> 00:05:15,199
sampling gear all around the lobster fisheries and it's still

77
00:05:15,319 --> 00:05:18,399
very difficult to find them because they're at low density

78
00:05:18,439 --> 00:05:21,160
in the plankton. And then they settle down. And you

79
00:05:21,199 --> 00:05:24,240
will notice that in Scotland in particular, the lobs of

80
00:05:24,279 --> 00:05:28,360
fisheries tend to be curring on all those wonderful reefs

81
00:05:28,800 --> 00:05:33,959
around Norse Berwick or in the Firth of Forth in

82
00:05:34,120 --> 00:05:37,800
shore up the coast of Fife. It's probably some on

83
00:05:37,839 --> 00:05:42,519
the north coast somewhere where you've got these ye that

84
00:05:42,680 --> 00:05:48,199
the larvae settle in shelter. And at the same time,

85
00:05:48,279 --> 00:05:51,639
at that time I inherited what had been the lobster

86
00:05:51,759 --> 00:05:57,800
enhancement experiments whereby Conway have been rearing producing hatchery reared

87
00:05:57,879 --> 00:06:01,879
lobsters and they were being put down in Bridlington Bay

88
00:06:02,560 --> 00:06:06,199
and they were released over a period of two, three,

89
00:06:06,319 --> 00:06:11,160
four five years on many sites in the relatively inshore

90
00:06:11,240 --> 00:06:15,680
waters in Bridlington Bay, which was ideal habitat because it

91
00:06:15,759 --> 00:06:19,560
had cobble. That's you know what a cobble shore is.

92
00:06:19,600 --> 00:06:22,319
It's not like the reefs on the Scottish coast in

93
00:06:22,439 --> 00:06:26,560
North Berwick for example, at all, but it is sort

94
00:06:26,639 --> 00:06:30,800
of cobble on sand. And also in that period there

95
00:06:30,879 --> 00:06:33,879
was the Bombing Range in Cowden off Cowden which they

96
00:06:34,000 --> 00:06:38,839
raf were using with an atens for firing tank busting

97
00:06:38,959 --> 00:06:45,879
shells in the range and those shells were about I

98
00:06:45,879 --> 00:06:51,879
think six to nine inches long and about that round.

99
00:06:52,240 --> 00:06:55,360
An ideal place for a juvenile lobster to settle if

100
00:06:55,399 --> 00:06:58,560
it could find it and they they live in rocks

101
00:06:58,600 --> 00:07:00,759
now on the west coast of Scotland, and they are oban.

102
00:07:01,120 --> 00:07:04,199
I knew a diver who told me that lobsters there

103
00:07:04,199 --> 00:07:08,120
were living in cracks in big rock walls, and then

104
00:07:08,160 --> 00:07:10,639
they would disappear for three weeks, but they'd always come

105
00:07:10,680 --> 00:07:14,360
back to those big cracks. So lobsters are very habitat

106
00:07:14,439 --> 00:07:19,680
related m They don't produce many eggs, but they're quite

107
00:07:19,759 --> 00:07:20,360
big eggs.

108
00:07:21,800 --> 00:07:26,680
Speaker 1: And I always thought that, going back to my younger eves,

109
00:07:26,720 --> 00:07:28,839
when I would be on the rocks with my father.

110
00:07:29,399 --> 00:07:31,600
Speaker 2: It was the all the holes.

111
00:07:32,560 --> 00:07:35,920
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, that's true. And I know there is a

112
00:07:36,000 --> 00:07:40,360
chap who used to live in John's Haven who reported

113
00:07:40,800 --> 00:07:44,759
he didn't like math, he didn't like scientists much, but

114
00:07:45,360 --> 00:07:48,839
he and I won't say any more than that, he

115
00:07:48,959 --> 00:07:51,360
saw them in the little cracks in the harbor wall.

116
00:07:52,480 --> 00:07:57,439
And I'd been to John's Haven since with my Pala.

117
00:07:57,480 --> 00:08:01,000
Dick Shelton, who used to work at Cockery, is a

118
00:08:01,079 --> 00:08:04,000
head of the salmon laboratory there for quite a number

119
00:08:04,000 --> 00:08:07,759
of years. Dick actually lives in Celardike. While he did

120
00:08:07,800 --> 00:08:13,079
live in Celardike, he now lives somewhere up south of Aberdeen,

121
00:08:13,800 --> 00:08:20,800
but he observed lobsters in cracks and crevices in these

122
00:08:20,839 --> 00:08:26,079
sorts of places, and crabs are different. They're much less

123
00:08:26,079 --> 00:08:30,399
habitat specific of course, they're much more abundant. A lobster

124
00:08:30,480 --> 00:08:33,440
produces probably up to a quarter of a million eggs,

125
00:08:33,600 --> 00:08:38,919
quite large eggs. Crabs produce millions. You very rarely get

126
00:08:39,240 --> 00:08:42,360
distributions of larvae in the surface waters because they're not

127
00:08:42,480 --> 00:08:47,120
very dense. One of my team and a planktologist from

128
00:08:47,159 --> 00:08:50,639
the lab did Neuston net sampling and Euston net is

129
00:08:50,679 --> 00:08:53,080
the thing that floats along the surface of the water

130
00:08:53,200 --> 00:08:57,200
on skids with a net behind it, and found lobsters

131
00:08:57,360 --> 00:08:59,840
larvae in Bridlington Bay. It's the only place where they

132
00:09:00,120 --> 00:09:02,559
have been found because there's a gyre south of the

133
00:09:02,600 --> 00:09:05,919
harbor where they get condensed and carried round in the

134
00:09:06,000 --> 00:09:08,679
gyre and then they settle. But they're very rare to

135
00:09:08,799 --> 00:09:11,559
find in the surface water, and I think this is

136
00:09:11,600 --> 00:09:15,039
all part of the biology of the lobster. Large eggs

137
00:09:15,320 --> 00:09:19,240
relatively few, so whilst in the water in the water

138
00:09:19,279 --> 00:09:24,000
columns so that they don't attract predators, and then settle

139
00:09:24,320 --> 00:09:28,440
in shelter almost straight away. And we have some experiments

140
00:09:28,440 --> 00:09:33,120
that science laboratories in the University Sanglier in Norwich many

141
00:09:33,200 --> 00:09:36,320
years ago, where they were put in tanks and they

142
00:09:36,320 --> 00:09:40,200
always dug burrows beside the tank so that they could

143
00:09:40,200 --> 00:09:45,679
creep in. Crabs, on the other hand, produce millions of

144
00:09:45,759 --> 00:09:51,639
eggs and little eggs that are widely distributed. You don't

145
00:09:51,639 --> 00:09:55,759
see larval distributions in lobsters. But what we used to

146
00:09:55,799 --> 00:09:58,279
do at the lab is use planked example as big

147
00:09:58,360 --> 00:10:02,240
tubes basically toads through the water so that you could

148
00:10:02,320 --> 00:10:08,440
find patches larval patches. So you'll find that that's off

149
00:10:08,480 --> 00:10:18,200
the Humber and these are ones in the Southwest larval

150
00:10:18,240 --> 00:10:21,320
patches in the western Channey. The other thing is that

151
00:10:21,639 --> 00:10:25,120
certainly in the Channel and again in the Pentland Firth,

152
00:10:25,919 --> 00:10:29,480
cancer Pagurus is migratory. The females migrate to the west.

153
00:10:29,960 --> 00:10:35,440
And one of my sort of subsequent pals, who's a

154
00:10:35,559 --> 00:10:39,879
chap named Coleman, who was doing a PhD at in Orkney,

155
00:10:40,399 --> 00:10:44,399
where one of my scientists retired to and became a

156
00:10:44,399 --> 00:10:51,120
heriot wat lecturer. Coleman tagged lobsters in sorry crabs mature

157
00:10:51,159 --> 00:10:54,519
crabs in the Pentland first and they disappeared off to

158
00:10:54,559 --> 00:11:00,399
the west coast. So there's this westward migration, and it's

159
00:11:00,440 --> 00:11:03,480
always been a puzzle that they it's very difficult to

160
00:11:03,559 --> 00:11:07,600
find that they close the loop that when they you know,

161
00:11:07,639 --> 00:11:10,840
they don't seem there's no evidence of a return migration.

162
00:11:11,399 --> 00:11:15,000
So it's a little bit like a conveyor belt going

163
00:11:17,799 --> 00:11:21,799
down the channel across the Pentland Firth. But then there

164
00:11:21,879 --> 00:11:26,679
must be other crabs that are resident now the migration

165
00:11:26,759 --> 00:11:29,279
in the channel, and I'll just cut to another topic

166
00:11:29,360 --> 00:11:33,000
that I entered into. There is a lot of gravel

167
00:11:33,080 --> 00:11:36,799
dredging on the Shingle Bank south of Hastings and always

168
00:11:36,840 --> 00:11:41,600
has been, and it's prime gravel, it's it's river iron

169
00:11:41,720 --> 00:11:48,759
gravel pre dates probably they break in of the North

170
00:11:48,799 --> 00:11:57,759
Sea into the channel during geological time and the autumn

171
00:11:58,120 --> 00:12:01,600
migration of hen crabs in from the Eastern Channel to

172
00:12:01,679 --> 00:12:05,320
the Central Channel around the Isle of Right and places

173
00:12:05,600 --> 00:12:10,200
and then further down to Devon and to a certain

174
00:12:10,200 --> 00:12:15,840
extent Cornwall. That is a westward migration which skirts in

175
00:12:15,919 --> 00:12:21,480
the case of Shingle Bank area the bank itself, and

176
00:12:21,519 --> 00:12:25,240
one of the fishermen there many years ago complained to

177
00:12:25,360 --> 00:12:30,600
say that the gravel dredging was producing sediment which was

178
00:12:31,399 --> 00:12:35,000
falling on the pots and making it making them less

179
00:12:35,000 --> 00:12:41,759
efficient and deterring his seasonal crab fishery. So I did

180
00:12:41,799 --> 00:12:44,519
get involved in that, and there is a process for

181
00:12:44,879 --> 00:12:48,320
licensing the gravel. And I don't want to go into

182
00:12:48,639 --> 00:12:51,879
the details in any particular way because some of it

183
00:12:51,919 --> 00:12:57,919
is probably quite personal, confidential information. But he always said

184
00:12:57,960 --> 00:13:02,000
that he was getting a raw deal because the sediment

185
00:13:02,039 --> 00:13:05,799
disturbance in the area affected his best season of the year.

186
00:13:06,919 --> 00:13:10,440
So I was involved in those sorts of issues. Then

187
00:13:10,440 --> 00:13:13,039
when we go back to Bridlington Bay and.

188
00:13:13,000 --> 00:13:17,279
Speaker 1: How far away was he from the regiing well.

189
00:13:17,159 --> 00:13:21,080
Speaker 3: The dredging was taking place on the top of the

190
00:13:21,120 --> 00:13:25,159
bank and it was probably about I don't know. I

191
00:13:25,200 --> 00:13:28,399
didn't actually I don't know that detail, but it's probably

192
00:13:28,440 --> 00:13:31,440
not much more than two or three miles.

193
00:13:32,480 --> 00:13:35,440
Speaker 1: You can you can understand his concern.

194
00:13:35,440 --> 00:13:40,360
Speaker 3: Oh, yes, absolutely, And he showed he has photographs of

195
00:13:41,320 --> 00:13:46,240
the sediment on his traps. Now he did arrange for

196
00:13:46,360 --> 00:13:49,759
me to assist him at a certain period. I couldn't

197
00:13:49,759 --> 00:13:53,320
represent him as a civil servant. I was not on

198
00:13:53,399 --> 00:13:59,279
that side of the house, but my biological mind could

199
00:13:59,279 --> 00:14:02,720
contribute him information that was helpful to him to make

200
00:14:02,759 --> 00:14:06,600
his case, and I did write a report at one

201
00:14:06,639 --> 00:14:10,240
stage which was you know, was in Cefaz about the issue,

202
00:14:10,279 --> 00:14:13,039
and you could show that there were there were issues

203
00:14:13,080 --> 00:14:18,039
there that have never been resolved. And he's a very

204
00:14:18,080 --> 00:14:23,159
respectful man. He says, you're retired, Colin, I won't bother

205
00:14:23,240 --> 00:14:28,639
you with my issues. But nothing much has changed. And

206
00:14:29,080 --> 00:14:32,440
in a sense, things like that stirred something in me,

207
00:14:34,600 --> 00:14:38,480
and the shellfish team stirred something in me as a whole,

208
00:14:38,639 --> 00:14:41,840
because it was much more intimately connected with the industry.

209
00:14:41,960 --> 00:14:44,759
For reasons which I'll say in the next few minutes

210
00:14:46,720 --> 00:14:50,519
that as a scientist I had a duty both to

211
00:14:52,200 --> 00:14:57,799
promote the management, the sustainable management of stocks on behalf

212
00:14:57,879 --> 00:15:01,759
of the industry, even though the industry was opposed to

213
00:15:01,879 --> 00:15:11,799
that management in the sense that everything about management involves restrictions. Now,

214
00:15:12,120 --> 00:15:17,279
one of the things that I think that is remarkable, Jim,

215
00:15:17,399 --> 00:15:22,639
you know the hiatus, the blowback that took place in

216
00:15:22,720 --> 00:15:29,039
the icy's recommendations on north Sea cod recently. Now, I

217
00:15:29,120 --> 00:15:32,399
had all of that in two thousand and one when

218
00:15:32,440 --> 00:15:36,759
we were first talking about the original icy's recommendation to

219
00:15:36,840 --> 00:15:40,279
close the north Sea crab fishery. I went through all

220
00:15:40,320 --> 00:15:42,399
of that at that time. This was before I joined

221
00:15:42,399 --> 00:15:46,519
the shellfish team or ran the shelfish team. But in

222
00:15:46,559 --> 00:15:53,919
that period the industry was totally against initially initially totally

223
00:15:53,919 --> 00:16:00,639
against any form of tough management. But now to see

224
00:16:01,440 --> 00:16:04,720
people like Mike Park who have a deep respect for

225
00:16:05,960 --> 00:16:09,440
who I actually met way back in those two thousands,

226
00:16:09,480 --> 00:16:14,200
early two thousands in an airport lounge in Norway, for example.

227
00:16:16,600 --> 00:16:20,120
My acknowledge is that scientists have to say what they

228
00:16:20,159 --> 00:16:24,039
have to say it provided of course that it is

229
00:16:24,159 --> 00:16:27,399
soundly base. And the argument at the moment is about

230
00:16:27,639 --> 00:16:30,279
still about the sub stock structure in the North Sea

231
00:16:30,879 --> 00:16:33,320
and West of Scotland, how it links to the West

232
00:16:33,320 --> 00:16:37,840
of Scotland, and particularly now that climate change has shifted

233
00:16:37,879 --> 00:16:42,879
the distribution of the cod. And behind that story is

234
00:16:42,919 --> 00:16:46,120
also the fact that climate change has changed, even in

235
00:16:46,200 --> 00:16:52,039
my time in the two thousands, has changed the composition

236
00:16:52,120 --> 00:16:54,879
of the plankton. There used to be a thing called

237
00:16:54,919 --> 00:16:58,519
Calanus finmarchicus, a tiny little shrimp which was a springs

238
00:16:58,559 --> 00:17:01,600
corner and was always around when the cod were feeding

239
00:17:01,639 --> 00:17:08,119
in the spring. But finmarchicus in the early period of

240
00:17:08,200 --> 00:17:14,319
the sort of mid two thousands and after the cod

241
00:17:14,799 --> 00:17:18,279
the gadoid outbursts in the North Sea, which was in

242
00:17:18,319 --> 00:17:22,680
the seventies, the high recruitment period which stimulated the growth

243
00:17:22,720 --> 00:17:26,599
in the industry in the North Sea was replaced by

244
00:17:27,039 --> 00:17:32,920
Calanus Fishmarchicus was displaced to the north by hell Glandicus,

245
00:17:33,000 --> 00:17:37,519
which is a summer copypod and is there at the

246
00:17:37,559 --> 00:17:41,640
wrong time for the early feeding regime of the cod.

247
00:17:42,559 --> 00:17:47,319
So there's a story there that the plankton has changed,

248
00:17:47,920 --> 00:17:52,440
and that that was influential in also the distributional changes

249
00:17:52,640 --> 00:17:55,559
and the early and the abundance changes in the cod

250
00:17:55,599 --> 00:17:58,960
stock at a certain period. When I hear people like

251
00:17:59,079 --> 00:18:03,359
Mike park Now accepting and talking in the way scientists

252
00:18:03,400 --> 00:18:08,480
do about the need for a well reasoned and necessary

253
00:18:08,960 --> 00:18:14,440
restrictive management to try and achieve something like MSY, but

254
00:18:15,720 --> 00:18:20,640
God has never been at MSY as such. But it's

255
00:18:20,720 --> 00:18:25,480
heartwarming in a sense to realize that although the industry

256
00:18:25,559 --> 00:18:28,960
is asking ICs to take another look at the relationship

257
00:18:29,519 --> 00:18:33,559
between the cod stocks around the UK in the northern

258
00:18:33,640 --> 00:18:41,000
part and how the southern north Sea changes interact with

259
00:18:41,240 --> 00:18:44,200
the northern north Sea bits and so on and so forth,

260
00:18:44,480 --> 00:18:49,160
to hear the industry expressing knowledgeable comments about those sorts

261
00:18:49,200 --> 00:18:52,440
of things is a major step forward when you think

262
00:18:52,480 --> 00:18:56,200
about it against the history of fishery science and fisheries management.

263
00:18:57,000 --> 00:18:59,799
It's not easy to resolve, and I know ICs will

264
00:18:59,799 --> 00:19:03,440
do it. It's best now. We discussed in the previous

265
00:19:03,440 --> 00:19:07,079
podcast that scientists have to tell them tell you how

266
00:19:07,119 --> 00:19:11,039
it is. Well, we do try and tell you how

267
00:19:11,039 --> 00:19:15,200
it is. But I have learned so many lessons over

268
00:19:15,240 --> 00:19:21,640
the years that I need to take into account much

269
00:19:22,200 --> 00:19:26,039
much more of the effect of management decisions on the industry,

270
00:19:26,039 --> 00:19:29,640
to understand the implications, to make sure therefore that the

271
00:19:29,680 --> 00:19:34,480
scientists do actually get it right and can justify some

272
00:19:34,559 --> 00:19:37,960
of the things that are being said or use in

273
00:19:38,000 --> 00:19:42,160
the absence of full knowledge right. So other things that

274
00:19:42,200 --> 00:19:45,079
I that I was involved in. The hatchery reared lobsters

275
00:19:45,119 --> 00:19:48,000
were put out in Bridlington Bay, so we decided we

276
00:19:48,079 --> 00:19:51,799
needed to monitor the Bridlington fishery in order to see

277
00:19:51,799 --> 00:19:55,000
whether any of them had survived and how they'd grown.

278
00:19:56,200 --> 00:20:00,799
And so in the late eighties and the early nineties

279
00:20:00,920 --> 00:20:05,559
I went to see quite a number of summers for

280
00:20:05,599 --> 00:20:09,440
a fortnight out of Brilington with Bob Crawford on his

281
00:20:09,559 --> 00:20:14,039
little Cobal the deb C, and we were fishing predominantly

282
00:20:14,079 --> 00:20:17,519
out to six or eight miles at the most between

283
00:20:17,599 --> 00:20:22,640
Skipsey and down to Hornsey Well with and Tea really way,

284
00:20:22,920 --> 00:20:26,160
and so I did two or three weeks with my staff,

285
00:20:26,480 --> 00:20:29,519
and so in some years my staff did it and

286
00:20:29,559 --> 00:20:33,440
I wasn't able to go for various reasons connected with

287
00:20:33,480 --> 00:20:36,319
the team. But I did do quite a number of

288
00:20:36,400 --> 00:20:42,920
years watching and measuring and checking on the keyside the

289
00:20:42,920 --> 00:20:46,000
lobsters that we landed from Debuc to see whether we

290
00:20:46,000 --> 00:20:48,559
could find the micro tags that had been inserted in

291
00:20:48,640 --> 00:20:53,160
the hatch relear juveniles. And then so me and my

292
00:20:53,279 --> 00:20:57,759
colleagues wrote papers about the fact that hattery reared lobsters

293
00:20:57,799 --> 00:21:02,880
put down on the right habitat had survived. They weren't

294
00:21:03,039 --> 00:21:07,279
caught in big numbers, and it was quite difficult to

295
00:21:07,359 --> 00:21:10,359
know how many of them had survived, because obviously what

296
00:21:10,480 --> 00:21:16,079
you're catching is is only a small sample. We knew

297
00:21:16,119 --> 00:21:19,240
that they survived, we knew that they'd grown, and we

298
00:21:19,240 --> 00:21:22,000
were able to discuss the growth rate, and we could

299
00:21:22,079 --> 00:21:28,000
assess the potential for the use of enhancement techniques in

300
00:21:28,880 --> 00:21:34,839
Spain in areas where, provided there was sufficient habitat, it

301
00:21:34,880 --> 00:21:40,359
would be worthwhile to hatchery advast expense, because of course

302
00:21:40,440 --> 00:21:46,480
running a hatchery is not cheap. I've had a sort

303
00:21:46,519 --> 00:21:54,480
of soft spot for that work, and I've used my

304
00:21:54,599 --> 00:21:58,119
team of use in the past the WC data for

305
00:21:58,240 --> 00:22:01,119
quite a number of different things, and that was where

306
00:22:01,160 --> 00:22:06,519
I first really understood lobster potting. And I can understand

307
00:22:06,559 --> 00:22:11,960
completely the feeling that comes upon a fisherman who gets

308
00:22:11,960 --> 00:22:17,240
a jolly good basket of keepers. After the physical pulley hauly,

309
00:22:17,240 --> 00:22:19,680
You're getting these damned things up out of the water.

310
00:22:20,079 --> 00:22:23,680
And even with modern kit, you know, with pothoulers and

311
00:22:23,759 --> 00:22:26,319
all the rest of it, and fast scatter on her

312
00:22:26,319 --> 00:22:30,519
hands and open decks, with a really nice working arrangement,

313
00:22:31,039 --> 00:22:32,960
you still have to lift the damn pot out of

314
00:22:33,000 --> 00:22:36,039
the water and stick it on the tray and bait

315
00:22:36,119 --> 00:22:39,359
it and stack it, and you're shooting it. You don't

316
00:22:39,400 --> 00:22:42,079
catch your leg in the coil a rope and go

317
00:22:42,160 --> 00:22:42,960
over the side.

318
00:22:43,720 --> 00:22:47,200
Speaker 1: I had I have to see colin one of the

319
00:22:47,200 --> 00:22:50,839
things that I phoned staggered in as far as progress

320
00:22:50,960 --> 00:22:55,680
was concerned on that one. As a youngster after school

321
00:22:55,920 --> 00:22:59,839
or weekends or school holidays, I would go out no

322
00:23:00,680 --> 00:23:05,000
my father then it was a fifty four foot wooden

323
00:23:05,039 --> 00:23:10,119
boat seen ittter and certain times of the year there

324
00:23:10,119 --> 00:23:13,519
would be fishing seeing it. Other times to the year

325
00:23:13,559 --> 00:23:18,400
they would be fishing for lobsters. So let's say that

326
00:23:18,559 --> 00:23:23,039
was I would be in my teens and I just

327
00:23:23,599 --> 00:23:24,880
loved a day.

328
00:23:24,960 --> 00:23:26,759
Speaker 2: Out at sea.

329
00:23:27,000 --> 00:23:30,480
Speaker 1: And sometimes at certain times of the year when the

330
00:23:30,519 --> 00:23:36,000
lobsters were moore in shore. On the shore, they would

331
00:23:36,240 --> 00:23:41,400
tow small boats out and two or three of us

332
00:23:41,519 --> 00:23:43,559
would go out in the small boats and go in

333
00:23:43,599 --> 00:23:49,599
and out around the rocks and pull the creoles and

334
00:23:49,759 --> 00:23:52,319
pots as they are called down there.

335
00:23:52,799 --> 00:23:54,680
Speaker 2: And then I.

336
00:23:54,680 --> 00:23:58,799
Speaker 1: Was in my let's say my fifties, so that's from

337
00:23:58,839 --> 00:24:02,440
a teens. In the next time, I was based in

338
00:24:02,559 --> 00:24:07,240
Scrubster on the North coast, and a guy I was

339
00:24:07,359 --> 00:24:11,359
friendly with says the fancy coming out with me a day,

340
00:24:11,440 --> 00:24:14,920
says yeah, I would loved it. Well, if I go

341
00:24:15,039 --> 00:24:18,279
back my father their boat, there were five of a crew,

342
00:24:19,000 --> 00:24:22,039
obviously a skipper in the wheel loose and the four

343
00:24:22,920 --> 00:24:26,200
crew men on the deck. I went out with this guy.

344
00:24:27,119 --> 00:24:30,640
He had the same number of kreels shooting the creels

345
00:24:30,640 --> 00:24:35,319
and haul in them as when go back in my

346
00:24:35,440 --> 00:24:39,680
younger days, and he was on his own he had

347
00:24:39,720 --> 00:24:45,000
a haller, but not just the hauler, but going back

348
00:24:45,640 --> 00:24:49,079
the younger days, there would be a laser in the kreel.

349
00:24:49,279 --> 00:24:53,799
They would loosen the laser, tie some either fish with

350
00:24:54,440 --> 00:24:59,279
small fish or carcasses remains after from philipt In, I

351
00:24:59,319 --> 00:25:01,640
have a tight they would tie that to the kreel

352
00:25:02,039 --> 00:25:06,440
and then retie the laser. But the advancements I thought

353
00:25:06,559 --> 00:25:11,400
was unbelievable. Because this guy he had we pocket. He

354
00:25:11,440 --> 00:25:15,960
would take up almost like a bungee club out it

355
00:25:16,039 --> 00:25:21,359
would open the poach, he'd put the bed and clip

356
00:25:21,480 --> 00:25:22,200
the bungee.

357
00:25:22,960 --> 00:25:23,799
Speaker 2: I thought that.

358
00:25:24,200 --> 00:25:29,160
Speaker 1: And with a haul in and shooting, what advancements over

359
00:25:29,240 --> 00:25:30,799
that remot be years?

360
00:25:31,480 --> 00:25:33,960
Speaker 3: Yes, And I have to admit that I haven't been

361
00:25:34,000 --> 00:25:37,680
on a modern vessel these days to see how much

362
00:25:38,119 --> 00:25:43,319
it has changed. But I mean I I've always taken

363
00:25:43,319 --> 00:25:45,640
my hat off to these guys, and of course mainly

364
00:25:45,680 --> 00:25:51,559
in the summertime. I've written somewhere in a recent thing

365
00:25:51,640 --> 00:25:55,319
that I sent off with my CV was that we

366
00:25:55,400 --> 00:25:57,440
always seemed to be leaving at two o'clock in the

367
00:25:57,480 --> 00:26:00,480
morning and then getting back in it too o'clock in

368
00:26:00,519 --> 00:26:05,119
the afternoon. And I think in nose stays Bridlington had

369
00:26:05,160 --> 00:26:09,039
a dance place that went on until about two o'clock

370
00:26:09,079 --> 00:26:11,880
in the morning, so that the Harbor Lights as it

371
00:26:11,920 --> 00:26:15,440
was called, was still booming away as we were scrambling

372
00:26:15,480 --> 00:26:19,319
down to get on board deb C and go off

373
00:26:19,640 --> 00:26:23,839
and do our stuff between Skipsy and Hornsey and with

374
00:26:24,079 --> 00:26:26,640
and Sy and of course at that stage we were

375
00:26:26,759 --> 00:26:31,720
using Decca. Bob just said it all by eyesight basically,

376
00:26:31,759 --> 00:26:34,200
because you know, there was Red House Farm which has

377
00:26:34,279 --> 00:26:37,480
now fallen in because the older s coast is crumbling.

378
00:26:38,759 --> 00:26:44,599
There was Mappleton Tower, Mappleton Church, the caravan site at Skips.

379
00:26:44,640 --> 00:26:46,960
He was obvious, you know, you knew where you were.

380
00:26:47,839 --> 00:26:50,839
But you were also going on the Green Channel over

381
00:26:50,880 --> 00:26:55,559
the Decker Navigator at that time, and so you know

382
00:26:55,759 --> 00:26:59,400
there were but the place was covered in Dan's all

383
00:26:59,440 --> 00:27:04,359
over the place, and there was high jinks. Sometimes occasionally

384
00:27:04,759 --> 00:27:09,240
somebody would shoot his pots over somebody else and there'd

385
00:27:09,279 --> 00:27:11,359
be a bit of fisty cuffs on the key side.

386
00:27:11,480 --> 00:27:13,559
Late at that he shook all that sort of cave,

387
00:27:14,759 --> 00:27:16,480
don't you.

388
00:27:15,480 --> 00:27:20,559
Speaker 1: There's officially scientists doing there. He's based and I think

389
00:27:20,599 --> 00:27:25,400
a whole university. Magnus Johnson, Oh yes, I know him, Yes,

390
00:27:25,680 --> 00:27:33,200
I've done a podcast with him and some of his PhD.

391
00:27:31,799 --> 00:27:38,559
I was staggered with what Magnus told me that he says,

392
00:27:38,599 --> 00:27:43,319
if you take it from Spurnhead, where would the northern

393
00:27:43,640 --> 00:27:44,119
point be.

394
00:27:44,680 --> 00:27:48,839
Speaker 3: Well, Flamboroughhead was a lot of Yes, yeah, from a

395
00:27:49,079 --> 00:27:52,799
spurn Head to flamber Here he reckoned that over one

396
00:27:52,839 --> 00:27:57,720
hundred thousand grills. Yes, absolutely. Oh no, Well, Bridlington is

397
00:27:57,759 --> 00:28:01,079
the prime fishery in the UK, there's no question about it.

398
00:28:01,759 --> 00:28:04,960
But and of course in WC never went much more

399
00:28:05,000 --> 00:28:08,640
beyond six to eight. There was then at that time

400
00:28:08,720 --> 00:28:11,440
a chapel in Graham Young who'd got a keel boat

401
00:28:11,440 --> 00:28:13,559
and he was going off forty miles because he'd been

402
00:28:13,599 --> 00:28:20,240
a diver fishing, diving or forty to sixty miles off

403
00:28:20,799 --> 00:28:25,680
the in the wartime, not the convoy route but the

404
00:28:25,720 --> 00:28:30,039
coastal shipping route, and he was diving on rex and

405
00:28:30,079 --> 00:28:33,640
retrieving brass and all that sort of caper. And he

406
00:28:33,759 --> 00:28:37,440
learned and he suddenly realized that some of these offside

407
00:28:37,839 --> 00:28:40,400
rex as he called, and the forty mile off jobs

408
00:28:40,720 --> 00:28:45,839
were full of very big lobsters. Because the bigger the lobster,

409
00:28:46,039 --> 00:28:50,119
the more shelter it seems to want or it likes shelter,

410
00:28:51,599 --> 00:28:54,319
and some of the ones that live on the West coast,

411
00:28:54,400 --> 00:28:57,079
for example, sit there and the cracks and the rocks

412
00:28:57,119 --> 00:29:01,559
out in Oburn Bay and move for two three weeks,

413
00:29:01,559 --> 00:29:03,319
and then they disappear for a bit, and then they

414
00:29:03,359 --> 00:29:06,160
come back and there are some very big lobsters sitting

415
00:29:06,440 --> 00:29:09,359
in those wedges. Finally used to be quite a good

416
00:29:09,400 --> 00:29:13,480
spot as well because of the brig and the juvenile

417
00:29:13,559 --> 00:29:18,640
lobsters would sit in crevices behind the drapes of sea

418
00:29:18,720 --> 00:29:20,799
lettuce hanging on the rocks.

419
00:29:20,519 --> 00:29:24,200
Speaker 1: On Filey brig. So it was all of that.

420
00:29:25,079 --> 00:29:28,079
Speaker 3: Anyway, we did a lot of recapture work with the

421
00:29:29,079 --> 00:29:32,000
catcher reared ones. We found that there was a proportion

422
00:29:32,119 --> 00:29:34,839
of the landings that were from the hatchery reared areas

423
00:29:35,400 --> 00:29:38,559
and that they and I tracked them in the recaptured

424
00:29:38,640 --> 00:29:42,680
data at least to age six. But then the work

425
00:29:42,720 --> 00:29:45,599
had to be That work was stopped by the Chief

426
00:29:45,640 --> 00:29:48,599
Scientist Group in London because according to them, we'd prove

427
00:29:49,039 --> 00:29:53,680
the point. But the economics of hatchery rearing and recapture

428
00:29:53,759 --> 00:29:57,559
compared to managing a natural fishery probably don't stack up

429
00:29:57,599 --> 00:30:02,079
particularly well. Although I've spoken with the Whitby Hatchery quite

430
00:30:02,119 --> 00:30:04,480
a lot about how much they're doing. And of course

431
00:30:04,720 --> 00:30:07,240
off the northeast coast, we had the collapse of the

432
00:30:07,880 --> 00:30:10,799
crab and the lobster fisheries two or three years ago.

433
00:30:11,000 --> 00:30:14,720
Now many of the boats from red car and Places

434
00:30:14,720 --> 00:30:17,799
and Hartleypool have been sold off and the fishermen have

435
00:30:17,880 --> 00:30:22,799
given up. But I think that Joe Redford is trying

436
00:30:22,839 --> 00:30:28,720
to rear lobsters and rejuvenate that fishery. So in addition

437
00:30:28,759 --> 00:30:32,359
to all of that, I had a sub team that

438
00:30:32,519 --> 00:30:36,480
was working on crab in the channel. Dave Bennett and

439
00:30:37,640 --> 00:30:41,359
people of that nature were doing lot and Brenda Thompson

440
00:30:41,400 --> 00:30:44,119
were doing some of the crab larval surveys whose pictures

441
00:30:44,160 --> 00:30:47,319
i've shown you, and that the pictures are from the

442
00:30:47,559 --> 00:30:50,799
report that I wrote in two thousand and nine when

443
00:30:50,839 --> 00:30:53,519
i'd been grabbed by the sagp and i'll tell you

444
00:30:53,559 --> 00:30:56,440
about that in just a few moments.

445
00:30:56,720 --> 00:30:59,839
Speaker 1: I can see you're still grabbed by the airs as.

446
00:31:00,119 --> 00:31:03,799
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, yes, yes, Well in a way, Jim, I

447
00:31:03,880 --> 00:31:05,720
don't think I'll be talking to you now if it

448
00:31:05,799 --> 00:31:09,559
hadn't been for that, because I think at our age

449
00:31:09,640 --> 00:31:10,720
we need an interest.

450
00:31:11,200 --> 00:31:14,720
Speaker 1: Yeah, No, it's just that just amusing me with being

451
00:31:15,039 --> 00:31:15,839
your command.

452
00:31:17,799 --> 00:31:20,839
Speaker 3: Well, Pieter Hunt and I worked well together. We were

453
00:31:20,839 --> 00:31:23,799
brilliant together. And he and I we used to go

454
00:31:23,880 --> 00:31:26,920
up to London and we had lots and lots of discussions,

455
00:31:29,000 --> 00:31:31,519
but they never came to anything, because in the old

456
00:31:31,599 --> 00:31:35,599
days math would sometimes put out a consultation for a

457
00:31:35,640 --> 00:31:40,839
particular increase in the minimum size or other measures like

458
00:31:40,960 --> 00:31:45,160
banning the scrubbing, of banning the landing of buried lobsters,

459
00:31:45,440 --> 00:31:49,319
which did eventually come in in the late twenty teens.

460
00:31:50,160 --> 00:31:52,759
But I noticed quite an increase in fishing news in

461
00:31:52,799 --> 00:31:56,359
the last couple of years of prosecutions for scrubbing.

462
00:31:56,720 --> 00:32:00,599
Speaker 1: Am I really just ask you just no, Colin. When

463
00:32:00,920 --> 00:32:05,200
you go back between crab and lobster over theedy appeared

464
00:32:05,519 --> 00:32:11,039
is that crabs the descriptions and fishermen use it's lake.

465
00:32:11,519 --> 00:32:16,079
They have a herem and the meal will guard all

466
00:32:16,119 --> 00:32:22,079
those females and they can be quite aggressive and guarding.

467
00:32:22,759 --> 00:32:25,920
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, I think that. I think they're promiscuous in

468
00:32:25,960 --> 00:32:31,240
that sense. And it's coincized there's the water temperature cycle.

469
00:32:31,880 --> 00:32:36,839
So traditionally the lobster fishery, in particular in Bridlington and

470
00:32:37,160 --> 00:32:40,559
in other parts of the coast would start. They would

471
00:32:40,559 --> 00:32:43,279
get the pots out in spring so that they would

472
00:32:43,279 --> 00:32:47,880
get the first flush of lobsters that were moving with

473
00:32:48,000 --> 00:32:51,160
the increase in the water temperature, and then of course

474
00:32:51,200 --> 00:32:54,200
they would go in later in the in the season,

475
00:32:54,640 --> 00:32:59,759
in the early summer to those that were carrying eggs

476
00:33:00,240 --> 00:33:04,799
would be shedding the eggs, and then that they would

477
00:33:04,799 --> 00:33:07,720
be molting, and then they would be feeding up again.

478
00:33:08,559 --> 00:33:12,759
So when we went out in August, they'd already molted,

479
00:33:13,759 --> 00:33:16,880
and they'd already dropped their eggs, and they'd already been

480
00:33:16,920 --> 00:33:22,839
inseminated by some hairy male and they would be looked

481
00:33:22,880 --> 00:33:25,400
after by the male for a certain period and then

482
00:33:25,440 --> 00:33:27,559
he'd go off and do it to it so another

483
00:33:27,640 --> 00:33:31,240
female somewhere. So there was this sort of very complex

484
00:33:31,400 --> 00:33:36,160
behavioral issue about that conditioned the seasonality of the fishery

485
00:33:36,680 --> 00:33:40,319
as well as a condition of the animal, because obviously

486
00:33:40,319 --> 00:33:44,359
there was a delay between the newly molted animal hardening

487
00:33:45,400 --> 00:33:49,319
and then being able to do its stuff. There are

488
00:33:49,400 --> 00:33:52,319
a lot of much more studies biological studies in the

489
00:33:52,440 --> 00:33:57,279
United States with tomorrow's americanas which is several factors more abundance.

490
00:33:57,319 --> 00:34:01,359
You're talking about forty tons of life has landed in Maine,

491
00:34:02,200 --> 00:34:05,039
you know, compared to two thousand to three thousand in

492
00:34:05,079 --> 00:34:10,320
the UK, so the whole scale of those fisheres is different.

493
00:34:09,960 --> 00:34:12,960
I went out, I mean, I did a couple of

494
00:34:13,079 --> 00:34:16,679
MSc assessments in the Gulf of Maine when after I'd retired,

495
00:34:17,440 --> 00:34:19,800
and I went up to all the fishermen's meetings and

496
00:34:19,840 --> 00:34:22,920
all that sort of caper, and we had a great time.

497
00:34:24,159 --> 00:34:26,440
In those days, America was the place that was a

498
00:34:26,440 --> 00:34:29,960
pleasure to visit. I wouldn't go there now for God's sake.

499
00:34:30,679 --> 00:34:35,159
And you know, the thing was that the women would

500
00:34:35,280 --> 00:34:39,159
run raffles and things like that. They'd hire a holiday

501
00:34:39,159 --> 00:34:42,840
in in the autumn and celebrate the season. So you

502
00:34:42,880 --> 00:34:48,119
could go to fishermen's meetings in Lots and Portland and

503
00:34:48,239 --> 00:34:53,039
various ports like that, and the whole fraternity would be there,

504
00:34:53,119 --> 00:34:56,599
having traveled two hundred miles in some cases, and they'd

505
00:34:56,599 --> 00:34:59,719
have a jamboree basically, and the women would be selling

506
00:34:59,760 --> 00:35:02,360
hat and this, that and the other in the foyer, and

507
00:35:02,400 --> 00:35:06,000
the blokes would be showing the main lobs of fishery

508
00:35:06,320 --> 00:35:09,519
committees and all that sort of thing and getting their

509
00:35:09,519 --> 00:35:13,599
management sorted and they had fisheries management plans years ago

510
00:35:14,280 --> 00:35:17,239
because of those sorts of things, And at one stage

511
00:35:17,320 --> 00:35:19,840
I did some refereeing for one of the North American

512
00:35:20,559 --> 00:35:24,320
lobster reports, and a subsequent colleague of mine, Mike Bell,

513
00:35:25,039 --> 00:35:29,079
did it again later. And my best pal in the

514
00:35:29,159 --> 00:35:32,880
fisheries and the made my fisheries team on lobsters was

515
00:35:33,400 --> 00:35:36,559
Steve Lovewell and then Julian Addison, who was a very

516
00:35:36,559 --> 00:35:40,480
good PhD student. So we had a we had a

517
00:35:40,519 --> 00:35:43,800
core of people that understood the evolution of the lobster

518
00:35:43,880 --> 00:35:49,800
fisheries and the biological relationships and other things, but we

519
00:35:49,800 --> 00:35:53,840
couldn't get the dann things managed properly now when we

520
00:35:53,920 --> 00:35:59,639
look at the obviously, because you can't age the things satisfactorily.

521
00:35:59,679 --> 00:36:03,320
Although we did do work. The Chief Scientist Group at

522
00:36:03,320 --> 00:36:07,440
the time I was in the team did some contracts

523
00:36:07,480 --> 00:36:11,840
with an Australian guy and he was using the eye

524
00:36:11,960 --> 00:36:18,280
stalk pigment liper fusion, which when you use ultraviolet light,

525
00:36:18,559 --> 00:36:22,559
glows and it turned out that the accumulation of lip

526
00:36:22,599 --> 00:36:28,360
of fusion in the eye was time dependent. So I

527
00:36:28,440 --> 00:36:31,400
gave him quite a lot of the recaptures that we

528
00:36:31,519 --> 00:36:34,639
had in Bridlington Bay, which were of different age. They were,

529
00:36:34,719 --> 00:36:37,079
of course they were different sizes. That was what we

530
00:36:37,079 --> 00:36:40,599
were measuring, and then we gave them to this guy

531
00:36:40,679 --> 00:36:43,760
who was working at the University of Leicester and using

532
00:36:43,760 --> 00:36:48,159
the I stalk pigment technique. He had a proxy age

533
00:36:48,239 --> 00:36:51,360
for these things and you know some of the lobsters

534
00:36:51,360 --> 00:36:54,440
would appear on the basis of that to live between

535
00:36:54,440 --> 00:36:59,960
thirteen forty years, the really big monsters, and they don't

536
00:37:00,159 --> 00:37:04,199
actually reached landing size until about four or five. That

537
00:37:04,400 --> 00:37:05,559
was the information that we had.

538
00:37:05,679 --> 00:37:12,360
Speaker 1: Well a Guya recently did one with the Maritime States. Yes, yes, Canada.

539
00:37:12,679 --> 00:37:17,199
He reckoned whether they're different there, he reckoned there were

540
00:37:17,320 --> 00:37:20,039
seven years before there were marketable size.

541
00:37:20,199 --> 00:37:22,280
Speaker 3: It's quite likely, quite likely.

542
00:37:22,719 --> 00:37:25,880
Speaker 1: The other thing I was going to ask you, Colin,

543
00:37:25,960 --> 00:37:29,039
when you see about your eight I'm not picking you

544
00:37:29,119 --> 00:37:31,559
up totally one hundred percent agree when you say the

545
00:37:31,679 --> 00:37:36,079
tannage of the fishery over there compared to the UK.

546
00:37:36,639 --> 00:37:39,840
But the point I just wanted to ask, because I've

547
00:37:39,840 --> 00:37:42,400
been thinking about it a lot since, doing a lot

548
00:37:42,440 --> 00:37:46,239
of talk with people over there, do you feel it's

549
00:37:46,239 --> 00:37:49,519
a bigger fishery or just the fact that it's about

550
00:37:49,519 --> 00:37:54,000
ten or more tames the coast lane of the UK.

551
00:37:54,159 --> 00:37:57,599
Speaker 3: Oh. Yeah, there is certainly the coastline, and no question

552
00:37:57,719 --> 00:38:00,199
about it. But I think they are much more more

553
00:38:00,239 --> 00:38:04,320
abundant on the ground. And I was going to I

554
00:38:04,360 --> 00:38:07,199
was just going to say, before you asked your question,

555
00:38:07,760 --> 00:38:11,079
there was a lady named Diane Cowans who was in Maine.

556
00:38:11,280 --> 00:38:14,400
I think she was a biologist, and she turned up

557
00:38:14,400 --> 00:38:18,400
at these meetings and you know the term fosse king

558
00:38:18,599 --> 00:38:21,400
where you walk along the beach and turn the stones over.

559
00:38:22,039 --> 00:38:25,039
When she did those in the mid coast of Maine.

560
00:38:25,239 --> 00:38:27,840
I mean, it's a lovely coastline. You know, there's some

561
00:38:27,920 --> 00:38:32,880
great spots, coves, all that sort of thing. But the

562
00:38:32,920 --> 00:38:37,480
intertidal range on the coast, if you turn boulders over,

563
00:38:38,039 --> 00:38:45,599
you'll see hundreds of juvenile, newly settled lobster larvae, newly

564
00:38:45,639 --> 00:38:51,119
settled scrabbling about. You will never you never find that

565
00:38:51,320 --> 00:38:56,360
except after a storm on an English East coast site.

566
00:38:57,000 --> 00:39:02,079
The density factor is significant. And when I've tried retired,

567
00:39:02,199 --> 00:39:08,039
I did MSc assessments for the main fishery and the

568
00:39:08,079 --> 00:39:10,239
Gulf of Saint Lawrence fishery. I went up to the

569
00:39:10,280 --> 00:39:14,159
Magdalen Islands. By God, that was an experience. It was wintertime.

570
00:39:15,000 --> 00:39:20,360
The plane was forced down to quite a low altitude.

571
00:39:20,840 --> 00:39:25,639
I think we flew from Montreal or somewhere, and I

572
00:39:25,679 --> 00:39:28,519
realized that the tops of the pine trees were higher

573
00:39:28,519 --> 00:39:31,880
than the wings on either side of the aircraft. I mean,

574
00:39:32,159 --> 00:39:34,559
we weren't in danger because it was a wide valley,

575
00:39:34,599 --> 00:39:37,960
but nevertheless, we're going down the valley. And then we

576
00:39:38,039 --> 00:39:42,519
landed on the tiny air strip somewhere. I can't remember

577
00:39:42,519 --> 00:39:45,360
the name now I could find it, I suppose. And

578
00:39:45,400 --> 00:39:47,239
there was a wall at the end of the runway,

579
00:39:47,840 --> 00:39:52,039
and it was one of the old Dutch planes with

580
00:39:52,199 --> 00:39:57,199
the twin props, and he suddenly put on full reverse

581
00:39:57,320 --> 00:40:01,000
thrust so that the props screamed and we just pulled

582
00:40:01,079 --> 00:40:04,119
up before the wall at the end, you know, that

583
00:40:04,320 --> 00:40:10,199
sort of narrow thing. That's I loved. I loved French Canadians.

584
00:40:10,280 --> 00:40:15,920
They are very French, they are they are Canadian as well.

585
00:40:16,280 --> 00:40:19,079
Speaker 2: And dependent away from Canada for yes.

586
00:40:19,760 --> 00:40:22,320
Speaker 3: And I actually had a couple of working groups in Quebec.

587
00:40:23,599 --> 00:40:27,880
MSc working groups in Quebec in the winter time, By god,

588
00:40:28,039 --> 00:40:32,440
was it cold, you know, all that kind.

589
00:40:32,239 --> 00:40:36,119
Speaker 1: Of case we were there. It's a number of years ago. Now,

590
00:40:36,199 --> 00:40:40,360
my wife's sister lives out there, and we were visiting

591
00:40:40,400 --> 00:40:44,440
them between Christmas and New Year because when the fishing

592
00:40:44,559 --> 00:40:48,480
in Thistry sort of closes down here, so there's a

593
00:40:48,559 --> 00:40:50,519
chance for us to go on holiday.

594
00:40:50,760 --> 00:40:57,159
Speaker 4: And my mustache eighth particles.

595
00:40:56,000 --> 00:41:00,360
Speaker 3: Well, you know, I do. I can't remember it, but

596
00:41:00,440 --> 00:41:04,280
I in those days I spoke quite good French because

597
00:41:04,320 --> 00:41:06,920
I learned quite a bit of French. I've got a

598
00:41:06,920 --> 00:41:10,239
bit of a feel for languages and I have a

599
00:41:10,239 --> 00:41:13,960
good French accent. It has been commented upon by quite

600
00:41:14,000 --> 00:41:16,960
a lot of French colleagues that I did. I didn't

601
00:41:17,000 --> 00:41:19,199
sound like a native, but they knew I wasn't a

602
00:41:19,199 --> 00:41:25,760
complete brit And you know, French Canadian is different, so

603
00:41:25,840 --> 00:41:29,159
they couldn't understand my French. And it was partly because

604
00:41:29,199 --> 00:41:40,079
the vocabulary is different. Yeah, you know, monsieur parably we yeah, okay,

605
00:41:40,159 --> 00:41:44,599
well you come to the folk club tonight sort of thing,

606
00:41:44,719 --> 00:41:49,400
you know. And that's the side of being a scientist

607
00:41:49,639 --> 00:41:54,559
that has always been wonderful good. You know, I can

608
00:41:54,599 --> 00:41:59,960
listen to these Breton type singers in the French Canadian content.

609
00:42:01,320 --> 00:42:05,079
I went to a club one night and they were

610
00:42:05,320 --> 00:42:10,800
just traditional. Well, it was like Lewis and Clark going

611
00:42:10,840 --> 00:42:15,119
over to the West coast of America. You know, there's

612
00:42:15,119 --> 00:42:18,480
a kind of an outback feeling to these sorts of places,

613
00:42:19,400 --> 00:42:22,880
and I loved it. Really, It's one of the high

614
00:42:22,880 --> 00:42:26,000
points of my life, these sorts of trips after retiring

615
00:42:26,840 --> 00:42:30,400
and being independent, but doing MSc type assessments, you were

616
00:42:30,440 --> 00:42:34,880
trying to bring something to the table. And I still

617
00:42:34,880 --> 00:42:38,119
think the MSc system is a good one because in

618
00:42:38,239 --> 00:42:42,599
order to be certified, and the certification has become very important,

619
00:42:42,599 --> 00:42:46,559
as you well know, in the industry, and that was

620
00:42:46,599 --> 00:42:49,719
one of the tragedies of the Scottish industry associated with

621
00:42:49,880 --> 00:42:54,000
the breakdown really in the pelagic discussions in recent years

622
00:42:55,800 --> 00:42:59,599
that the industry began to understand that if you had

623
00:42:59,599 --> 00:43:04,119
a harvest control rules, it's caused you know, a rule

624
00:43:04,119 --> 00:43:07,719
of thumb that says if the catch per effort falls

625
00:43:07,760 --> 00:43:12,199
below a certain level, action will be automatically taken to

626
00:43:12,320 --> 00:43:17,400
restore that fishery. You don't have to then depend on

627
00:43:18,039 --> 00:43:23,760
persuading an administrator in London that they need to do something.

628
00:43:23,840 --> 00:43:26,880
Now it's sort of as it were written into the

629
00:43:26,920 --> 00:43:31,320
relationship between an MSc assessment and the status of the fishery,

630
00:43:31,920 --> 00:43:34,519
and I've always thought that that was a very good thing.

631
00:43:36,119 --> 00:43:40,800
Lobster's failed several times in my time for various reasons

632
00:43:40,800 --> 00:43:46,079
that we couldn't fulfill all of the criteria. And the

633
00:43:46,119 --> 00:43:48,639
next thing I just want to say is I did

634
00:43:48,679 --> 00:43:52,199
spend a lot of time doing coastal intertidal cockle and

635
00:43:52,239 --> 00:43:55,400
muscle surveys in the wash. For example, my team did,

636
00:43:55,920 --> 00:43:59,719
and I've walked the wash sands on the Norfolk coast

637
00:44:00,280 --> 00:44:06,440
for cockles, huge, big area, very interesting dynamics in the wash.

638
00:44:06,519 --> 00:44:10,639
It's a sort of an anti clock eye circulation, a

639
00:44:10,639 --> 00:44:14,480
lot of wind driven drift at certain seasons of the year,

640
00:44:15,119 --> 00:44:18,599
and big fluctuations in settlement from year to year, which

641
00:44:18,639 --> 00:44:21,320
makes management very difficult. And then I had a guy

642
00:44:21,400 --> 00:44:26,639
that was working on scallops. Peter Dare, brilliant biologist. His

643
00:44:26,760 --> 00:44:31,639
hobby was collecting nest information from buzzards and he would

644
00:44:31,679 --> 00:44:34,960
climb up trees all over East Anglia and look at

645
00:44:34,960 --> 00:44:37,599
the nests and work out the breeding rate and all

646
00:44:37,639 --> 00:44:39,360
the rest of it. I think he's written a book

647
00:44:39,360 --> 00:44:42,119
about He's dead now, bless him to three years ago.

648
00:44:42,840 --> 00:44:45,639
But Peter was an old fashioned biologist and I used

649
00:44:45,639 --> 00:44:52,159
to do cockle surveys in opposite learnsle in the on

650
00:44:52,239 --> 00:44:56,840
the Slanridian sands there, and you know, just like in

651
00:44:56,920 --> 00:45:00,360
the Thames Estuary, you do a quadrat every fifty meters

652
00:45:00,440 --> 00:45:04,920
or every hundred meters and dig a square meter of

653
00:45:05,000 --> 00:45:08,320
the sand and count and measure the cockles, and then

654
00:45:08,400 --> 00:45:12,440
go on another fifty meters contour the diagram and raise

655
00:45:12,480 --> 00:45:15,320
it up to a biomass estimate and then set your

656
00:45:15,320 --> 00:45:19,000
harvest rate on that basis. So I learned all of

657
00:45:19,039 --> 00:45:22,480
those sorts of things, and as you can imagine, given

658
00:45:22,559 --> 00:45:26,840
my personality in particular, I became the go to person

659
00:45:27,000 --> 00:45:30,400
for all this sort of stuff, and I could I

660
00:45:30,440 --> 00:45:34,599
think I learned to tell the tale in an accessible

661
00:45:34,800 --> 00:45:39,400
manner to these folk in the industry. Why are we

662
00:45:39,480 --> 00:45:41,880
doing it? What are we getting out of it? How

663
00:45:41,920 --> 00:45:45,039
is it going to affect you? How should it affect you?

664
00:45:45,679 --> 00:45:49,480
Is it necessary? Why is it necessary? So when we

665
00:45:49,519 --> 00:45:52,199
look at an assessment, you know that the yield curve

666
00:45:52,239 --> 00:45:55,320
has usually got a hump in it. There's a peak

667
00:45:55,360 --> 00:46:01,320
which is corresponding roughly to MSY maximum sustainable you. And

668
00:46:01,440 --> 00:46:05,119
there are modern techniques, the so called virtual population analysis,

669
00:46:05,119 --> 00:46:07,800
where you back calculate to the amount of stock that's

670
00:46:07,840 --> 00:46:11,400
on the ground. Well, with an age based assessment, that's

671
00:46:11,639 --> 00:46:16,239
not straightforward, but you do know that the difference between

672
00:46:16,280 --> 00:46:20,679
a thirty centimeter place and the sixty centimeter place is

673
00:46:20,760 --> 00:46:25,639
the difference in age between say five and thirty five.

674
00:46:26,639 --> 00:46:31,280
But with the length business and the molting with crustacea,

675
00:46:31,840 --> 00:46:35,559
it's not very clear how you can relate the size

676
00:46:35,599 --> 00:46:40,760
distribution to age, and so that makes calculating mortality rate

677
00:46:41,159 --> 00:46:44,760
a bit more difficult. But the shot of all of

678
00:46:44,800 --> 00:46:47,719
the crab assessments and the lobster assessments has been that

679
00:46:47,800 --> 00:46:51,280
they have been on the basis of the model with

680
00:46:51,360 --> 00:46:53,920
the reservations. As I could go into at greater depth,

681
00:46:54,000 --> 00:46:57,079
but I've sort of alluded to them, assuming that we're

682
00:46:57,159 --> 00:47:01,800
our conversion from lengths to age using tagging data from

683
00:47:01,800 --> 00:47:06,599
the past, you know, tag recapture data. You tag lobsters

684
00:47:06,639 --> 00:47:09,679
at this year, and you catch them three years later

685
00:47:10,079 --> 00:47:13,480
and they've molted twice. How do you know, Well, the

686
00:47:13,559 --> 00:47:16,480
size is more than thirty percent bigger than it was

687
00:47:16,519 --> 00:47:19,920
when you tagged it. Yeah, so that's the sort of picture.

688
00:47:19,960 --> 00:47:27,639
It's a molting frequency diagram plus the tag recapture information yeah, So,

689
00:47:28,440 --> 00:47:32,840
assuming those models are correct, lobsters have been fully exploited

690
00:47:33,280 --> 00:47:36,920
for a long time, but they haven't collapsed. There are

691
00:47:37,119 --> 00:47:41,159
changes in the catch rate. In other words, density is varied.

692
00:47:41,840 --> 00:47:45,159
But as the shellfish fisheries expanded, and in England Wales

693
00:47:45,199 --> 00:47:48,880
it's expanded a lot, the average number of pops used

694
00:47:48,880 --> 00:47:52,320
has gone up from the small hundreds to two to

695
00:47:52,440 --> 00:47:56,440
three thousand in some cases. Then the crabbers have now

696
00:47:56,480 --> 00:47:59,599
got viv a vessels and by the way, those crabbers

697
00:47:59,599 --> 00:48:04,679
have all got licenses still they bought up latent licenses.

698
00:48:05,239 --> 00:48:09,920
We haven't got. The licensing system hasn't frozen the number

699
00:48:09,960 --> 00:48:13,280
of vessels. So you've got some of the big vivier

700
00:48:13,440 --> 00:48:16,679
vessels that have been fishing in the Southwest, the crab

701
00:48:17,840 --> 00:48:20,760
with twenty thousand plus pots Colin.

702
00:48:20,800 --> 00:48:24,079
Speaker 1: When you say that, it just brings me back again.

703
00:48:24,400 --> 00:48:27,800
I often think about it and go back to what

704
00:48:27,840 --> 00:48:31,239
I was saying my father when he was I would

705
00:48:31,280 --> 00:48:34,280
say that would be the fifties and early sixties.

706
00:48:34,440 --> 00:48:36,000
Speaker 2: They would have been fishing.

707
00:48:35,840 --> 00:48:40,599
Speaker 1: And they well into the well, no fifties and well

708
00:48:40,639 --> 00:48:44,199
into the sixties, and they never had more than one

709
00:48:44,320 --> 00:48:48,840
hundred kreels fishing and they could make a decent living,

710
00:48:49,159 --> 00:48:50,400
and that was five.

711
00:48:50,159 --> 00:48:50,760
Speaker 2: Of a crew.

712
00:48:51,400 --> 00:48:55,639
Speaker 1: There's two men board and some of the bigger, bigger

713
00:48:56,280 --> 00:49:00,440
crabbers that are into thousands of krils, and the two

714
00:49:00,519 --> 00:49:05,199
men crabbers I lost seven or eight hundred krills And

715
00:49:06,000 --> 00:49:09,519
I just wonder the team's colin could they get up

716
00:49:09,599 --> 00:49:14,760
Baaland the fish market is supply and demand supplies down,

717
00:49:15,159 --> 00:49:16,320
the demand goes up.

718
00:49:16,960 --> 00:49:21,199
Speaker 4: So is there a basis they were to cantalless get

719
00:49:21,239 --> 00:49:25,920
the place up so there is not too expensive for

720
00:49:25,960 --> 00:49:28,480
the consumer to buy it.

721
00:49:29,000 --> 00:49:33,440
Speaker 1: But it gives a There must be a way of

722
00:49:34,239 --> 00:49:37,519
getting a ballance. The wrong way to do it is

723
00:49:38,719 --> 00:49:40,360
put more ports out.

724
00:49:41,039 --> 00:49:45,559
Speaker 3: Well, I mean before COVID, I mean I have to

725
00:49:45,599 --> 00:49:48,679
tell you that to me, teams meetings are a real pain.

726
00:49:50,039 --> 00:49:54,599
It's so difficult, particularly as well. I must talk about

727
00:49:54,639 --> 00:49:59,639
this before we sign off today, about the crab and Loves,

728
00:49:59,639 --> 00:50:03,119
the Manager group and all these new groups that have

729
00:50:03,199 --> 00:50:06,880
been formed to get management plans under the Fisheries Act.

730
00:50:07,159 --> 00:50:11,079
But they're all teams meetings. There's often between twenty and

731
00:50:11,199 --> 00:50:14,400
thirty or forty people on the team's meeting. You can't

732
00:50:14,480 --> 00:50:19,280
read the room now. In the last meetings I had

733
00:50:19,320 --> 00:50:23,920
in London would be probably twenty nineteen, and I can

734
00:50:24,000 --> 00:50:27,480
remember this and I used to practice it because the

735
00:50:27,559 --> 00:50:32,639
one advantage of say, SAGB had a crustacean committee at

736
00:50:32,639 --> 00:50:36,920
that time, and we had three meetings a year and

737
00:50:36,960 --> 00:50:39,440
you could talk face to face with these guys and

738
00:50:39,480 --> 00:50:43,199
it wasn't a threat because this was just a reporting meeting,

739
00:50:43,719 --> 00:50:47,159
not a decision taking meeting, and you could discuss something

740
00:50:47,239 --> 00:50:49,960
like you just raised that point, and I might say,

741
00:50:50,400 --> 00:50:54,599
it makes sense to have a fishery's assessment and then

742
00:50:54,639 --> 00:50:59,679
a target harvest immortality, which is nominally sustainable. But then

743
00:50:59,719 --> 00:51:03,360
there is market side to this whole question, and what

744
00:51:03,400 --> 00:51:06,679
you've just described is something that we could take into

745
00:51:06,800 --> 00:51:10,920
account and get some kind of compromised deal that would

746
00:51:10,960 --> 00:51:15,199
say no more effort in order to balance the fishery now,

747
00:51:15,559 --> 00:51:19,000
and then gradually reduce effort in steps to get the

748
00:51:19,039 --> 00:51:23,679
benefit of the market related price rise. And you could

749
00:51:23,760 --> 00:51:26,880
envision that over a ten year period or something like that.

750
00:51:27,280 --> 00:51:30,119
In some ways it's too late for that, but you

751
00:51:30,159 --> 00:51:33,119
could go up. But Bill would say a Bill, you know,

752
00:51:33,519 --> 00:51:35,679
sitting on the other side of the table, you're not

753
00:51:35,719 --> 00:51:38,360
bloody telling me how many plots I've got to pish

754
00:51:38,599 --> 00:51:41,320
because if the fuel price goes up tomorrow or the

755
00:51:41,360 --> 00:51:44,280
price on the market goes down tomorrow, I've got another

756
00:51:44,400 --> 00:51:46,559
hundred and fifty pots in the garage and I'm going

757
00:51:46,599 --> 00:51:52,039
to put them out because my balance sheet requires X amount.

758
00:51:52,480 --> 00:51:55,920
Speaker 2: But that itself is not a good argument.

759
00:51:56,239 --> 00:52:02,320
Speaker 3: No, no, but that's what I'd say. Yeah, And then

760
00:52:02,360 --> 00:52:05,639
you could say ding ding ding. In coffee time, we'd

761
00:52:05,679 --> 00:52:07,719
have coffee and you could go up to this guy

762
00:52:07,760 --> 00:52:11,000
and say, do you really mean that? Well, he said yes,

763
00:52:12,320 --> 00:52:15,559
because we've just had a fuel rise, as it happened

764
00:52:15,599 --> 00:52:18,960
in that meeting. This was way back in those days.

765
00:52:19,239 --> 00:52:21,960
And I said, well, in a way, that means whenever

766
00:52:22,039 --> 00:52:24,199
ever going to solve the problem. Well, he said, there

767
00:52:24,239 --> 00:52:27,159
is another thing here. I don't want what do you

768
00:52:27,280 --> 00:52:30,760
know about fishing. You're telling me how to run my business.

769
00:52:31,400 --> 00:52:34,159
And I said, well, no, but if you look at

770
00:52:34,159 --> 00:52:37,679
the herring story, look at the cod recovery story, that

771
00:52:37,840 --> 00:52:41,280
there is another dimension here. You're just un lucky that

772
00:52:41,639 --> 00:52:45,800
lobsters and crabs haven't collapsed in any shape or form.

773
00:52:45,880 --> 00:52:50,559
This is obviously in twenty nineteen, surprisingly, so I don't

774
00:52:50,559 --> 00:52:53,000
know what that means. It means that we haven't got

775
00:52:53,039 --> 00:52:57,679
something quite right. But interestingly, Jim, there's a guy at

776
00:52:57,679 --> 00:53:01,719
the Marine Laboratory Aberdeen named Mosquito is a Portuguese guy

777
00:53:02,280 --> 00:53:06,400
who wrote a paper in twenty fifteen or after twenty fifteen,

778
00:53:06,480 --> 00:53:10,519
twenty eighteen, or something like that, twenty nineteen. Perhaps since

779
00:53:10,599 --> 00:53:15,639
twenty fifteen, crab landings have been declining. Now, of course

780
00:53:15,679 --> 00:53:20,280
this year they're on the floor because of the octopus fishery,

781
00:53:21,000 --> 00:53:25,599
but they've all they were already declining in the last

782
00:53:25,639 --> 00:53:30,199
ten years despite the increased in effort. And the other

783
00:53:30,320 --> 00:53:33,760
side of it is that the inshore guys along the

784
00:53:33,880 --> 00:53:38,840
Channel coast and in the southwest in particular off Cornwall

785
00:53:39,400 --> 00:53:43,599
are in serious trouble this year because crab cacchies have

786
00:53:43,679 --> 00:53:48,320
been either non existent or replaced by octopus. There's water

787
00:53:48,400 --> 00:53:52,159
temperature is now at this time of the year already

788
00:53:52,199 --> 00:53:55,239
several degrees higher than the long term average.

789
00:53:56,239 --> 00:54:02,760
Speaker 1: The most recent podcast released yesterday as a you made

790
00:54:02,760 --> 00:54:03,920
no embraced Stewart.

791
00:54:04,480 --> 00:54:07,400
Speaker 3: Yes I know him well online?

792
00:54:08,239 --> 00:54:12,920
Speaker 1: Okay, well, yes, yeah, he's done the report on the

793
00:54:12,960 --> 00:54:16,360
octopus bloom as he calls it, and he's he's actually

794
00:54:16,400 --> 00:54:20,719
apart from everything else as you say empty in kreels,

795
00:54:20,800 --> 00:54:25,440
in their fullish empty shells. He says, there's actually evidence

796
00:54:25,599 --> 00:54:28,000
now of scallops.

797
00:54:28,440 --> 00:54:30,360
Speaker 2: Yes, been been.

798
00:54:31,519 --> 00:54:35,679
Speaker 1: They'll come across a port and it's absolutely full of scallops,

799
00:54:36,039 --> 00:54:41,159
and I reckon that the octopus are cutching them, putting

800
00:54:41,199 --> 00:54:45,199
them in the ports, and it's like, well, that's that's

801
00:54:45,440 --> 00:54:47,320
next week's meals.

802
00:54:49,599 --> 00:54:50,360
Speaker 2: Storing them.

803
00:54:51,280 --> 00:54:54,199
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, I think there is serious climate change

804
00:54:54,239 --> 00:55:00,960
in the Southwest in particular, and obviously the octopus seasons

805
00:55:01,599 --> 00:55:06,599
where the season has been dominated by the octopus. And

806
00:55:06,719 --> 00:55:10,199
of course there was originally a phase like this on

807
00:55:10,480 --> 00:55:13,519
off the Portuguese and Spanish coast about three or four

808
00:55:13,599 --> 00:55:16,760
years ago, so that sort of effect has sort of

809
00:55:17,039 --> 00:55:21,280
come up since then. There are problems, of course in

810
00:55:21,360 --> 00:55:24,159
the in the Channel Islands as well. I think Jersey

811
00:55:24,239 --> 00:55:28,519
and Guernsey have had quite significantly difficult fisheries this year,

812
00:55:30,119 --> 00:55:31,800
so that the lookout.

813
00:55:31,519 --> 00:55:32,559
Speaker 2: Is not good.

814
00:55:34,480 --> 00:55:38,840
Speaker 3: The problem is of course that in certain parts.

815
00:55:38,480 --> 00:55:39,320
Speaker 1: Of the industry.

816
00:55:39,519 --> 00:55:43,719
Speaker 3: I mean you see in fishing news little articles about

817
00:55:43,920 --> 00:55:49,599
one man bands from Hastings or the Sussex Ports which

818
00:55:50,079 --> 00:55:52,559
from jim Parts is a member of sa GB, and

819
00:55:53,159 --> 00:55:57,519
there's a lot of creole building and selling pots and stuff,

820
00:55:58,000 --> 00:56:01,440
and the fishery and Eastern Channel has collapse. It's not

821
00:56:01,559 --> 00:56:04,880
properly assessed by Seafast for reasons which I've never understood.

822
00:56:06,199 --> 00:56:10,000
But the whole thing is certainly in a period of

823
00:56:10,079 --> 00:56:14,360
very significant change. And Bryce Stewart is a real old

824
00:56:14,360 --> 00:56:17,400
fashioned style zoologist. I don't mean to say he's behind

825
00:56:17,440 --> 00:56:21,840
the times, but he works for the MBA and he's

826
00:56:21,880 --> 00:56:25,679
got access to resources that I don't have now, so

827
00:56:26,000 --> 00:56:26,400
I have.

828
00:56:26,440 --> 00:56:27,079
Speaker 1: To read it.

829
00:56:27,639 --> 00:56:30,880
Speaker 3: Mosquito wrote up this paper in twenty fifteen or eighteen,

830
00:56:30,960 --> 00:56:34,960
whenever it was. There's no doubt at all that lots

831
00:56:35,000 --> 00:56:38,599
of landings have increased from the low landings from the

832
00:56:38,639 --> 00:56:42,400
low hundreds up to two thy five hundred tons and

833
00:56:42,480 --> 00:56:47,360
have definitely stabilized or this year they will have decreased, probably,

834
00:56:48,400 --> 00:56:52,000
but the fishery can't go on forever increasing. But we're

835
00:56:52,039 --> 00:56:57,840
talking about a huge increase in the crab landings up

836
00:56:57,840 --> 00:57:01,400
to about twenty zerousand tons and now it's down to

837
00:57:01,440 --> 00:57:04,519
fifteen thousand tons over the last ten years. That's the

838
00:57:04,559 --> 00:57:09,159
total England, England and Wales landings, or North Sea and

839
00:57:09,480 --> 00:57:15,519
Channel landings. The Channel fishery which was harvested at roughly

840
00:57:15,760 --> 00:57:20,320
msy for crab, there's a female, it's a hen only

841
00:57:20,400 --> 00:57:25,559
fishery is now overfished. The latest Sea Pass assessment in

842
00:57:25,639 --> 00:57:29,920
twenty twenty three show that the Southwest crab had already

843
00:57:30,800 --> 00:57:38,320
gone too high to deliver msy. And so wherever you

844
00:57:38,400 --> 00:57:42,880
look at the moment and Beshley Pool, who is secretary

845
00:57:42,920 --> 00:57:48,480
of the Western Channel Fishermen's Groups, is tearing her hair out,

846
00:57:48,880 --> 00:57:51,920
and she's actually taking part in the f rep next

847
00:57:51,920 --> 00:57:55,159
week in Norwich, and I'll talk to her personally because

848
00:57:56,199 --> 00:58:00,440
her members are in serious trouble this year. Some are

849
00:58:00,480 --> 00:58:05,679
catching octopus, some have switched to but I don't I

850
00:58:05,679 --> 00:58:10,800
don't think that's sustainable. The market is probably limited to

851
00:58:10,880 --> 00:58:16,760
a degree, and obviously it's it's very destabilizing. And if

852
00:58:16,840 --> 00:58:21,440
you can't catch your annual income, what do you do

853
00:58:21,679 --> 00:58:24,920
Unless you've actually got money put by, you're in queer Street.

854
00:58:25,039 --> 00:58:29,519
So it doesn't look too good. I mean, I did

855
00:58:29,679 --> 00:58:32,039
participate in a lot of icy stuff in the year

856
00:58:32,079 --> 00:58:34,639
has gone past, but we'll skip that for the moment.

857
00:58:34,920 --> 00:58:38,639
I was chaired the Shelvish Committee. I chaired what was

858
00:58:38,679 --> 00:58:41,119
called the Consultant Committee in the old days. Which is

859
00:58:41,159 --> 00:58:44,800
the committee that had all of the sort of scientific

860
00:58:45,039 --> 00:58:49,440
groups reporting to it, and then I reported from that

861
00:58:49,719 --> 00:58:52,079
meeting to the to what was called the Bureau, which

862
00:58:52,159 --> 00:58:54,920
was all of the heads of mission for the for

863
00:58:55,000 --> 00:58:59,039
the ICYS countries. That was a very special period for

864
00:58:59,119 --> 00:59:04,880
me and I enjoyed it greatly. But you know it's

865
00:59:04,920 --> 00:59:08,320
an aside in the sense of this conversation, So let

866
00:59:08,320 --> 00:59:13,519
me just say that in the two thousands mid two thousands,

867
00:59:13,559 --> 00:59:18,440
towards the end of the two thousands, Peter Hunt made

868
00:59:18,480 --> 00:59:22,559
me an honorary life member of SAGB and I spent

869
00:59:22,840 --> 00:59:30,920
about five or eight years doing two things. We obtained

870
00:59:31,039 --> 00:59:36,800
money to develop a shellfish industry development strategy, and I

871
00:59:36,880 --> 00:59:45,400
reviewed all of the statistics and the biology and descriptions

872
00:59:45,440 --> 00:59:48,199
of the fisheries of all of the main shellfish species,

873
00:59:48,239 --> 00:59:53,760
the marketable shellfish species whilst the crab, crawfish, the main

874
00:59:53,840 --> 00:59:59,239
mollus ones, cockles and mussels, and one or two others

875
00:59:59,440 --> 01:00:02,480
around the coast. And I used these what was then

876
01:00:02,519 --> 01:00:06,079
the Sea Fisheries Committee data. This was mainly England and

877
01:00:06,119 --> 01:00:09,960
Wales stuff, and I produced a very large document with

878
01:00:10,039 --> 01:00:15,239
about twenty five files of stuff and lots of pictures

879
01:00:15,280 --> 01:00:18,559
and lots of descriptions. It was then sent to the

880
01:00:18,559 --> 01:00:23,159
Seafish Industry Authority and they completely chopped it up into

881
01:00:23,920 --> 01:00:26,039
They said it was too big to publish, and it's

882
01:00:26,079 --> 01:00:28,599
so right. It would have been something like two hundred

883
01:00:28,599 --> 01:00:32,559
pages or something and lots and lots of illustrations. So

884
01:00:32,880 --> 01:00:37,559
they chopped it up and it was published in summary form.

885
01:00:38,719 --> 01:00:41,599
Didn't even keep a summary because it was Newton. Basically,

886
01:00:41,599 --> 01:00:43,840
as far as I was concerned, I put all this

887
01:00:44,039 --> 01:00:47,880
work in. I've still got a folder of files pdf

888
01:00:47,960 --> 01:00:51,880
files of all the data and my words, but it

889
01:00:51,880 --> 01:00:55,039
would have been a pretty heavy tone. Then we got

890
01:00:55,079 --> 01:01:00,280
an EU contract to do the management of ground Crabfisher's report.

891
01:01:00,280 --> 01:01:03,679
This big thing that I showed you earlier on it

892
01:01:03,719 --> 01:01:07,840
was published by the SAGB from an EU grant and

893
01:01:07,920 --> 01:01:11,800
it is, if I say so myself, a complete summary

894
01:01:12,360 --> 01:01:17,360
of the landing trends between nineteen hundred, nineteen sixty and

895
01:01:17,480 --> 01:01:21,559
two thousand and five. It shows logbook date on the

896
01:01:21,559 --> 01:01:23,920
fishermen that we had it, It shows the pictures of

897
01:01:23,960 --> 01:01:28,679
the crab of the crab larval distributions such as they were,

898
01:01:29,000 --> 01:01:32,480
and it discusses management and it looked at the potential

899
01:01:32,920 --> 01:01:37,480
for effort management by looking at the relationship between pot

900
01:01:37,559 --> 01:01:43,519
numbers and vessel length for the English fleet from Seafast Logbook. Now,

901
01:01:43,599 --> 01:01:46,320
I would have carried on with that work if I'd

902
01:01:46,360 --> 01:01:49,639
been in charge of the shellfish team, but I don't

903
01:01:49,639 --> 01:01:52,440
know what happened in the interim. I know Ga Laddis

904
01:01:52,559 --> 01:01:55,519
Lambert is now the head of Shellfish and I went

905
01:01:55,559 --> 01:01:58,559
to see her in the lab about two months ago,

906
01:01:58,679 --> 01:02:02,280
and I've handed over a lot of references from the

907
01:02:02,320 --> 01:02:07,519
past scientific references. I have taken part in many, many

908
01:02:07,599 --> 01:02:11,079
sort of conferences, including the status of the cockle and

909
01:02:11,159 --> 01:02:14,320
mussel stocks in the Wash, which was a very large

910
01:02:14,599 --> 01:02:20,320
symposium volume that was that we produced at one stage.

911
01:02:21,519 --> 01:02:26,920
But these are gray literature, not scientific papers. We used

912
01:02:26,960 --> 01:02:32,280
to have a publication called Shellfish News in Seafas and

913
01:02:32,440 --> 01:02:35,159
I don't think that that's produced any longer, but it

914
01:02:35,199 --> 01:02:38,440
had articles about crockle management in it. So there is

915
01:02:38,599 --> 01:02:42,639
historical record. And you know, if I was to live

916
01:02:42,719 --> 01:02:47,199
long enough, you know, I could do another twenty podcasts

917
01:02:47,239 --> 01:02:51,119
about all these sorts of things. But the point is

918
01:02:51,239 --> 01:02:55,000
that on the strength of that I have become a

919
01:02:55,119 --> 01:02:59,760
sort of a walking encyclopedia of the past, but the

920
01:03:00,000 --> 01:03:02,719
detail is now gone, if you see what I mean.

921
01:03:03,239 --> 01:03:07,360
I know the principles. But I became a director of

922
01:03:07,880 --> 01:03:14,719
Shellfish Association Limited leading up to about ten years ago.

923
01:03:15,159 --> 01:03:21,480
Because Fishmonger's Hall, who'd always given us rooms free of

924
01:03:21,599 --> 01:03:24,440
charge and the conference free of charge and all the

925
01:03:24,440 --> 01:03:27,679
rest of it, a new regime at the Hall decided

926
01:03:27,719 --> 01:03:32,400
that that wasn't an appropriate relationship any longer, and so

927
01:03:32,519 --> 01:03:36,639
we became a limited company. And my directorship of that

928
01:03:36,719 --> 01:03:39,880
company lapses at the end of next year I think,

929
01:03:40,159 --> 01:03:43,320
or this yes, probably sometime in the middle of next year.

930
01:03:43,719 --> 01:03:46,960
What it means is that I go to the board meetings.

931
01:03:47,800 --> 01:03:50,880
I am an honorary chairman of the Crustacean Committee. Mike

932
01:03:51,000 --> 01:03:55,400
Roach is now the chair of the Crustacean Committee NFF

933
01:03:55,559 --> 01:04:00,199
guy who did do his PhD with Magnus Johnson. There's

934
01:04:00,199 --> 01:04:04,440
another PhD working for him, Nick Burt or something who's

935
01:04:04,440 --> 01:04:06,679
going to give a talk at the Shellfish Conference this

936
01:04:06,719 --> 01:04:10,039
summer in June. And Rome Betts, who was doing a

937
01:04:10,119 --> 01:04:14,440
sociological study under Magnus. So I have contacts with Magnus

938
01:04:14,480 --> 01:04:18,199
about those sorts of things. The thing about the SAGB

939
01:04:18,480 --> 01:04:24,119
is that it's also obviously very involved in the mollusk

940
01:04:24,239 --> 01:04:29,199
industry trying to get a smooth pathway for exporters of

941
01:04:29,960 --> 01:04:33,320
rope grown muscles in the Channel. For example, John Homyard's

942
01:04:33,360 --> 01:04:38,519
project still sending them to France through the whistles and

943
01:04:38,519 --> 01:04:44,400
wheels that Brexit has created. In my personal view, Brexit

944
01:04:44,440 --> 01:04:47,639
has been a complete disaster, as many of us always

945
01:04:47,679 --> 01:04:52,199
thought it would be, and the border posts in France

946
01:04:53,079 --> 01:04:57,639
can be very difficult, and people who buy crabs on

947
01:04:57,679 --> 01:05:00,440
the coast down on the South coast and stick them

948
01:05:00,440 --> 01:05:03,320
in a vivier Laurie really want to get them through

949
01:05:03,360 --> 01:05:06,239
the customs posts at the other side as quickly as possible.

950
01:05:06,360 --> 01:05:11,000
For obvious reasons. My daughter lives in Central Spain, and

951
01:05:11,039 --> 01:05:13,199
when I used to go to Central Spain to be

952
01:05:13,320 --> 01:05:17,679
with her, you could get Scottish crabs at the local supermarket.

953
01:05:18,880 --> 01:05:24,000
They've been trucked down to gavalan Is where she lives,

954
01:05:24,079 --> 01:05:28,639
which is sort of quite inland, and it's a French

955
01:05:28,679 --> 01:05:32,159
supermarket and they've got Scottish brown crabs on the counter there.

956
01:05:32,880 --> 01:05:40,039
But problems that we've had with veterinary certification inspectors in

957
01:05:40,119 --> 01:05:44,800
France making life difficult just because they want to justify

958
01:05:44,920 --> 01:05:50,320
their posting. You know, these things are tricky, and obviously

959
01:05:51,039 --> 01:05:55,159
we have messy waters in the UK. The water quality

960
01:05:55,199 --> 01:05:57,880
around the coast is not as pristine as it is

961
01:05:57,920 --> 01:06:01,039
off the Scottish coast. In most many of the English

962
01:06:01,079 --> 01:06:06,239
coastal waters, the bacterial quality varies between Class A and

963
01:06:06,320 --> 01:06:09,519
Class SPEED depending on the time of year and whether

964
01:06:09,559 --> 01:06:13,760
there are storms, and whether there's overflow of rain water

965
01:06:13,880 --> 01:06:16,639
from some of the storm outflows and all this kind

966
01:06:16,719 --> 01:06:20,840
of caper. So you know, the SAGB plays a big

967
01:06:20,920 --> 01:06:23,960
role in trying to smooth out all of those difficulties.

968
01:06:24,400 --> 01:06:27,719
And then suddenly you'll have heard of crustacean compassion, have

969
01:06:27,840 --> 01:06:33,400
you yep, yes, Well we have a battle royal with them,

970
01:06:33,480 --> 01:06:36,800
don't we, because they're all about humane killing. They have

971
01:06:36,880 --> 01:06:40,159
a huge budget, and they had the London School of

972
01:06:40,199 --> 01:06:44,519
Economic Scientific study about doual lobsters and crabs feel pain

973
01:06:45,679 --> 01:06:49,719
and allegedly they do, and all of that sort of thing.

974
01:06:49,840 --> 01:06:52,719
So a lot of the discussions in SAGB have been

975
01:06:52,760 --> 01:06:57,079
around those sorts of problems, and David Jarrett, who's the director,

976
01:06:57,400 --> 01:07:00,360
is run off his feet most of the time running

977
01:07:00,400 --> 01:07:06,000
around trying to troubleshoot all of these major issues. And

978
01:07:06,039 --> 01:07:09,679
I'm not deeply engaged in the detail, but i am

979
01:07:09,800 --> 01:07:14,000
sitting on the Crustacean Committee and the Mollus Committee, and

980
01:07:14,119 --> 01:07:20,000
also the Council which reviews our position on these items.

981
01:07:20,039 --> 01:07:23,679
So I'm sort of reasonably connected to these more modern

982
01:07:23,719 --> 01:07:27,000
issues on which had I been in Sea Fast years

983
01:07:27,000 --> 01:07:31,480
ago and translated that position to now, I would probably

984
01:07:31,519 --> 01:07:36,280
have had quite a detailed knowledge and opinion. So I'm

985
01:07:36,400 --> 01:07:39,440
very aware of how the industry is struggling with these

986
01:07:39,480 --> 01:07:43,840
sorts of issues. The one great thing that SAGB did

987
01:07:43,880 --> 01:07:49,159
some years ago was to secure exports of crabs to China,

988
01:07:50,079 --> 01:07:55,880
and in some cases there was a serious issue about cambium,

989
01:07:56,199 --> 01:08:01,400
which the Chinese said we shouldn't buy crabs with which

990
01:08:01,440 --> 01:08:04,840
have got high cabmium loads. So I was quite involved

991
01:08:05,599 --> 01:08:09,960
some years ago now in researching the role of cabmium

992
01:08:10,800 --> 01:08:15,880
in metabolism and all the rest of it. And you know,

993
01:08:16,199 --> 01:08:19,119
SAGB had to bite on the bullet and formed a

994
01:08:19,159 --> 01:08:23,119
group of the crab industry in order to try and

995
01:08:23,840 --> 01:08:29,880
deal with the crab and cabia. Miss you. We have

996
01:08:30,119 --> 01:08:36,800
been allowed to export crabs after establishing a monitoring program

997
01:08:37,039 --> 01:08:42,000
and crabs. There is a self monitoring arrangement with the

998
01:08:42,079 --> 01:08:46,760
crab group of the SAGB, so that if CABMIM were

999
01:08:46,800 --> 01:08:50,600
to increase beyond certain based levels, those crab would not

1000
01:08:50,640 --> 01:08:54,479
be eligible for export to China. But by and large

1001
01:08:54,600 --> 01:08:58,479
we've resecured that trade to a certain degree.

1002
01:08:58,600 --> 01:09:02,000
Speaker 1: But I did that podcast recently with that guy in

1003
01:09:02,079 --> 01:09:07,239
China and one of the things that I sayst them

1004
01:09:07,319 --> 01:09:12,159
that says what we found was quite bizarre, strange.

1005
01:09:13,000 --> 01:09:14,640
Speaker 2: I said, China, come along.

1006
01:09:15,399 --> 01:09:19,079
Speaker 1: It was a year or two ago now and no

1007
01:09:19,279 --> 01:09:24,720
crab from the UK because there was a problem with

1008
01:09:24,800 --> 01:09:30,039
the water and there was a bacteria, so that market

1009
01:09:30,159 --> 01:09:34,479
wasn't available to a fisherman and then a Dutch company

1010
01:09:35,359 --> 01:09:39,239
they started buying it. So they come into the market

1011
01:09:39,600 --> 01:09:40,920
and do you know where they were putting it?

1012
01:09:41,600 --> 01:09:44,560
Speaker 2: China? Yeah, and it was fine.

1013
01:09:45,399 --> 01:09:49,439
Speaker 3: Yes, it is okay now to certainly within certain limits.

1014
01:09:49,439 --> 01:09:52,560
There is a limit and if they're not allowed to

1015
01:09:52,560 --> 01:09:55,960
breach the limit, but if they're within limits, as he.

1016
01:09:55,960 --> 01:09:59,079
Speaker 1: Said himself, the one problem we have to not get

1017
01:09:59,119 --> 01:10:03,239
cluded over with the politics commitment.

1018
01:10:05,119 --> 01:10:08,880
Speaker 3: Oh yes, well, there has been a visitation this last

1019
01:10:09,479 --> 01:10:16,359
ten days from the Chinese authorities to verify what we're

1020
01:10:16,359 --> 01:10:20,439
doing in this context, and arsenic has now crept up

1021
01:10:20,479 --> 01:10:24,760
as being an additional requirement. David Jared has taken them

1022
01:10:24,880 --> 01:10:29,239
round ports to see how things are progressing in terms

1023
01:10:29,239 --> 01:10:32,359
of monitoring and all the rest of it. So that

1024
01:10:32,520 --> 01:10:35,239
is always going to be a potentially live issue. But

1025
01:10:35,640 --> 01:10:38,680
I have to say that within the last year, I

1026
01:10:38,720 --> 01:10:41,680
think at the last conference we had a lecture short

1027
01:10:41,800 --> 01:10:50,119
lecture online presentation online in the conference room by the

1028
01:10:50,399 --> 01:10:55,840
British Embassy in Beijing, which are trying very hard to

1029
01:10:56,760 --> 01:11:01,520
market agricultural and fisheries products in China.

1030
01:11:04,079 --> 01:11:04,600
Speaker 1: There and there.

1031
01:11:04,920 --> 01:11:07,600
Speaker 3: There are certainly exports going from the EU as well,

1032
01:11:09,159 --> 01:11:12,239
so things are not as bad as they have been,

1033
01:11:13,720 --> 01:11:16,319
but you never know whether the sword of dam the

1034
01:11:16,359 --> 01:11:18,239
Fleees is going to fall, and I think that the

1035
01:11:18,239 --> 01:11:22,960
welfare issue is a significant one. We also have the

1036
01:11:22,960 --> 01:11:27,640
project going which I'm not involved in directly, but because

1037
01:11:27,680 --> 01:11:32,640
of things like banding of lobster clause. There's a Dutch

1038
01:11:32,680 --> 01:11:35,880
company and the guy's been going round the ports and

1039
01:11:35,920 --> 01:11:39,600
I think he's been to Scotland as well. His name

1040
01:11:39,640 --> 01:11:42,880
eludes me. I've got it somewhere. It's a core binder

1041
01:11:43,199 --> 01:11:46,720
machine and it will be about the size of a

1042
01:11:46,760 --> 01:11:50,600
pc is square, but it will be about the size

1043
01:11:50,600 --> 01:11:52,920
of sort of like a foot by a foot by

1044
01:11:52,920 --> 01:11:56,880
a foot in the old measurements, and it will be

1045
01:11:56,960 --> 01:11:59,520
something that you can insert the clause of the lobster.

1046
01:12:00,199 --> 01:12:03,680
A proper plastic sheeting will wrap round the clause so

1047
01:12:03,720 --> 01:12:07,640
that you don't have to nick them. That's one of

1048
01:12:07,680 --> 01:12:13,560
the things. We have people who are contracted now to

1049
01:12:13,840 --> 01:12:18,960
do webs just general communications on the internet on behalf

1050
01:12:19,000 --> 01:12:24,439
of the association, and recipes and all those sorts of things.

1051
01:12:24,920 --> 01:12:28,760
So SAGB is trying very hard and it is of

1052
01:12:28,800 --> 01:12:33,560
Great Britain, so there should be some Scottish members, probably

1053
01:12:33,680 --> 01:12:39,319
not in the minority, but still very valuable. David jard

1054
01:12:39,399 --> 01:12:42,399
is in his early sixties. I don't know what's going

1055
01:12:42,479 --> 01:12:46,039
to happen when he retires, and who would the where

1056
01:12:46,199 --> 01:12:49,479
was all to do that job. He started as an

1057
01:12:49,479 --> 01:12:54,119
oyster cultivator and a muscle cultivator in the River X

1058
01:12:55,199 --> 01:13:02,079
and then his family situation changed and he came up

1059
01:13:02,119 --> 01:13:09,199
to SAGB, leaving that business behind and he's been fantastic.

1060
01:13:09,640 --> 01:13:17,199
He's always lobbying the MPs at what's in the parliamentary

1061
01:13:17,239 --> 01:13:21,520
group that's associated with shellfish, and of course changes of

1062
01:13:21,560 --> 01:13:27,079
government haven't helped. Because Daniel Zeichner was speaking at our

1063
01:13:27,159 --> 01:13:31,399
conference last year and he had been around the industry

1064
01:13:31,520 --> 01:13:37,039
reports on two or three occasions, getting a brief when

1065
01:13:37,039 --> 01:13:40,880
he was in opposition. So he became a fisheries minister

1066
01:13:41,800 --> 01:13:45,720
for several months, but then for some reason was mysteriously

1067
01:13:45,840 --> 01:13:51,920
removed by the powers of being government and replaced by

1068
01:13:52,000 --> 01:13:54,560
Angela Eagle. Well, I think she's actually doing quite a

1069
01:13:54,560 --> 01:13:59,000
good job. But Daniel Zeichner was very easy to get

1070
01:13:59,039 --> 01:14:02,920
on with and was very understanding of the industry, even

1071
01:14:02,960 --> 01:14:06,520
though he's MP for Cambridge. So those are the sorts

1072
01:14:06,520 --> 01:14:09,680
of things which have been part of my hinterland now

1073
01:14:09,760 --> 01:14:13,800
for you know, a long time. At a certain period

1074
01:14:13,840 --> 01:14:16,159
I was chairman of the Buckland Foundation. I don't know

1075
01:14:16,159 --> 01:14:20,119
whether you've heard of Frank Buckland, but he wrote the

1076
01:14:20,159 --> 01:14:24,119
salmon fisheries reports in the eighteen eighties. He did a

1077
01:14:24,159 --> 01:14:27,760
lot report in the eighteen eighties, and he was an

1078
01:14:27,800 --> 01:14:31,880
animal collector. He ate all the animals that he collected

1079
01:14:32,560 --> 01:14:35,760
at some stage or other, and he was a very

1080
01:14:35,840 --> 01:14:39,840
sort of either Edward Wardion or Victorian type of character.

1081
01:14:40,319 --> 01:14:43,319
He'd been in the Lifeguards, I think, or the horse, Yes,

1082
01:14:43,359 --> 01:14:47,000
the lifeguards. But he was a zoologist, a hobby zoologist.

1083
01:14:47,520 --> 01:14:47,920
Speaker 2: Anyway.

1084
01:14:48,680 --> 01:14:54,039
Speaker 3: When he died, his family eventually folded up in nineteen

1085
01:14:54,079 --> 01:14:57,800
twenty two, and he gave and they gave a substantial

1086
01:14:57,840 --> 01:15:01,840
amount of money to be invested. The Buckland Foundation was formed,

1087
01:15:02,319 --> 01:15:05,319
so they had a Buckland lecture every year or every

1088
01:15:05,359 --> 01:15:10,119
second year on fisheries topics of all sorts, and people

1089
01:15:10,319 --> 01:15:12,800
like who's the chap in Shetland.

1090
01:15:12,239 --> 01:15:14,680
Speaker 1: That's always talking John Goodland?

1091
01:15:15,079 --> 01:15:19,720
Speaker 3: Yes, John, for example, gave one, Barrdese gave one, and

1092
01:15:19,800 --> 01:15:23,479
I was the Buckland professor in twenty fifteen when I

1093
01:15:23,600 --> 01:15:27,159
told them the Cord recovery story. You know, I went

1094
01:15:27,199 --> 01:15:31,279
to Harvard University and did a talk there, and I

1095
01:15:31,319 --> 01:15:34,479
did one in Fishmonger's Hall with Carla Bryant who's just

1096
01:15:34,600 --> 01:15:39,840
retired from Seafas. Barridese was there and Tim Oliver.

1097
01:15:39,600 --> 01:15:40,640
Speaker 1: And all the rest of it.

1098
01:15:41,279 --> 01:15:46,399
Speaker 3: Okay, I'm going to tell you something now which is

1099
01:15:47,199 --> 01:15:50,359
probably just I'm going to leave it as a statement

1100
01:15:51,319 --> 01:15:55,479
that I think you probably need to read Fishing News

1101
01:15:55,640 --> 01:15:59,920
next week and there will be something related to me

1102
01:16:00,399 --> 01:16:01,279
in it.

1103
01:16:01,359 --> 01:16:05,680
Speaker 1: Oh, good stories here. One of the things I was

1104
01:16:05,720 --> 01:16:09,159
going to say to you as well, Colin, is that

1105
01:16:09,319 --> 01:16:14,159
Brace Stewart or podcast that was released is ninety three.

1106
01:16:15,000 --> 01:16:19,039
Speaker 2: Now eighty nine. Is a guy I've talked about, Richard Page.

1107
01:16:19,520 --> 01:16:23,960
Speaker 1: He's American, but he's out in China, and what a

1108
01:16:24,239 --> 01:16:27,479
fascinate in story. And the reason I'm telling you is

1109
01:16:27,479 --> 01:16:30,359
that there might be well, I would say there almost

1110
01:16:30,479 --> 01:16:37,399
will be something of interest for SGB because he talks

1111
01:16:37,600 --> 01:16:40,880
about two things that he's been involved with.

1112
01:16:41,439 --> 01:16:41,640
Speaker 2: Now.

1113
01:16:41,760 --> 01:16:45,000
Speaker 1: One they were building at the side of a river,

1114
01:16:45,600 --> 01:16:49,159
so to make sure that it wasn't too much subsidence

1115
01:16:49,199 --> 01:16:55,039
and the water that we denote they used to make

1116
01:16:55,079 --> 01:17:01,359
sure that secured the building muscles right wow, And he

1117
01:17:01,399 --> 01:17:04,199
says there was a glue. They give us a sort

1118
01:17:04,239 --> 01:17:08,920
of glue effect. And then he goes on and tells

1119
01:17:09,119 --> 01:17:13,720
about a situation out in China there and there's a

1120
01:17:14,159 --> 01:17:20,199
bay like a sea, and after the war there was

1121
01:17:20,600 --> 01:17:24,159
paper mills something like that, and there was an enormous

1122
01:17:24,199 --> 01:17:29,680
problem with pollution in the sea. They cleared it. And

1123
01:17:29,800 --> 01:17:33,319
you know what was used to clear the pollution in

1124
01:17:33,399 --> 01:17:39,920
the sea oysters oysters And they call it the Great

1125
01:17:40,199 --> 01:17:43,800
Wall of Oysters. And he goes on in the podcast

1126
01:17:43,840 --> 01:17:48,920
to explain how they had five five or six different

1127
01:17:49,039 --> 01:17:53,319
levels and one was filtering the water, one was absorbing

1128
01:17:53,399 --> 01:17:57,760
the bacteria, and he goes through how it filtering and

1129
01:17:58,159 --> 01:18:04,680
the process. Not it's not sensationalism. The point is making

1130
01:18:04,760 --> 01:18:09,439
that he feels that and what I thought was interesting.

1131
01:18:10,039 --> 01:18:14,319
We're always suspicious of China, and we always whatever we

1132
01:18:14,359 --> 01:18:19,319
think that their ulterior motives, and that after listening to

1133
01:18:19,520 --> 01:18:21,640
some of what he was in, I think we could

1134
01:18:21,760 --> 01:18:22,560
learn from them.

1135
01:18:22,600 --> 01:18:23,640
Speaker 2: Call or Oh.

1136
01:18:23,720 --> 01:18:26,039
Speaker 3: I think I think there's lots of things that are

1137
01:18:26,079 --> 01:18:30,880
going on in China that that is true. I saw

1138
01:18:31,000 --> 01:18:34,560
recently somewhere I can't think where it was. I think

1139
01:18:34,600 --> 01:18:37,800
it was somewhere in the in obviously I was on

1140
01:18:37,840 --> 01:18:41,760
my mobile phone somewhere. But they now have in some

1141
01:18:41,840 --> 01:18:44,399
of these huge high rise blocks in some of the

1142
01:18:44,479 --> 01:18:50,800
more the most modern Chinese cities, they have hanging gardens

1143
01:18:50,920 --> 01:18:54,479
around the outside of the building with with you know,

1144
01:18:54,560 --> 01:19:00,239
which are producing sort of or homes for plants of

1145
01:19:00,279 --> 01:19:03,239
one sort or another, which are doing the right thing

1146
01:19:03,359 --> 01:19:07,159
for air pollution and things of that nature. So I

1147
01:19:07,199 --> 01:19:10,680
think there's a lot of ecological stuff going on. In

1148
01:19:10,720 --> 01:19:13,119
addition obviously they're pumping out.

1149
01:19:14,439 --> 01:19:17,760
Speaker 1: Well, that was episode in name with Richard, and then

1150
01:19:18,079 --> 01:19:21,800
after that, I can't remember, it's ninety one or two,

1151
01:19:22,720 --> 01:19:26,600
Richard came back needed a we both we did a

1152
01:19:26,640 --> 01:19:30,960
podcast and a guy joined as Greg Mercer. His name

1153
01:19:31,119 --> 01:19:38,119
is from the Maritime States, right, So the podcast there

1154
01:19:38,479 --> 01:19:44,359
covered the Canadian side the Chinese saide, and it was

1155
01:19:44,399 --> 01:19:48,479
fascinating and taking it together. Now, Greg Mercer is a

1156
01:19:48,560 --> 01:19:53,640
guy who has written a book called The Lobster Trap.

1157
01:19:56,600 --> 01:20:01,000
And one of the things I find, I think it's

1158
01:20:01,119 --> 01:20:06,439
really intriguing and fascinate And Colin, do you know, I

1159
01:20:06,479 --> 01:20:11,079
haven't written a book, but I often think how people

1160
01:20:11,479 --> 01:20:15,439
arrive at the title when they're writing a book. And

1161
01:20:15,720 --> 01:20:19,680
what I thought was fascinating about the Griggs book The

1162
01:20:19,720 --> 01:20:25,239
Lobster Trap. You're not long into the book until you

1163
01:20:25,399 --> 01:20:29,319
realize everybody involved is in the trap.

1164
01:20:30,439 --> 01:20:40,600
Speaker 2: Yes, it's oh bunderful title. Yeah.

1165
01:20:41,079 --> 01:20:43,640
Speaker 3: I never really sat down and wrote a chronology in

1166
01:20:43,720 --> 01:20:46,119
my career, and I've got lots of diaries of course

1167
01:20:46,159 --> 01:20:48,720
that are stashed away somewhere, but I mean it would

1168
01:20:48,720 --> 01:20:51,880
take hours to go through that. But I mean I've

1169
01:20:51,920 --> 01:20:54,479
covered a lot of the items that I was personally

1170
01:20:54,600 --> 01:20:57,640
very involved in and you can tell where my heart

1171
01:20:57,800 --> 01:21:01,560
is in so many ways. It's funny though that.

1172
01:21:01,560 --> 01:21:03,880
Speaker 2: I you will.

1173
01:21:03,720 --> 01:21:07,479
Speaker 3: Have noticed I think that there are certain memory lapses now.

1174
01:21:09,119 --> 01:21:13,760
It is kind of annoying because I've always had an

1175
01:21:13,800 --> 01:21:19,600
elephantine memory, and in a sense, all of these incidents

1176
01:21:19,640 --> 01:21:22,960
are still there, but you know, the names associated with

1177
01:21:23,079 --> 01:21:28,359
them may have gone or whatever. And it's I wouldn't

1178
01:21:28,600 --> 01:21:34,479
think even attempt to write a book now, although ironically

1179
01:21:35,359 --> 01:21:38,399
I used to write poetry. And in fact I was

1180
01:21:38,520 --> 01:21:40,760
just going through my cupboard in order to get this

1181
01:21:40,920 --> 01:21:45,640
computer out because I used my filing cupboard. Here I

1182
01:21:45,760 --> 01:21:50,119
found by accident something I put into one of the

1183
01:21:50,159 --> 01:21:53,000
pockets of the filing cabinet, which is a medal that

1184
01:21:53,079 --> 01:21:57,800
I got in nineteen sixty four for poetry at the

1185
01:21:57,920 --> 01:22:01,560
University of Breading, where I I won a prize for

1186
01:22:01,840 --> 01:22:07,199
English verse of all things, And you know, and I

1187
01:22:07,199 --> 01:22:11,079
do sketching. I do my Christmas card every year. Usually

1188
01:22:11,600 --> 01:22:13,600
sometimes it's a photograph, but usually.

1189
01:22:13,439 --> 01:22:14,119
Speaker 2: It's a drawing.

1190
01:22:15,000 --> 01:22:17,840
Speaker 3: And so there is another side to me which is

1191
01:22:18,640 --> 01:22:23,720
memory proofed. But a lot of the stuff I talk

1192
01:22:23,800 --> 01:22:27,199
about here and it's not just me, you know, I

1193
01:22:27,239 --> 01:22:30,640
had team. I had a team around me, and I

1194
01:22:30,680 --> 01:22:33,239
would like that to be clear in the podcast that

1195
01:22:33,680 --> 01:22:39,920
I'm used. I'm talking about issues very intimately associated with

1196
01:22:40,520 --> 01:22:43,760
and led on many of them. But I did have

1197
01:22:44,520 --> 01:22:49,319
an excellent supporting team, and you know, you can't mention

1198
01:22:49,399 --> 01:22:52,680
them all by name. The new lady who's running the

1199
01:22:52,680 --> 01:22:56,319
shellfish team at Seafast now has a list of the

1200
01:22:56,359 --> 01:23:00,359
publications that we produced in the scientific literature. A lot

1201
01:23:00,359 --> 01:23:04,560
of what we did was advice notes to London, and

1202
01:23:04,600 --> 01:23:07,520
of course, you know, a they were sort of semi

1203
01:23:07,560 --> 01:23:11,720
confidential at the time and all that. I'll tell you

1204
01:23:11,760 --> 01:23:16,880
one funny story now before I sign off, if I may.

1205
01:23:18,039 --> 01:23:21,479
You know, all this business about what you might call

1206
01:23:21,680 --> 01:23:27,439
politicians being bought by various people, you know, even the

1207
01:23:27,479 --> 01:23:33,119
Epstein Mandelssohn thing or whatever, it's anathema to me. My

1208
01:23:33,279 --> 01:23:37,800
training as a civil servant, dating from the sixties is

1209
01:23:37,920 --> 01:23:44,159
that you couldn't accept gifts if it looked in any

1210
01:23:44,199 --> 01:23:47,920
shape or form, as if that was associated with giving

1211
01:23:48,399 --> 01:23:51,279
advice that was user friendly.

1212
01:23:51,800 --> 01:23:53,039
Speaker 1: We were independent.

1213
01:23:54,880 --> 01:23:58,800
Speaker 3: I don't have one left now, but the first book

1214
01:23:58,840 --> 01:24:01,479
that I was given, I mean when I joined the lab,

1215
01:24:01,520 --> 01:24:05,239
they said go to the store, get a notebook and

1216
01:24:05,319 --> 01:24:09,039
a rubber because the rubbers are in short supply and

1217
01:24:09,079 --> 01:24:13,680
we keep them under lock and key, and the book

1218
01:24:13,920 --> 01:24:19,640
had hmso for the public service. And I've never lost

1219
01:24:19,640 --> 01:24:24,479
that ethos. Yeah, And it's funny because things are so

1220
01:24:24,680 --> 01:24:28,199
different now. The sorts of things that are being revealed

1221
01:24:28,279 --> 01:24:33,680
on a semi daily basis, particularly in relation to certain

1222
01:24:33,720 --> 01:24:38,439
members of the alleged hierarchy of the of the past,

1223
01:24:39,760 --> 01:24:44,600
are unthinkable to to many of us because it just

1224
01:24:44,720 --> 01:24:47,760
wasn't like that. You were you were, you were in

1225
01:24:47,800 --> 01:24:52,920
the truth game. And I well, one time, when I

1226
01:24:53,000 --> 01:24:57,800
was doing the fish work, I was involved in advice

1227
01:24:58,720 --> 01:25:04,640
in relation to macerel box down in the Southwest, and

1228
01:25:05,920 --> 01:25:09,439
we came to some decision about that in ceafas and

1229
01:25:09,479 --> 01:25:13,640
we advised London accordingly, and then some decisions were taken.

1230
01:25:14,640 --> 01:25:16,000
Speaker 1: The details.

1231
01:25:16,920 --> 01:25:20,359
Speaker 3: Are not particularly relevant really, but it was about either

1232
01:25:20,359 --> 01:25:22,920
the duration or the size of the box, that sort

1233
01:25:22,920 --> 01:25:29,039
of thing. And at a certain moment subsequent to the

1234
01:25:29,119 --> 01:25:34,079
decision being taken and described in Fishing News, a little

1235
01:25:34,319 --> 01:25:38,359
envelope arrived in my intro and it was a certain

1236
01:25:38,439 --> 01:25:43,680
gentleman in a certain location who was affected by the

1237
01:25:43,800 --> 01:25:48,319
macrol box and it contained a ticket for a football

1238
01:25:48,359 --> 01:25:54,319
match in a certain Southwestern town, and this was a

1239
01:25:54,359 --> 01:25:59,359
gesture of thanks for taking an objective view of the topic,

1240
01:26:01,279 --> 01:26:04,720
and very flattering though it was. My first action was

1241
01:26:04,760 --> 01:26:07,520
to write to him and say, I'm sorry, I I

1242
01:26:07,760 --> 01:26:14,119
although this is a relatively small thing, I can't accept

1243
01:26:14,159 --> 01:26:19,039
it because you know, it's just not done in a way.

1244
01:26:19,520 --> 01:26:21,960
And that might have been what might be considered by

1245
01:26:22,000 --> 01:26:26,720
my ball best to have been an extreme Presbyterian.

1246
01:26:26,000 --> 01:26:28,399
Speaker 2: View of the situation, but.

1247
01:26:29,760 --> 01:26:31,560
Speaker 3: It was how we lived at that time.

1248
01:26:32,279 --> 01:26:38,239
Speaker 1: Well a similarly in Colin on the say that I

1249
01:26:38,279 --> 01:26:40,600
would say when I say, say the sade of the

1250
01:26:40,680 --> 01:26:43,800
industry I was on when I was on the shore

1251
01:26:43,880 --> 01:26:49,039
base and trading, I'll never forget. It'll be the eighties,

1252
01:26:49,159 --> 01:26:53,119
back in the eighties. I'm sitting in the accountant's office

1253
01:26:53,840 --> 01:27:00,159
reviewing IF some figures and my manager called me my

1254
01:27:00,319 --> 01:27:07,119
phone mobile and now he was telling me that we

1255
01:27:07,199 --> 01:27:12,720
had taken load a few loads of redfish from Fiue's

1256
01:27:12,840 --> 01:27:18,199
boat sent them to bremer Harven, and he had just

1257
01:27:18,359 --> 01:27:22,720
got news from Bremerhaven that there was a problem. It

1258
01:27:22,840 --> 01:27:28,800
was this particular redfish which it was a Sebastos may

1259
01:27:29,000 --> 01:27:34,359
Mantella and there was coming through the flesh and they

1260
01:27:34,399 --> 01:27:39,039
couldn't use part of it, and it was we were

1261
01:27:39,279 --> 01:27:44,960
down quite a substanial and absolutely on the deal obviously

1262
01:27:45,680 --> 01:27:51,000
I counted maybe so my face drop when I was told.

1263
01:27:52,199 --> 01:27:55,079
And when I come off the phone, he says, oh,

1264
01:27:55,119 --> 01:27:58,520
what happened there? So I told him and he says,

1265
01:27:58,680 --> 01:28:02,760
but you know, he says, you're not liable. It says

1266
01:28:03,239 --> 01:28:08,399
there's nothing in the rating. You don't and it's much

1267
01:28:08,520 --> 01:28:11,520
deeper than that, that is your rate of nothing in

1268
01:28:11,560 --> 01:28:12,079
the rating.

1269
01:28:12,520 --> 01:28:13,720
Speaker 2: But I've given my word.

1270
01:28:15,399 --> 01:28:19,319
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, and that's what we've felt. That went further

1271
01:28:19,479 --> 01:28:21,960
than your your signature.

1272
01:28:22,640 --> 01:28:24,640
Speaker 2: Mm hmmm, mm hmm.

1273
01:28:25,520 --> 01:28:30,600
Speaker 3: Well, I think that you know there's there are all

1274
01:28:30,640 --> 01:28:34,800
sorts of things. I mean, what you know that there's

1275
01:28:34,880 --> 01:28:41,560
quite clearly more cases of lobster scrubbing and various other

1276
01:28:41,640 --> 01:28:45,720
things appearing from time to time in fishing news and

1277
01:28:46,319 --> 01:28:51,680
other aspects of certain us some downsize on the industry.

1278
01:28:53,359 --> 01:28:59,239
But that's a tiny percentage really that we hear about

1279
01:29:00,720 --> 01:29:04,800
of the total industry. And I don't know that. And

1280
01:29:06,000 --> 01:29:11,800
I had experiences in Bridlington where you know, a local

1281
01:29:11,880 --> 01:29:15,520
trouble maker would be sorted out by some of the

1282
01:29:15,600 --> 01:29:21,439
other compatriots of the industry. No names, no pack drill,

1283
01:29:22,880 --> 01:29:27,560
no written record, but the guy would be told, in

1284
01:29:27,640 --> 01:29:31,600
no uncertain terms, don't you shoot your pots over mine

1285
01:29:31,800 --> 01:29:39,640
or whatever it might be. And you know, scrubbing lobsters.

1286
01:29:40,560 --> 01:29:43,560
It happens, There's no question about it. And there are

1287
01:29:43,680 --> 01:29:46,359
some bad apples here and there, and we see about

1288
01:29:46,399 --> 01:29:49,920
them and we hear about them, But by and large,

1289
01:29:50,159 --> 01:29:54,319
I've always felt that the potting industry in particular were

1290
01:29:55,159 --> 01:29:59,840
pretty straightforward people. A lot of them come from long

1291
01:30:00,079 --> 01:30:06,600
established families, like the Cornish crawlfish fishermen, for example. There's

1292
01:30:06,640 --> 01:30:10,600
some really wise people who have been trying to spin

1293
01:30:11,359 --> 01:30:15,279
that fishery out as best they can and persuade the

1294
01:30:15,399 --> 01:30:19,840
MMO to you know, have a good off season and

1295
01:30:19,880 --> 01:30:23,239
this kind of thing. You know that their hearts are

1296
01:30:23,239 --> 01:30:27,760
in the right place. And I've always felt that one

1297
01:30:27,760 --> 01:30:31,359
of the things that the SAGB can do is to

1298
01:30:31,439 --> 01:30:36,279
push for conservation, but take into account that we are

1299
01:30:36,359 --> 01:30:39,720
dealing with people's livelihoods. But the one thing that I

1300
01:30:39,760 --> 01:30:46,319
also feel is that your livelihood still depends on sustainable

1301
01:30:46,359 --> 01:30:54,279
harvesting practices, sustainable harvesting policies and following the regulations, if

1302
01:30:54,319 --> 01:30:58,079
those regulations have been brought in for honest and good

1303
01:30:58,199 --> 01:31:04,279
and necessary scientific really since yeah, well, it's it's been

1304
01:31:04,319 --> 01:31:06,560
a pleasure to talk with you, Jim.

1305
01:31:06,880 --> 01:31:08,199
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know.

1306
01:31:08,840 --> 01:31:11,239
Speaker 3: I just wish that in some ways that you were

1307
01:31:11,279 --> 01:31:13,079
just down the road because we could have had a

1308
01:31:13,119 --> 01:31:14,119
few points together.

1309
01:31:17,439 --> 01:31:24,920
Speaker 1: Well, we'll maybe make that happen one day