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Speaker 1: Hello everyone, and welcome to Seafood Matters. Thank you for

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joining us again. My guest today is Jack Robertson. When

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people talk about the development of square mesh panels in

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the fishing industry, Jack Robertson's name is never far from

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the conversation. So I am absolutely thrilled to welcome Jack

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to Seafood Matters. It's means so much to me, genuinely,

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Hi Jack, thank you for coming on.

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Speaker 2: Oh lovely, Jim Lovely, that's a fantastic introduction and it's

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great to talk to you. We haven't actually talked for

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many a long year, and we should have been. But yes,

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I certainly had good fun with, say, the square mesh development,

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and it was a wonderful time that I had in

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the Marine lab in Aberdeen, developing the whole idea and

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doing the experiments on it, and then eventually getting it

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introduced to legislation to help the fishing industry.

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Speaker 1: I was never on board during the trials, but still

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felt part of it as I believed in it, mainly

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because I had the utmost respect for you. I'm the

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fisherman you worked with.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, Jim, listen, you've said it. My initial experiment started

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on the research vessels, but I quickly needed to get

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into going on board with the commercial fishermen, because not

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only could they produce more fish, but I could also

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show them what was going on with the underwater cameras,

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with the square mession, with their own nets, and every

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one of the skippers, and I sailed with many, many

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many skippers. To a man, they were all brilliant, absolutely brilliant,

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welcomed me on board. We had a fabulous time, worked

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very hard, Jim, because it was twenty four to seven,

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it was a commercial trip. We just fished with them

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as they would fish normally, and we just changed the

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court ends as required to satisfy the experiment. We measured

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the fish as they were working up the fish, and

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they could have been nicer, could have been better, every single.

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Speaker 1: One of them. It was brilliant, fantastic, Jack. When you

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mentioned that the research vessels, there's a guy I've done

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some recordings with, but I would class them as a

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friend as well. He's an officially scientist in Iceland, Chap

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Young Christiansen. Now when your men, it just comes to

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my mind when you mentioned the research vessels, because I

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mean John's and his eighties now obviously long time retired.

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That like yourself, he had a real passion and an

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interest in what he did. And his view about the

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research vessels he reckoned that the way he put it,

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he says they were started building nice new research vessels

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because they didn't want to be going out to see

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on dirty trawlers. That he reckoned that was the biggest

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mistake they made because what it actually what actually, what

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it actually did, was it to fishermen and scientists apart.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, Jim, you've said it all, and it was the

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best thing I did. Was started going away with say,

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the fishermen, not I'm not speaking against the research vessels

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because actually the first square mesh experiment was undertaken on

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a research vessel, the small gold Seeker, and then the Klipeia.

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I did a few trips of square mesh on that

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and the skippers and the crew of the research vessels

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were all ex fishermen and they they were fascinated by

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the square mesh and they helped me enormously. Were they

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were fabulous and in what they did in the development

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of this square mesh. But they were restricted, Jim, by

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the civil service requirement for almost a nine to five

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on on the vessels, so you had to stop to

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give them their the rest and so forth. And that

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was the system we worked to on the research vessels

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and there was no changing that. But what I needed

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was volume volume of fish, particularly lots of small fish,

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to see them escaping. And that's why I moved on

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to the the commercial vessels. And and it was certainly

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the best thing that I could have done for the

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development of the experiments and the idea.

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Speaker 1: And what was the atmosphere in the industry, Like then Zark.

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Speaker 2: The atmosphere was I this is the late nineteen seventies

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early nineteen eighties, and they were going through quite a

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good period. The fish stocks were large, and the atmosphere

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was actually quite good gym. It was a positive atmosphere.

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There were new boats being built, there was quite a

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bit of money in the industry. But things were beginning

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to happen in that stock assessments were suggesting the need

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for quotas. Quotas were being introduced, which the industry obviously

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were a bit concerned about. And then quotas were were

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reduced gradually and so forth, So gradually the atmosphere changed

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to one of tremendous optimism with lots of fish catching

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potential and opportunities to fewer opportunities, And that's why they

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became interested in the whole idea of saving juvenile fish,

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which is what the Squaremish was all about. I wanted

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to save the juveniles to pump back into the fish stocks,

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to enhance the fish stocks for the fishing industry. That

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was my burning ambition all the time. It was to

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help the industry. And when they saw that come along,

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they became very interested, actually, And there was a great

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atmosphere of optimism developed through the nineteen eighties as I

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went on board more and more of the commercial boats

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and met more skippers, and more skippers talked about it,

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and there was certainly a tremendous feeling of optimism that

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perhaps something could be done to bring the stocks back

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a little bit, because by the late nineteen eighties, the

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hardock stocks in particular had to decreased markedly, so opportunities

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for the industry were becoming rather more difficult. And of course,

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you know, we were unfortunately still in the EU and

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the EUS dictating what we had to do in terms

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of catch limits and so forth, and boats had to

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be taken out and then gradually there was a pall

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came over the industry of real unhappiness. Jim, I don't

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know whether you would agree with me that it was

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a period of a bit of unhappiness about the way

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things were going.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I remember back when you were doing the trials. Oh,

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you explained how and showed I'm sure I saw some

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of the videos how it wasn't just a case of

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square mesh panels. More fish would get out. I'm not

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right and saying when they were trying to get out

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of the diamond net they lost a lot of scales

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picking up infections, and so there was much better for

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the fish when they escape of even the small fish

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escaping escape from us square mesh rather than a diamond Yeah,

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that's correct.

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Speaker 2: My colleagues John Maine and Graham Sangster, who by the way,

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developed the separator troll, which is another great story about

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the development of that. But they were concerned about the

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survival of juvenile fish escaping from diamond mesh. That's what

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they started on. And then I asked them to look

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at the square mesh as well, and their results showed

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that survival rates from the square mesh were improved for sure,

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and you can understand why, just as you described it, Gim,

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the diamond meshes are tight closed and a juvenile fish

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trying to escape out through wriggling away like crazy, and

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you can see the scales flying off them in clouds

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of scales in some cases, and yet coming out of

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the square mesh. It was both pop out straight out

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through the square, hardly touching the sides, hardly touching the

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mesh at all, and no evidence of clouds of scales

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running down the length of the cod end. And of

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course we were filming all this with a remote control

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television vehicle which was controlled from the surface, so it

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was flying alongside the court ends and observing all the

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experimental cod ends that I used, and it was quite fascinating.

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The thing that started me off was I began diving

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in the middle nineteen seventies, began diving with John and

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Graham on troll gear, so they were looking at design

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improvements to design of troll nets, etc. That was the

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remit at the time in the lab, or at least

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in the gear section of the lab, and that diving

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really taught me a lot about net design. It also

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taught me a lot about how many juvenile fish were

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being destroyed. Now, in discussions with a colleague in the

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lab Stand German, he told me in the late nineteen

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seventies that's something in the region of seventy percent of

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what was captured in the North Sea of harrick and whiting.

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I'm talking about here, seventy percent of what was caught

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was discarded over the side as dead juvenile fish. So

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this was babies that didn't get a chance to spawn.

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This was babies who were not feeding other fish species,

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because the ecosystem requires lots of different species around and

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they feed on each other, and that's important. Caught in

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the southern North Sea on sand deals sand eals were

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fished out. Where did the cod go? They disappeared out

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of the Dogger Bank Doga bank. Cord fishery was one

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of the biggest in the world. It's no longer, it

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hasn't been for thirty forty fifty years because of the

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sandal fishery. So their food was taken from them. So

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these juvenile haddick and whiting, which could have been potentially

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food for cord and for haddock themselves, for adult haddock

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and adult whiting and so forth, it wasn't available to them.

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So it was a huge waste, huge waste, and it

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had to stop. But the way that the government wanted

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to stop it was by increasing the diamond mash size,

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but that didn't work. You were still getting discards. If

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you increased from seventy eighty to ninety two hundred mil,

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there were still discards, maybe not as many as there

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had been before, but nonetheless way too many to accept.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, really interesting, but Jimmy it was.

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Speaker 2: And of course the diving on the next with John

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and Graham showed all that to me, and I thought,

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I've got to do something about this. I really have to,

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and you dead, well, yeah, I mean it's something simple

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like turning diamond mesh onto the square. But actually there

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was something I did before that. I had to look

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at hexagonal mesh six six sided mesh, which is when

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you turn it a certain way, you can end up

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with a rectangle. And I thought, oh, now a rectangle

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is going to be good because it'll let more juvenile

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fish out, but it'll let the flatfish out as well.

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And I had a look at that and that was

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really good. But then I thought, m hexagonal mesh no,

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too expensive and not very practical. For mending and so forth.

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So it had to be What I wanted to develop

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was something, and I think you'll agree with me, Jim.

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It had to be practical, and it had to be

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acceptable to the industry. So I moved on to the

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square mesh and began trials, many many hundreds of trials,

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many many hundreds of toes over different horsepower vessels, say nets,

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troll nets, big and small vessels with full square mesh cottage.

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Now get that, Jim, it's full square mesh cottage. And

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I did. I did that, and the results were unbelievable. However, however,

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there was a potential problem in that if the square

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mesh was too big, you would lose too many marketable fish,

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and I didn't want that. The industry can't cope with

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any conservation device which on a whul By Hall basis

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restricts the amount of adult fish that they can capture.

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In other words, if the adult fish was escaping, what's

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the point in spending money and fuel and towing for

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hours and hours an end if you're getting you know,

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ten boxes as opposed to of adult fish, as oppos

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to thirty or forty or fifty boxes.

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Speaker 1: Of adult fish.

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Speaker 2: But at the same but at the same time let

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the juvenile fish escape, so that that became that became

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an issue which I had to look at very very carefully.

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And actually the best size for whitefish trolls of square

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mesh was eighty millimeters, which with which compared roughly to

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about one hundred millimeter diamond, but it didn't compare in

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terms of the release of juvenile fish. The square eighty

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still reduced more juvenile hrdrican whiting, so you can see that.

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You know, it was a long it was a long

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process of experimentation to find to find a mesh size

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that was acceptable to the industry and by the way,

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getting the industry to accept it as well. But but

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that was helped enormously by these fabulous skippers that I

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went away with on on on their their boats and

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you know, just dropping and I love to name drop

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when it comes to square mesh. I mean Tom Harks,

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you know, he he was, he was, he was on

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board excuse the pun for square mesh, you know. And

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and I was away with I was away with John

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Smith on the heather Sprigue. He was another great supporter

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of the square mesh and and and I could go

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on and on about it, you know, in terms of names.

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But people are sure that supported the square mesh were

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were very helpful in persuading the industry, in getting the

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idea cross, in showing results in discussing it. The likes

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of John Ashworth was sometime. Do you remember John Ashworth? Yeah, yeah, yeah,

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he was. He was very vocal in support of the industry.

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Everything that that man did was totally in support of

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the industry.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I remember that. But then it's interesting, Jacket

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You've mentioned Tom hark Is, because it was just the

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very person I was going to mention just now because

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I remember your trials. Obviously, I did a lot of

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business with Tom and all that Orkney boats, and I

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00:17:37,799 --> 00:17:43,160
remember Tom saying and just exactly what you were saying

241
00:17:43,200 --> 00:17:46,279
with it, but it was eighty mullimeter and he was

242
00:17:46,880 --> 00:17:52,119
I think the trials were ninety on the Diamond and

243
00:17:52,240 --> 00:17:56,720
he reckoned not on the square, sorry, And he was

244
00:17:56,799 --> 00:18:02,440
concerned that there were letting just everything that you said,

245
00:18:02,920 --> 00:18:07,440
mature fish escape and it wasn't going to work. But

246
00:18:07,680 --> 00:18:11,640
I'm right in saying that, which I thought was crazy

247
00:18:11,720 --> 00:18:17,720
at the time, that they weren't allowed to come down

248
00:18:19,039 --> 00:18:29,160
because from ninety because because of the regulations on mesh size,

249
00:18:29,640 --> 00:18:34,119
and they wouldn't they wouldn't budge on the fact that

250
00:18:34,279 --> 00:18:39,680
square mesh was much greater. As you said there, eighty

251
00:18:40,400 --> 00:18:45,559
was the equivalent to one hundred and probably ninety what

252
00:18:45,720 --> 00:18:48,200
would be equivalent to maybe one hundred and ten or

253
00:18:48,240 --> 00:18:51,680
one hundred and twenty, But they wouldn't let them take

254
00:18:51,720 --> 00:18:54,680
it down. Is that right? Am I remembering that correctly?

255
00:18:54,799 --> 00:18:59,920
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right. It's a complicated issue, but essense,

256
00:19:00,240 --> 00:19:02,720
you're right. I mean, we're talking about the civil servants

257
00:19:02,720 --> 00:19:06,079
in head Office. They had control of the introduction of legislation,

258
00:19:06,319 --> 00:19:09,359
so we were, you know, the scientists in the marine lab.

259
00:19:09,359 --> 00:19:14,200
We're merely putting our data to them and they decided

260
00:19:14,240 --> 00:19:17,839
from there, so any recommendations that we made would not

261
00:19:18,039 --> 00:19:19,720
necessarily been taken.

262
00:19:19,480 --> 00:19:20,039
Speaker 1: Up by them.

263
00:19:20,680 --> 00:19:23,720
Speaker 2: But I do recall a conversation with one civil servant

264
00:19:24,119 --> 00:19:26,599
who said, when I put to him that the eighty

265
00:19:26,640 --> 00:19:31,240
millimeter would be the best for the fishing industry in

266
00:19:31,359 --> 00:19:36,519
terms of retaining marketable fish but still allowing a much

267
00:19:36,599 --> 00:19:40,880
higher escape rate of the juvenile fish than nineteen one

268
00:19:40,960 --> 00:19:45,240
hundred mili diamond. And he said, no, we can't let

269
00:19:45,319 --> 00:19:49,759
them go down to eighty because they might cheat. Now

270
00:19:50,160 --> 00:19:53,960
I found that a fascinating statement, and I mean it

271
00:19:54,079 --> 00:19:58,640
actually demonstrates a lack of understanding of a civil servants

272
00:19:58,640 --> 00:20:02,480
sitting at a desk in Edinburgh compared to us out

273
00:20:02,519 --> 00:20:05,640
there on the fishing boats with the fisherman doing the stuff.

274
00:20:07,119 --> 00:20:10,599
And I asked him. I asked him, I said, what

275
00:20:11,559 --> 00:20:16,160
do you mean precisely by they would cheat with it? Oh? Well,

276
00:20:17,240 --> 00:20:23,599
can't they close the meshus up and restrict the And

277
00:20:23,640 --> 00:20:29,240
I said, well, okay, they could perhaps snotter you know

278
00:20:29,279 --> 00:20:32,279
what I mean by snortering accordagem just tying a rope

279
00:20:32,359 --> 00:20:36,799
rounded and closing the meshes up. And I said, well, okay,

280
00:20:37,319 --> 00:20:40,880
you know a fisherman could do that. But then why

281
00:20:40,880 --> 00:20:46,400
would he do that if the idea of eighty millimeter

282
00:20:46,839 --> 00:20:51,119
or even ninety milimeters square mesh is sold to the industry.

283
00:20:52,680 --> 00:20:54,200
And he looked at me and he said, you know

284
00:20:54,240 --> 00:20:56,119
what do you mean? I said, well, look, we've got

285
00:20:56,160 --> 00:21:01,279
to undertake a teaching process of of getting across the

286
00:21:01,359 --> 00:21:05,079
idea to the industry and showing them the data, showing

287
00:21:05,079 --> 00:21:10,960
them the video film and persuading them to use the

288
00:21:11,440 --> 00:21:14,759
square mesh in the manner that it was meant to

289
00:21:14,839 --> 00:21:18,119
be used. And I said, and this is the telling factor.

290
00:21:18,559 --> 00:21:23,240
I said, Look, even even if thirty percent of the

291
00:21:23,279 --> 00:21:27,480
fishing industry were to cheat with the square mesh caught end,

292
00:21:28,640 --> 00:21:33,279
you would still with the remaining seventy percent, be something

293
00:21:33,319 --> 00:21:37,039
in the region of sixty to seventy percent better off

294
00:21:37,680 --> 00:21:43,440
in terms of the destruction of juvenile fish in reducing

295
00:21:43,480 --> 00:21:47,000
the destruction of juvenile fish. And he looked at me,

296
00:21:47,039 --> 00:21:49,200
he said, is that right? And I said, well, you know,

297
00:21:49,640 --> 00:21:52,480
as far as one can one can calculate. And of

298
00:21:52,519 --> 00:21:56,319
course these calculations are very difficult to make, Jim, you know,

299
00:21:56,480 --> 00:22:01,920
it's stock assessment work and so on. Is open to

300
00:22:01,960 --> 00:22:06,000
all sorts of questions. But basically that was the argument

301
00:22:06,079 --> 00:22:09,480
that even if some of them did snorter their the

302
00:22:09,519 --> 00:22:15,480
squaremish caught in, there would still be a benefit in

303
00:22:15,559 --> 00:22:19,400
terms of increasing the spawning stock biomass by allowing the

304
00:22:19,480 --> 00:22:24,000
juvenile fish to escape. Well, okay, so this argument goes

305
00:22:24,039 --> 00:22:26,400
on for years and years and years, and I'm talking.

306
00:22:27,880 --> 00:22:34,519
My first filming of square mesh happened in September nineteen

307
00:22:35,680 --> 00:22:42,359
eighty one, and from there it took ten years to

308
00:22:42,400 --> 00:22:49,880
get the square mesh panel into legislation, and interestingly, Jim,

309
00:22:49,920 --> 00:22:55,039
the panel for prontrolls when it was introduced in nineteen

310
00:22:55,279 --> 00:23:02,039
ninety one was eighty millimeters. The panel for whitefish trolls

311
00:23:02,799 --> 00:23:09,000
was ninety millimeters. So you know, the acceptance of eighteen

312
00:23:09,039 --> 00:23:15,039
milimeter was okay eventually, but only for the prontrol that

313
00:23:15,039 --> 00:23:19,880
that ten year period. GYM was extremely frustrating because within

314
00:23:21,079 --> 00:23:27,680
about four years five years of nineteen eighty one, I

315
00:23:27,720 --> 00:23:32,599
had gathered a huge amount of data on squaremesh cought ents,

316
00:23:32,720 --> 00:23:35,960
and I wanted and felt that it would be the

317
00:23:35,960 --> 00:23:39,000
best for the industry to introduce squaremish cought ens at

318
00:23:39,039 --> 00:23:42,519
eighty millimeters. And I wish that had happened, I really do,

319
00:23:43,240 --> 00:23:48,720
But there was no persuading the civil servants who controlled

320
00:23:48,920 --> 00:23:54,240
the legislation. No matter how well we put across our

321
00:23:54,440 --> 00:23:58,880
argument or data, etc. There was no way it was

322
00:23:58,920 --> 00:24:05,640
going to happen. So from about nineteen eighty six we

323
00:24:05,759 --> 00:24:08,680
began thinking, how are we going to get round this?

324
00:24:08,799 --> 00:24:11,359
How are we going to get square mesh in? Because

325
00:24:11,599 --> 00:24:14,359
we were totally convinced that square mesh was going to

326
00:24:14,400 --> 00:24:18,480
be good for certainly for hardick and waiting stocks, how

327
00:24:18,519 --> 00:24:21,359
we're going to do it, and the square mesh panel

328
00:24:22,319 --> 00:24:26,960
on the top side of the cord end was mooted.

329
00:24:28,599 --> 00:24:30,839
Now I'll tell you a little story here, and it's

330
00:24:30,839 --> 00:24:34,599
a funny story in a way because I to this

331
00:24:34,680 --> 00:24:36,680
day I still have a laugh with Ken Arkley. Do

332
00:24:36,680 --> 00:24:41,480
you remember Ken Arkley from the Seafish Industry Authority? Now,

333
00:24:41,960 --> 00:24:47,000
Ken Ken was yeah, yeah, SFI. Ken was a very

334
00:24:47,039 --> 00:24:52,519
practical down to earth lad and I was having discussions

335
00:24:52,559 --> 00:24:56,039
with him about, you know, what to do in terms

336
00:24:56,079 --> 00:24:59,240
of oh well, he said, let's let's have a look

337
00:24:59,279 --> 00:25:06,400
at a panel, and I said okay, and I invited

338
00:25:06,440 --> 00:25:08,680
them up on one of the trips and we did

339
00:25:08,720 --> 00:25:12,240
some work on the panel, different positions in the cord end,

340
00:25:12,240 --> 00:25:15,119
and it was great. And the panel on the top

341
00:25:15,200 --> 00:25:19,000
side of the cord end works so well because it

342
00:25:19,160 --> 00:25:24,319
depends on the behavior of the huddeken whiting, which always

343
00:25:24,519 --> 00:25:28,640
rise up as they're running down the extension, or at

344
00:25:28,720 --> 00:25:34,319
least swimming backwards as it were, or swimming to keep

345
00:25:34,440 --> 00:25:36,720
up with the net, but the nets overtaking them as

346
00:25:36,759 --> 00:25:41,000
they exhausts, so gradually they're dropping down the extension. They

347
00:25:41,039 --> 00:25:44,200
come into the cod end and immediately they're pushing upwards

348
00:25:44,319 --> 00:25:47,640
as they had been pushing upwards against the diamond mesh

349
00:25:47,960 --> 00:25:51,440
but couldn't get out, and they were upwards. So this

350
00:25:51,680 --> 00:25:56,839
behavior was incredible. They were always going upwards, so the

351
00:25:56,920 --> 00:26:02,559
panel on the top side was just ideal. Now, this

352
00:26:02,759 --> 00:26:07,640
behavior of Hardig and Whiting rising up was first discovered

353
00:26:08,720 --> 00:26:13,680
by John Mayne and Graham Sangster when they started working

354
00:26:13,799 --> 00:26:17,680
on their separator troll. Well actually before they started working

355
00:26:17,680 --> 00:26:22,599
on the separator troll, they were filming fish behavior in

356
00:26:22,720 --> 00:26:27,480
the mouth of the troll and they discovered that Haddig

357
00:26:27,559 --> 00:26:31,440
and whiting when they exhausted and they couldn't keep up

358
00:26:31,599 --> 00:26:35,039
swimming with the net with the troll as it was

359
00:26:35,160 --> 00:26:40,720
trundling over the seabed, they would always rise up. Unbelievable,

360
00:26:41,279 --> 00:26:44,440
and John and Graham said, wow, this is incredible. They

361
00:26:44,519 --> 00:26:47,720
rise up, the whiting rise up, not to such a

362
00:26:47,799 --> 00:26:51,279
high level, but all the had all the flatfish were

363
00:26:51,279 --> 00:26:54,279
staying low, as you would imagine flatfish would always do,

364
00:26:55,039 --> 00:26:58,279
and cod were staying low as well. So they came

365
00:26:58,359 --> 00:27:03,119
up with a brilliant idea. Let's try a horizontal separator

366
00:27:03,440 --> 00:27:07,799
panel along the full length of the net from the

367
00:27:07,839 --> 00:27:10,119
from the mouth of the net just above the foot

368
00:27:10,200 --> 00:27:14,079
rope right back into the court ends and have a

369
00:27:14,079 --> 00:27:16,839
cought end on top and a cought end down below.

370
00:27:18,319 --> 00:27:21,440
And lo and behold, the top cought end caught all

371
00:27:21,440 --> 00:27:24,319
the hurdigan waiting. The lower cot end caught all the

372
00:27:24,359 --> 00:27:30,599
flatfish and the cord. So that's that's why, that's why

373
00:27:30,640 --> 00:27:34,640
the panel worked in my mind, because I knew that

374
00:27:34,759 --> 00:27:38,000
behavior from John and Graham, and I knew they were

375
00:27:38,000 --> 00:27:41,279
going to push out on the top side. But but

376
00:27:41,279 --> 00:27:44,759
but my real problem was I wanted juvenile cod to

377
00:27:44,880 --> 00:27:51,160
escape as well. Cod do not rise up. They always

378
00:27:51,240 --> 00:27:55,799
they always tend to go down. And I knew from

379
00:27:55,880 --> 00:27:59,720
the filming of my square mesh cought end, the full

380
00:28:00,039 --> 00:28:02,799
cod end with the square mesh on the full circumference,

381
00:28:03,759 --> 00:28:08,799
I had film of juvenile cod escaping from the lower part.

382
00:28:09,480 --> 00:28:13,279
Now you can understand, Jim, that's why, that's why I

383
00:28:13,319 --> 00:28:17,480
wanted to use the full square mesh cod end square

384
00:28:17,519 --> 00:28:21,119
mesh on the circumference, because it would deal with the cod,

385
00:28:21,160 --> 00:28:24,960
the juvenile cod, and it would going down, and it

386
00:28:24,960 --> 00:28:30,240
would deal with the haddache juvenile haddigan waiting going up. Okay,

387
00:28:30,319 --> 00:28:34,359
So the next problem, the next problem that the industry

388
00:28:34,480 --> 00:28:38,039
quite rightly raised was what about the flatfish? If you're

389
00:28:38,160 --> 00:28:44,680
using a full square mesh codent, are they going to escape? Well,

390
00:28:44,720 --> 00:28:47,759
the simple answer was that tiny flatfish do escape from

391
00:28:47,839 --> 00:28:55,079
square mesh eighteen ninety mili, but the regulation minimum size

392
00:28:55,200 --> 00:29:00,680
and below doesn't necessarily do so. So to solve that problem,

393
00:29:00,720 --> 00:29:03,799
we put a short length of diamond mesh on the

394
00:29:03,839 --> 00:29:07,240
back end of the full square mesh cod ent and

395
00:29:07,279 --> 00:29:11,640
that solved the problem. So cod juvenile cord were going

396
00:29:11,640 --> 00:29:14,920
out down below in the square mesh, hurrigon whiting were

397
00:29:14,920 --> 00:29:18,519
going out the top. The flat undersized flatfish were going

398
00:29:18,559 --> 00:29:21,039
out with the diamond mesh at the back end. And

399
00:29:21,119 --> 00:29:27,720
it couldn't have been better, But would would the legislators

400
00:29:29,039 --> 00:29:33,400
except that no. Now, part of the reason was, of course,

401
00:29:34,079 --> 00:29:39,960
that the industry were concerned about the full square mesh

402
00:29:40,000 --> 00:29:42,519
cord end on the round. They wondered about the strength.

403
00:29:42,799 --> 00:29:46,400
So I did a lot of its strength experiments, and

404
00:29:46,480 --> 00:29:51,279
I use different type of netting. I used not Japanese

405
00:29:51,359 --> 00:29:55,079
knutless netting and so forth, and we felt that we

406
00:29:55,160 --> 00:30:01,599
had resolved all their questions about the strength, but it

407
00:30:01,880 --> 00:30:10,559
didn't really gather traction. However, However, the squamish idea did

408
00:30:10,599 --> 00:30:14,559
gather traction with the industry and certainly the squaremish panel

409
00:30:15,279 --> 00:30:22,160
was acceptable to them. Uh. And then the whole sort

410
00:30:22,200 --> 00:30:26,680
of political process of by the industry to to actually

411
00:30:26,720 --> 00:30:32,079
get it introduced was was undertaken. And I met I

412
00:30:32,119 --> 00:30:35,519
met some great guys you know who represented the industry.

413
00:30:35,559 --> 00:30:38,519
I don't know if you remember Willy Hay very well,

414
00:30:39,160 --> 00:30:43,960
Willie Willy willy Hay was he was extremely interested in

415
00:30:44,000 --> 00:30:47,160
the squamish and we had a meeting well, in fact,

416
00:30:47,160 --> 00:30:52,960
willy Hay invited Ken Arkley and myself down to Edinburgh

417
00:30:53,000 --> 00:30:57,400
along with other representatives from Willy Hay was the president

418
00:30:57,440 --> 00:31:01,880
of the s FF at the time and and uh

419
00:31:02,119 --> 00:31:07,000
and and Tom Hay was at that time president or

420
00:31:07,119 --> 00:31:11,200
chairman of of the s w f p A. He

421
00:31:11,359 --> 00:31:17,880
later moved on and created f A L the Fisherman's Association. Yeah,

422
00:31:18,000 --> 00:31:21,440
but but Tom Tom was there representing the s w

423
00:31:21,599 --> 00:31:23,599
f p A, and he was he was in favor

424
00:31:23,640 --> 00:31:29,160
of it because because their skippers had fed through the associations,

425
00:31:29,279 --> 00:31:33,599
their their interest and and in many cases their delight

426
00:31:33,720 --> 00:31:37,519
in the idea of the square mesh panel and reducing

427
00:31:37,680 --> 00:31:42,920
the the juvenile Hurricane Whiting and and Willie Hay, I

428
00:31:42,960 --> 00:31:46,559
mean Willie I had. I had seen Willie at some

429
00:31:46,920 --> 00:31:50,920
meetings that had occurred in the lab and and and

430
00:31:50,920 --> 00:31:54,160
and I thought, oh, dere being invited down to Edinburgh

431
00:31:54,160 --> 00:31:55,880
by Willie Hay is probably going to tell me off

432
00:31:55,920 --> 00:32:00,160
about the square mesh because I've seen him up, I'd

433
00:32:00,200 --> 00:32:03,160
seen him operate at some other meetings, and by haven't

434
00:32:03,200 --> 00:32:05,839
seen he wouldn't hold back with the scientists, you know,

435
00:32:05,920 --> 00:32:09,720
he would give them hell. But you know what he

436
00:32:09,799 --> 00:32:12,640
could he couldn't have been nicer. So we were in

437
00:32:12,640 --> 00:32:14,720
a hood. I can't even remember which hotel. It was,

438
00:32:14,759 --> 00:32:17,079
the meeting room in the hotel, and it was it

439
00:32:17,119 --> 00:32:22,839
was laid out with the tables, and he met he

440
00:32:22,920 --> 00:32:26,559
met Ken and I at the door of the hotel.

441
00:32:26,599 --> 00:32:28,759
And I'll never forget He's come in. Lads. She says,

442
00:32:28,920 --> 00:32:32,680
you must be starving. I've set up I've set you

443
00:32:32,799 --> 00:32:36,680
up for a plate of fish and chips. So we

444
00:32:36,799 --> 00:32:41,480
sat we sat down with all these industry leaders around us,

445
00:32:43,519 --> 00:32:48,960
you know, including the likes of John Thompson, including you

446
00:32:49,000 --> 00:32:51,519
know John Smith. He was he was in the s

447
00:32:51,640 --> 00:32:55,960
w f P A one one of the office bearers

448
00:32:55,960 --> 00:32:59,680
et cetera, and some names I can't even remember now,

449
00:32:59,720 --> 00:33:01,400
but there were a lot of them, and they were

450
00:33:01,440 --> 00:33:05,680
just questioning Ken and I about the whole business, and

451
00:33:05,680 --> 00:33:07,759
we just we just laid it out as I'm laying

452
00:33:07,799 --> 00:33:10,440
it out to you, about the squaremish, the full squaremish

453
00:33:10,519 --> 00:33:14,240
caught end, they caught in with the diamond piece on

454
00:33:14,319 --> 00:33:21,599
the end, the squamish panels, uh and so on, and

455
00:33:21,680 --> 00:33:24,960
they were very much in favor of it. And I believe,

456
00:33:27,039 --> 00:33:29,240
although there's a lot going on in the background with

457
00:33:29,319 --> 00:33:32,480
many other people, including John Ashworth who was pushing for

458
00:33:32,599 --> 00:33:37,079
it in Math, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food in

459
00:33:37,079 --> 00:33:43,440
in in England, that I believe that that was a

460
00:33:43,559 --> 00:33:51,359
turning point that meeting where they they accepted that certainly

461
00:33:51,400 --> 00:33:54,440
to help the industry and to minimize the destruction of

462
00:33:54,480 --> 00:34:01,000
the juvenile fish, that the squaremish panel was worth seeing

463
00:34:01,599 --> 00:34:05,400
or putting into legislation, and they then went to the

464
00:34:05,480 --> 00:34:11,599
legislators and persuaded them to introduce it. And of course

465
00:34:11,639 --> 00:34:16,599
the first introduction was in nineteen ninety one, as I said,

466
00:34:17,559 --> 00:34:19,880
and believe it or not, Jim, of course you'll be

467
00:34:19,920 --> 00:34:23,920
well aware square mesh has been in legislation continuously since

468
00:34:24,079 --> 00:34:30,280
nineteen ninety one in the UK fishery at various sizes

469
00:34:30,320 --> 00:34:35,880
and configurations, etc. It's been in European legislation since the

470
00:34:35,960 --> 00:34:39,199
early nineteen nineties because they took it on board after

471
00:34:39,280 --> 00:34:44,719
we introduced it in the UK, and it's been in Iceland,

472
00:34:45,360 --> 00:34:48,000
it's been in Canada, it's been in America, it's been

473
00:34:48,000 --> 00:34:52,880
in Norway, it's been in a wide range of countries

474
00:34:52,880 --> 00:34:57,039
in the Northern Hemisphere, including in the Southern Hemisphere. Australia's

475
00:34:57,079 --> 00:35:01,440
big and square mesh as well. So it it really,

476
00:35:01,679 --> 00:35:09,280
it really did start something. But Jim, but now here's me.

477
00:35:10,159 --> 00:35:12,880
I'm a young scientist and I come up with this

478
00:35:13,000 --> 00:35:16,119
square mesh idea. Let's open the mass shop. And I

479
00:35:16,199 --> 00:35:18,519
come up with this idea and I think, oh, this

480
00:35:18,679 --> 00:35:24,960
is fabulous. I'm the first one. I'm the inventor, and

481
00:35:25,039 --> 00:35:29,239
I thought, oh wow, this is something big, and I

482
00:35:29,360 --> 00:35:32,559
was I was very proud of myself having invented it. Anyway,

483
00:35:33,480 --> 00:35:36,039
after the first trial that I had with it, I thought,

484
00:35:36,599 --> 00:35:38,480
do you know what I need to get into this

485
00:35:38,639 --> 00:35:41,800
selectivity of cought ins more than I had done up

486
00:35:41,840 --> 00:35:43,960
till that time, Because up till that time in the

487
00:35:44,000 --> 00:35:48,039
Marine Lab Gym. I was looking at fishing gear design.

488
00:35:48,360 --> 00:35:52,039
That's what I was employed for, to improve fishing gear design,

489
00:35:52,599 --> 00:35:56,079
and that's all I've been doing. I hadn't developed into selectivity,

490
00:35:56,480 --> 00:35:58,440
so I needed to get a background on what had

491
00:35:58,440 --> 00:36:01,320
been done in selectivity. And along to the librarian in

492
00:36:01,320 --> 00:36:04,280
the lab, John Byrne. And in those days, of course,

493
00:36:04,320 --> 00:36:07,000
we didn't have the Internet. He couldn't email, he couldn't

494
00:36:07,519 --> 00:36:11,000
He had to phone around all of the libraries in

495
00:36:11,039 --> 00:36:16,880
the UK, in Europe and across the world to ask them.

496
00:36:17,000 --> 00:36:22,519
My question to him, which was has square mesh ever

497
00:36:22,599 --> 00:36:26,760
been used before? I was hoping it hadn't because I

498
00:36:26,840 --> 00:36:31,000
wanted to be the inventor. But it had. It had

499
00:36:31,360 --> 00:36:37,039
because John came back with And this is where the

500
00:36:37,119 --> 00:36:43,199
history just fascinates me about the whole thing. Apparently a fellow,

501
00:36:43,239 --> 00:36:47,800
a Dutchman by the name of Guelder, first child square

502
00:36:47,840 --> 00:36:52,280
mesh panel. It was a panel in a in a

503
00:36:52,480 --> 00:36:56,159
in a four panel caught end which was held open

504
00:36:57,199 --> 00:37:02,559
by a frame. He tried square mesh in nineteen twenty eight.

505
00:37:02,639 --> 00:37:09,039
Would you imagine nineteen twenty eight. It was incredible. And

506
00:37:09,239 --> 00:37:15,880
John went even further back a fishery scientist in England,

507
00:37:15,920 --> 00:37:22,039
an Englishman in eighteen ninety five, had you used square

508
00:37:22,079 --> 00:37:24,800
mesh as well? So that was me blown out of

509
00:37:24,840 --> 00:37:29,880
the water. I hadn't invented it after all, But Jim

510
00:37:30,000 --> 00:37:33,559
I wasn't disappointed because the more that I got into

511
00:37:33,800 --> 00:37:37,599
the whole selectivity issue and looked at the history of it, well,

512
00:37:37,639 --> 00:37:41,559
there was Holt in eighteen ninety five, Guilder in nineteen

513
00:37:41,639 --> 00:37:45,480
twenty eight. In the early nineteen hundreds there was a

514
00:37:45,599 --> 00:37:51,840
rash of scientists Danish, Dutch and so forth who were

515
00:37:51,880 --> 00:37:55,119
concerned about the destruction of juvenile fish, and they started

516
00:37:55,320 --> 00:37:58,480
playing around with different designs of troll which they called

517
00:37:59,000 --> 00:38:03,239
savings trolls. They were saving the juvenile fish, saving the babyfish.

518
00:38:04,000 --> 00:38:06,800
But none of them, none of them took off in

519
00:38:06,840 --> 00:38:11,920
the legislation, and it needs to go into legislation because fishermen.

520
00:38:12,719 --> 00:38:15,920
Although in recent times I understand there have been some

521
00:38:16,000 --> 00:38:19,760
fishermen who've wanted to trial their own designs and have

522
00:38:19,840 --> 00:38:26,480
been refused by by the ministries to use them legally,

523
00:38:27,440 --> 00:38:29,920
when in fact they've been shown to be much better

524
00:38:30,320 --> 00:38:33,440
than what we've got at the moment. However, that's another story.

525
00:38:33,480 --> 00:38:37,079
But none of the early devices were ever introduced into

526
00:38:37,119 --> 00:38:41,280
legislation because at that time there was no legislation. There

527
00:38:41,320 --> 00:38:45,519
was no minimum size mesh size. That didn't occur until

528
00:38:45,679 --> 00:38:50,639
nineteen thirty three in the UK fishery when a mesh

529
00:38:50,639 --> 00:38:56,000
size of roughly roughly seventy seventy five millimeters was introduced

530
00:38:56,039 --> 00:39:01,920
to the troll fishery for the first time. Solation built

531
00:39:02,159 --> 00:39:08,920
around the world into legislation from the nineteen thirties up

532
00:39:08,960 --> 00:39:12,840
to the nineteen eighties where I was trying to introduce

533
00:39:13,159 --> 00:39:17,039
the square mesh. So the history of the whole thing

534
00:39:17,480 --> 00:39:26,519
was fascinating, and the history also included the then director

535
00:39:26,599 --> 00:39:29,559
of the Marine Lab, Basil Parish. Now you might remember

536
00:39:29,599 --> 00:39:34,000
Basil Parish. He was a great director of the Marine

537
00:39:34,079 --> 00:39:37,639
Lab and he was very much in favor of the

538
00:39:37,679 --> 00:39:42,920
square mesh. And when I came back from my first

539
00:39:42,960 --> 00:39:46,400
trial on the Gold Seeker with the video film and

540
00:39:46,800 --> 00:39:53,719
the data showing the juveniles escaping, he saw the film

541
00:39:54,360 --> 00:39:57,559
and it was in September, and he said, what do

542
00:39:57,639 --> 00:39:59,400
you want to do with this, Jack? And I said, well,

543
00:39:59,440 --> 00:40:03,239
obviously we've got to do some experiments on it. I said,

544
00:40:03,239 --> 00:40:05,000
well absolutely, he said, but what do you want to

545
00:40:05,039 --> 00:40:08,280
do immediately, because he was so keen to get something

546
00:40:08,400 --> 00:40:12,719
done immediately in terms of more fish data to prove

547
00:40:12,800 --> 00:40:16,400
whether it was better or not. And I said, well,

548
00:40:17,559 --> 00:40:21,440
I can't get any any funding because the annual funding

549
00:40:22,360 --> 00:40:25,440
had been allocated. And he said, don't worry about that.

550
00:40:25,519 --> 00:40:28,280
He said, how much do you need to charter a

551
00:40:28,320 --> 00:40:30,960
fishing vessel and go off and do some experiments. So

552
00:40:31,000 --> 00:40:34,280
within a month and made me returning from that trip,

553
00:40:35,159 --> 00:40:40,239
Basil Parish had found funding and I had chartered a vessel,

554
00:40:41,400 --> 00:40:46,119
the Harvest Reaper, out of the Fraserburg with James May

555
00:40:46,679 --> 00:40:52,559
the skipper, and James was brilliant, absolutely brilliant, and we

556
00:40:53,000 --> 00:40:56,440
got some very good data which showed to Basil that

557
00:40:57,480 --> 00:41:00,480
the square was certainly performing better than the the Diamond

558
00:41:00,519 --> 00:41:05,239
mesh in certain circumstances. And from there it blossomed. From

559
00:41:05,239 --> 00:41:09,159
there I couldn't. I was never refused any funding that

560
00:41:09,239 --> 00:41:13,400
I requested for, you know, chartering boats, going away with

561
00:41:13,440 --> 00:41:21,519
the fishermen, et cetera, which was absolutely phenomenal. Now, one

562
00:41:21,599 --> 00:41:27,800
interesting thing, Jim Listen, that trip with James May was staggering,

563
00:41:29,239 --> 00:41:33,960
not only because of what they saw, they were staggered

564
00:41:34,000 --> 00:41:37,559
by what they saw both from the video film and

565
00:41:37,599 --> 00:41:41,880
from the data that I produced. But I was staggered

566
00:41:43,079 --> 00:41:45,679
because James said to me one day, and it was

567
00:41:45,719 --> 00:41:48,800
about the second day of the trials, he says, you

568
00:41:48,840 --> 00:41:54,719
know something, Jack, I'm comparing the diamond mesh fish with

569
00:41:54,920 --> 00:41:59,199
the square mesh caught fish, and I'm seeing a better

570
00:41:59,400 --> 00:42:04,000
quality in the square mesh fish. And we looked at

571
00:42:04,000 --> 00:42:08,800
it closely and it was true. Visually we could see

572
00:42:08,840 --> 00:42:12,159
that there was a better quality. Now why was that, well,

573
00:42:12,199 --> 00:42:15,840
of course James explained it. He said, because there's debris

574
00:42:16,039 --> 00:42:19,440
escaping out of the square mesh, you know, the kind

575
00:42:19,440 --> 00:42:24,000
of the sort of debris that you pick off the

576
00:42:24,039 --> 00:42:29,360
seabedstones and shells and bit pieces, which when it grinds

577
00:42:29,440 --> 00:42:31,760
around at the end of the cought end with the

578
00:42:31,800 --> 00:42:37,519
fish accumulated, it's rubbing against the fish. They're losing scales.

579
00:42:37,639 --> 00:42:41,440
They're not as good quality as the square mesh. And

580
00:42:42,239 --> 00:42:44,000
do you know what James did, He said to me,

581
00:42:44,039 --> 00:42:47,039
He said, do you know what, it's well worth keeping

582
00:42:47,079 --> 00:42:51,760
those two groups of fish separate on the market, because

583
00:42:51,800 --> 00:42:54,039
we landed on the market at the end of the

584
00:42:54,079 --> 00:42:59,800
week and lo and behold the square Now nobody knew no,

585
00:43:00,039 --> 00:43:03,320
but he knew and nobody had been forewarned that the

586
00:43:03,719 --> 00:43:09,480
two fish had been separated. Lo and behold, the square

587
00:43:09,480 --> 00:43:15,519
mesh fish was picking up about two to three pounds

588
00:43:15,519 --> 00:43:20,639
of box more than the diamond mesh caught fish. Now

589
00:43:20,679 --> 00:43:23,480
we asked to buy, I asked the buyers. I asked

590
00:43:23,519 --> 00:43:25,719
the buyers afterwards, why did you buy that fish? And

591
00:43:25,719 --> 00:43:27,840
he said, well, look, he said, the quality is better

592
00:43:27,880 --> 00:43:30,639
on them. I can see that. He said, I'd still

593
00:43:30,679 --> 00:43:34,519
buy the other fish. And then we told them that

594
00:43:34,599 --> 00:43:38,760
the difference was diamond and square. So that was an

595
00:43:38,840 --> 00:43:40,199
amazing finding.

596
00:43:42,599 --> 00:43:45,360
Speaker 1: That that's one way to get a fisherman's heart.

597
00:43:46,159 --> 00:43:49,960
Speaker 2: Oh absolutely, I'll tell you. I'll tell you the other

598
00:43:50,000 --> 00:43:53,599
way to get this heart. My biggest selling point, apart

599
00:43:53,599 --> 00:43:56,599
from the fact that it shaved juvenile fish with the

600
00:43:56,639 --> 00:44:00,880
full square mesh caught end, was that there was less

601
00:44:01,000 --> 00:44:05,519
sorting on deck because you didn't have the debris and

602
00:44:05,559 --> 00:44:06,239
you didn't have.

603
00:44:07,639 --> 00:44:10,119
Speaker 1: That would be an improvement on quality.

604
00:44:09,679 --> 00:44:13,440
Speaker 2: As well, and that's an improvement on quality. But they

605
00:44:13,519 --> 00:44:18,400
had less work on deck. So every hall with the

606
00:44:18,440 --> 00:44:22,199
Harvard Streeber boys, they kept saying they were cheering by

607
00:44:22,199 --> 00:44:24,039
the end of the trips when they saw the squaremish

608
00:44:24,039 --> 00:44:26,119
caught in coming up. Oh, we don't have much sorting.

609
00:44:26,280 --> 00:44:28,960
But they were still getting they were still getting the

610
00:44:29,000 --> 00:44:34,239
equivalent marketable marketable adult fish as they had got with

611
00:44:34,360 --> 00:44:37,400
the diamond mesh. So there were lots of selling points

612
00:44:37,440 --> 00:44:39,800
early on. And as time went on, of course, and

613
00:44:39,880 --> 00:44:45,679
more and more skippers and crew got to learn about

614
00:44:45,719 --> 00:44:48,519
the square mesh, then they began to realize that there

615
00:44:48,519 --> 00:44:49,760
were huge advantages.

616
00:44:50,199 --> 00:44:52,960
Speaker 1: But when you say that, Jock, is it not sad

617
00:44:53,639 --> 00:44:58,119
when you go back, so the vibes you were getting

618
00:44:58,360 --> 00:45:01,480
when they might sheet of.

619
00:45:01,639 --> 00:45:04,800
Speaker 2: Fat, it's very sad and.

620
00:45:06,679 --> 00:45:06,920
Speaker 1: Well.

621
00:45:08,119 --> 00:45:10,719
Speaker 2: And you know, to pick up on your point about

622
00:45:11,360 --> 00:45:21,280
your Icelandic Johann the Icelandic scientists, Christensen and him saying,

623
00:45:21,440 --> 00:45:25,599
you know that they wanted research vessels because they were

624
00:45:25,679 --> 00:45:29,599
nice and clean and cozy and everything was nice, and

625
00:45:29,639 --> 00:45:31,880
they didn't want to go away in commercial boats because

626
00:45:32,199 --> 00:45:35,639
it was smelly and dirty. I had exactly the same

627
00:45:36,199 --> 00:45:40,239
experience with a senior scientist in the marine lab in

628
00:45:40,280 --> 00:45:45,480
the early days of the square meshed when I mooted

629
00:45:46,119 --> 00:45:49,920
that I start charting now. To put it to you, Jim,

630
00:45:50,639 --> 00:45:53,360
the charting hadn't taken place to any great extent in

631
00:45:53,400 --> 00:45:55,360
the marine lab, and they were kind of against it.

632
00:45:55,400 --> 00:45:59,039
They wanted the research vessels to be used for the experiments.

633
00:45:59,079 --> 00:46:02,599
But I I persuaded them that I was going to

634
00:46:02,599 --> 00:46:06,159
get greater quantities of fish. I could work twenty four

635
00:46:06,199 --> 00:46:08,239
to seven on the commercial boats. And one of the

636
00:46:08,320 --> 00:46:11,480
senior scientists said to me one day, he said, he said,

637
00:46:11,519 --> 00:46:13,840
I don't understand why you want to go in commercial

638
00:46:13,880 --> 00:46:18,440
boats chat because they're dirty, smelly fishermen now, And I

639
00:46:18,480 --> 00:46:21,360
said to it, I actually chastised him for that. I said,

640
00:46:21,400 --> 00:46:26,880
you mustn't speak that way. We're in a sense representing

641
00:46:27,039 --> 00:46:31,880
we're working for the industry, and that should be at

642
00:46:31,920 --> 00:46:36,599
the forefront of every scientist's thinking, that you're there for

643
00:46:36,679 --> 00:46:40,440
the industry. Whatever aspect of work you're doing, whether it's

644
00:46:40,440 --> 00:46:45,519
stock assessment, environmental issues, whether it's selectivity work, you should

645
00:46:45,679 --> 00:46:50,400
always be mindful that you're working for the industry. And

646
00:46:50,440 --> 00:46:52,480
he was taken aback by that. He was taken aback.

647
00:46:52,679 --> 00:46:56,519
He never ever said anything against the charters after that.

648
00:46:57,039 --> 00:47:00,599
Speaker 1: He didn't see himself as working for the industry.

649
00:47:01,360 --> 00:47:04,280
Speaker 2: Well, whether it was that Jim or not, I don't know,

650
00:47:04,280 --> 00:47:07,480
but I was I was. I was really horrified by it,

651
00:47:07,519 --> 00:47:13,920
because well, listen, it was you know. And I think

652
00:47:13,960 --> 00:47:16,480
to the other extent is that I think a lot

653
00:47:16,519 --> 00:47:18,440
of scientists in those days, I don't know what it's

654
00:47:18,519 --> 00:47:20,280
like these days. I've been away from it for a

655
00:47:20,320 --> 00:47:23,280
long long time, Jim, But those days, a lot of

656
00:47:23,280 --> 00:47:27,159
the scientists thought that the industry were perhaps, you know,

657
00:47:27,480 --> 00:47:32,079
not very intelligent. And nothing could be further from the truth.

658
00:47:32,679 --> 00:47:36,199
The most intelligent people I have ever met on Earth

659
00:47:37,079 --> 00:47:40,079
are some of the fishermen that I went away with. Well,

660
00:47:40,119 --> 00:47:42,199
in fact, all of the fishermen, I would say, I mean,

661
00:47:42,239 --> 00:47:46,320
look at Andrew Bremner on the boy Andrew and his father,

662
00:47:46,519 --> 00:47:51,400
Norri I chartered. I chartered them a few times and

663
00:47:52,000 --> 00:47:57,960
couldn't have been better. And Norrie putting across understanding immediately

664
00:47:58,039 --> 00:48:01,159
the the you know, the whole concept of guaremation and

665
00:48:01,199 --> 00:48:04,400
the need for it and pushing for it. And there

666
00:48:04,440 --> 00:48:07,000
was there was Andrew and and and John Gary A

667
00:48:07,079 --> 00:48:11,199
Cup and Shetland. I mean, what a clever, clever man.

668
00:48:11,760 --> 00:48:16,760
And Sunbeam exactly yeah, and and and of course we

669
00:48:16,840 --> 00:48:20,480
go back to Tom Harkas. I mean, my word, look

670
00:48:20,519 --> 00:48:24,039
at the man, how he developed I was on both

671
00:48:24,079 --> 00:48:26,719
his boats, by the way, the Orkney Reaver, which was

672
00:48:26,760 --> 00:48:32,639
a fantastic seaboat, but the Kila, I love the Kila.

673
00:48:33,800 --> 00:48:36,960
I've never been on a fishing boat quite like it

674
00:48:37,119 --> 00:48:41,920
in seakeeping qualities and oh man alive. It was just

675
00:48:42,000 --> 00:48:44,800
a superb, superb vessel.

676
00:48:45,239 --> 00:48:52,400
Speaker 1: I love your passion and I think it's absolutely brilliant

677
00:48:52,599 --> 00:49:01,880
the way you're giving recognition the guys commercial fishing boats.

678
00:49:02,360 --> 00:49:07,199
Oh yeah, skippers that you worked, oh yeah for them,

679
00:49:07,440 --> 00:49:09,559
and they worked for the Marine Lab.

680
00:49:10,800 --> 00:49:13,320
Speaker 2: Well yeah they were they were working for the lab,

681
00:49:13,360 --> 00:49:16,679
and and and they they enjoyed every minute of it.

682
00:49:16,719 --> 00:49:21,039
I enjoyed every minute of it. But I mean, you know, Jim,

683
00:49:21,440 --> 00:49:23,199
I always said at the time, and I and I

684
00:49:23,320 --> 00:49:24,920
still say it, and I'll say it to anyone who

685
00:49:24,960 --> 00:49:28,239
wants to listen to me until they're bored silly, because

686
00:49:28,280 --> 00:49:29,760
you know what I'm like when I get stuck on

687
00:49:29,840 --> 00:49:30,480
square mesh.

688
00:49:31,480 --> 00:49:35,599
Speaker 1: But I would say with that, you'll talk, and you'll

689
00:49:35,639 --> 00:49:41,000
talk until they're bold board silly, you said, but you

690
00:49:41,039 --> 00:49:41,880
won't stop then.

691
00:49:45,039 --> 00:49:47,800
Speaker 2: But but the thing was that the thing was Jim,

692
00:49:47,880 --> 00:49:50,880
that to me, all of the skippers, including a lot

693
00:49:50,920 --> 00:49:52,960
of people, are sure, including one or two in the

694
00:49:52,960 --> 00:49:58,280
Marine lab as well are the unsung heroes of the

695
00:49:58,320 --> 00:50:02,800
square Mesh story. Because the square mesh story was so

696
00:50:03,159 --> 00:50:08,559
far away from anything that the industry had had ever

697
00:50:08,679 --> 00:50:13,880
experienced that it must have been so difficult for them

698
00:50:13,119 --> 00:50:16,079
to accept in a lot of a lot of cases.

699
00:50:16,199 --> 00:50:19,639
And I mean, I'm spinning your story here of what

700
00:50:19,719 --> 00:50:23,920
I saw in the industry, which was their acceptance was brilliant.

701
00:50:24,519 --> 00:50:27,960
Speaker 1: What I could say to you, obviously, when you're talking

702
00:50:28,039 --> 00:50:30,480
you get back to the eighties. I was much younger.

703
00:50:30,880 --> 00:50:35,039
I was involved to degree, not the same as the

704
00:50:35,039 --> 00:50:39,440
fisherman because I wasn't actively on the boat hands on

705
00:50:40,280 --> 00:50:46,320
that I was talking to you when you would commend

706
00:50:46,840 --> 00:50:49,079
when the boat would we be come in into land

707
00:50:49,159 --> 00:50:52,559
and be talking to the fisherman. And I can remember

708
00:50:52,719 --> 00:50:56,599
I just thought it was so exciting what it was

709
00:50:56,639 --> 00:51:00,960
going to do for the future. So I know exactly

710
00:51:01,000 --> 00:51:04,960
what you're all what you're saying there, Jack, I know exactly.

711
00:51:05,079 --> 00:51:08,320
I can remember it clearly now.

712
00:51:08,400 --> 00:51:11,960
Speaker 2: Jim, I don't want to embarrass You've given me. You've

713
00:51:11,960 --> 00:51:15,679
given me the ideal opportunity to say that you you

714
00:51:16,119 --> 00:51:20,719
are one of the unsung heroes. All those discussions that

715
00:51:20,760 --> 00:51:22,639
we had, I didn't know who I was talking to

716
00:51:22,760 --> 00:51:26,519
when when we were landing with the boats, except that

717
00:51:26,599 --> 00:51:29,239
you know, you were buying from from the boats, the

718
00:51:29,280 --> 00:51:31,440
fish from the boats. And of course you know me,

719
00:51:31,480 --> 00:51:34,960
I'll talk to anyone in the on the pier, anyone

720
00:51:35,039 --> 00:51:37,079
that comes up to me. In fact, I'll even grab

721
00:51:37,119 --> 00:51:39,119
people and start talking to them when they don't want

722
00:51:39,159 --> 00:51:44,320
to talk. And you, you, you listened, and I could

723
00:51:44,400 --> 00:51:47,800
see the excitement in your eyes. But Jim, I saw

724
00:51:47,840 --> 00:51:50,760
that excitement in so many other people's eyes. And you

725
00:51:50,840 --> 00:51:54,719
went on and you chatted about that to every fisherman

726
00:51:54,760 --> 00:51:57,400
that you encounter. I know for a fact, because fishermen

727
00:51:57,440 --> 00:52:00,280
would feed back to me, always speaking to Jim Kwi

728
00:52:00,360 --> 00:52:02,039
and he was telling me about the skirmish, tell me

729
00:52:02,079 --> 00:52:04,840
something about it, and Jim was Shane, it's a great idea.

730
00:52:04,840 --> 00:52:07,559
And Jim, you were all over the place. You were.

731
00:52:07,599 --> 00:52:12,079
You were definitely one of the unsung heroes that that

732
00:52:12,079 --> 00:52:17,239
that pushed it into into legislation eventually. But no, I

733
00:52:17,280 --> 00:52:24,519
mean a lot of people, a lot of people were involved. Uh.

734
00:52:24,559 --> 00:52:29,719
Speaker 1: And but as well as that, Jack, I appreciate it,

735
00:52:29,800 --> 00:52:32,519
and I thank you for that really kind words. I

736
00:52:32,519 --> 00:52:37,079
didn't see myself as that, but good back a wee

737
00:52:37,079 --> 00:52:41,880
bit one of the other points you made earlier, and

738
00:52:42,519 --> 00:52:46,519
I really do respect the way that you speak so

739
00:52:47,199 --> 00:52:51,599
fondly and highly of the fisherman you had connections with

740
00:52:51,719 --> 00:52:55,920
on my goodness worth plenty that I'll go back. I

741
00:52:55,960 --> 00:53:00,639
remember we were still in the EU midterm review, That's

742
00:53:00,679 --> 00:53:03,880
what it was, a midterm review the common Fisheries policy

743
00:53:03,920 --> 00:53:09,199
in Shetland. I went up for it. I was we

744
00:53:09,199 --> 00:53:12,440
were Tom and myself for coming back. We were in

745
00:53:12,559 --> 00:53:16,840
Sambra airport waiting for her plane and who was sitting

746
00:53:16,920 --> 00:53:23,519
on the airport waiting for their plane? And honestly that

747
00:53:23,920 --> 00:53:26,760
live with me to the rest of my days. The

748
00:53:27,000 --> 00:53:32,079
foresight and the knowledge and intelligence. Who was at three

749
00:53:32,119 --> 00:53:38,840
guys everyone you mentioned, So I know and appreciate what

750
00:53:38,880 --> 00:53:43,559
you're saying and who you're talking about, Willly Hay, Tom

751
00:53:43,679 --> 00:53:46,039
Hay and Johnny Thompson.

752
00:53:47,039 --> 00:53:51,559
Speaker 2: Johnny Thompson. Yes, yes, three unsung heroes.

753
00:53:52,199 --> 00:53:58,840
Speaker 1: Oh absolutely totally. And what I just come away from

754
00:53:59,199 --> 00:54:05,639
we were just buzzing so fool What foresaid? What foresaid?

755
00:54:06,320 --> 00:54:12,159
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, absolutely, I'm big characters, Oh, huge characters, and

756
00:54:12,280 --> 00:54:15,920
you know every one of them should have been knighted.

757
00:54:16,800 --> 00:54:20,760
I firmly believe that that what they did for the industry,

758
00:54:20,760 --> 00:54:25,039
and I sincerely wish and hope that the industry knew

759
00:54:25,079 --> 00:54:26,639
it at the time, and I'm quite sure that a

760
00:54:26,639 --> 00:54:31,239
lot of the industry did knew just what they sacrificed

761
00:54:32,119 --> 00:54:36,800
for the industry and pushed for the industry. They were

762
00:54:36,840 --> 00:54:41,039
all great, great men. And John Thompson, I'm glad you

763
00:54:41,119 --> 00:54:46,039
mentioned him because the Saint Kilda, the Saint Kilda, Oh

764
00:54:46,079 --> 00:54:47,920
what a beautiful boat.

765
00:54:47,880 --> 00:54:52,239
Speaker 1: Wouldn't boat. And I remember one time they commend to

766
00:54:52,360 --> 00:54:54,400
land in lochand that I was. I was buying a

767
00:54:54,480 --> 00:54:56,960
lot of fish at the time. At that time that

768
00:54:57,079 --> 00:55:02,360
would be before that, that would be well before the eighties.

769
00:55:02,400 --> 00:55:07,519
That would be either late sixties or into the seventies.

770
00:55:08,079 --> 00:55:13,960
And I was buying fish on and John came in

771
00:55:14,000 --> 00:55:18,599
to land. He had his fish on the market. Now

772
00:55:19,039 --> 00:55:23,480
there was a customer in Edinburgh, give me an order.

773
00:55:24,360 --> 00:55:27,599
He wanted fish, told me about the quality, the size,

774
00:55:27,880 --> 00:55:30,679
and I thought, well, I can't go wrong, I don't.

775
00:55:30,760 --> 00:55:33,960
I think it was before the St Kilda as well.

776
00:55:34,000 --> 00:55:37,760
I think it would be the Horizon. So I bought

777
00:55:37,800 --> 00:55:43,079
the fish the customer wanted from. It was Johnny's Thompson's

778
00:55:43,239 --> 00:55:46,599
fish because I knew the quality, knew the exactly what

779
00:55:46,719 --> 00:55:50,400
he wanted. So customer got the fish. He was happy.

780
00:55:50,719 --> 00:55:53,519
I was happy. And that was on the Thursday.

781
00:55:53,559 --> 00:55:54,159
Speaker 2: And you know that.

782
00:55:54,440 --> 00:55:58,800
Speaker 1: I'm sure you remember at that time that guy's landed.

783
00:55:59,039 --> 00:56:02,719
There were fished out. They would land on the Thursday night,

784
00:56:03,880 --> 00:56:07,559
go home, and then start again on the Sunday night.

785
00:56:08,400 --> 00:56:13,320
And I was back up on the Tuesday and Johnny

786
00:56:13,480 --> 00:56:17,320
was in again to land and he came up. He

787
00:56:17,400 --> 00:56:20,760
came up to me and he says, how did you

788
00:56:20,800 --> 00:56:24,880
get on with my fish last week? And I says,

789
00:56:25,519 --> 00:56:28,079
I got on fine with it, Johnny. I had an

790
00:56:28,239 --> 00:56:32,000
order from a customer. He wanted them, so I got

791
00:56:32,039 --> 00:56:37,920
them at he's happy with them. So I don't know,

792
00:56:38,199 --> 00:56:44,440
you're what you're getting at? I says, all good, you know,

793
00:56:44,519 --> 00:56:48,320
and he's lossy accent. Oh, he says, I'm fine. Pleased

794
00:56:48,400 --> 00:56:51,679
to hear that, Jem. He says, I was a wee

795
00:56:51,719 --> 00:56:54,079
bit worried you paid too much for them.

796
00:56:56,599 --> 00:57:01,280
Speaker 2: It's amazing. When when did you ever hear but when

797
00:57:01,400 --> 00:57:04,760
you ever hear a fishermen? Well that was that was

798
00:57:05,960 --> 00:57:07,280
That was the man, that was.

799
00:57:07,199 --> 00:57:11,440
Speaker 1: The because because on the market. George McKay it was

800
00:57:11,679 --> 00:57:15,840
you could say, mister Lochan where he owned the Lochander

801
00:57:15,960 --> 00:57:20,639
fish selling company, and there was buyers coming up from Aberdeen.

802
00:57:20,840 --> 00:57:24,599
Was was still operating a support buyers coming up from

803
00:57:24,679 --> 00:57:30,519
Bucky Aberdeen all over. And of course here's me, young lad,

804
00:57:31,039 --> 00:57:33,559
bidding on the fish. Of course what do they do,

805
00:57:33,960 --> 00:57:39,480
push me up, making me, force me to pay more

806
00:57:39,000 --> 00:57:43,239
pay And Johnny, when you think of it now, Jack,

807
00:57:43,760 --> 00:57:47,800
Johnny had he at the foresight that he could see

808
00:57:48,320 --> 00:57:52,239
it's new, young I wasn't buying a lot of that

809
00:57:52,480 --> 00:57:56,639
size of headaches at the time, and here was him saying, well,

810
00:57:57,000 --> 00:57:58,320
this could be the future.

811
00:57:59,079 --> 00:57:59,719
Speaker 2: And he was.

812
00:58:01,360 --> 00:58:06,000
Speaker 1: Rather than think it's more money for me, he thought, well,

813
00:58:06,039 --> 00:58:10,239
I hope it doesn't damage in a way that he's

814
00:58:10,280 --> 00:58:13,559
not he doesn't come in buying in the future.

815
00:58:14,000 --> 00:58:16,639
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was very thoughtful that way.

816
00:58:16,559 --> 00:58:19,079
Speaker 1: John That's that's the measure of the mind he was.

817
00:58:19,199 --> 00:58:22,039
Speaker 2: He was also the most patient skipper I think I've

818
00:58:22,079 --> 00:58:24,960
ever come across I did. I did a couple of

819
00:58:24,960 --> 00:58:28,960
trips with him. One trip I was filming the Shane

820
00:58:28,960 --> 00:58:31,719
Net now is Shane Net to film with the RCTV

821
00:58:31,800 --> 00:58:36,119
them remote control television vehicle is very, very difficult, and

822
00:58:36,159 --> 00:58:39,159
it took us three weeks to get some good film

823
00:58:39,480 --> 00:58:43,480
of juvenile fish escaping from the cot end. And I'll

824
00:58:43,960 --> 00:58:49,199
forever be in John Thompson's dead for the patients that

825
00:58:49,280 --> 00:58:52,960
he displayed during that three weeks until we got the film.

826
00:58:53,199 --> 00:58:58,039
When we got the film, he celebrated it far and wide.

827
00:58:57,760 --> 00:59:02,440
He plastered that video anywhere and everywhere he could send

828
00:59:02,480 --> 00:59:07,480
it because he was so enthused by the square mesh.

829
00:59:07,559 --> 00:59:08,880
Speaker 1: Yeah, I can't believe that.

830
00:59:09,880 --> 00:59:13,719
Speaker 2: Great. Great, I'll tell you. I'm sorry take up your

831
00:59:13,760 --> 00:59:17,880
time here, but listen another funny story, Johnny. When we

832
00:59:17,920 --> 00:59:21,280
were on that trip. You know how the rescue helicopters

833
00:59:21,519 --> 00:59:24,360
very often come over a fishing boat and ask permission

834
00:59:24,440 --> 00:59:29,519
to do some practice landings aboard. And that happened to us,

835
00:59:30,039 --> 00:59:33,360
you know, regularly. Anyway, the Wessex I think it was

836
00:59:33,360 --> 00:59:35,519
a Wessex helicopter at the time, I'm sure it was.

837
00:59:36,079 --> 00:59:40,280
It came over us and the radio comes on, skipper,

838
00:59:40,360 --> 00:59:43,360
can we could we do a practice and John John

839
00:59:43,400 --> 00:59:45,559
turns to me and he says, you okay for this, Jack,

840
00:59:45,679 --> 00:59:48,039
you know it's your charter. I said absolutely, I said no,

841
00:59:48,119 --> 00:59:51,199
I'm in full encouragement of, you know, practicing for the

842
00:59:51,800 --> 00:59:57,519
rescue services. Anyway, the winchman comes down onto the deck,

843
00:59:57,800 --> 01:00:01,800
he releases and I get chatting to him. Well what

844
01:00:01,960 --> 01:00:04,400
was I chatting to him about? Square Mesh? Of course,

845
01:00:04,480 --> 01:00:07,760
Jim and telling him, telling him, telling him what we

846
01:00:07,800 --> 01:00:10,760
are doing. And I could see him glaze over gradually,

847
01:00:11,239 --> 01:00:15,079
you know, and he started he started signaling, is his

848
01:00:15,360 --> 01:00:18,719
pilot to come in and lift him off? And I

849
01:00:18,760 --> 01:00:21,039
said to him, I said, just before he lifted off,

850
01:00:21,039 --> 01:00:25,440
I said, look, you wouldn't mind taking the camera. I

851
01:00:25,440 --> 01:00:28,719
had a video camera on board and I was videoing

852
01:00:28,840 --> 01:00:31,199
the whole thing, you know, And that's what I did.

853
01:00:31,239 --> 01:00:35,599
I made videos of each trip and distributed it around. Anyway,

854
01:00:35,719 --> 01:00:38,239
I said to him, wouldn't mind taking the camera up

855
01:00:38,519 --> 01:00:42,119
and filming us? Oh? He's just no bother at all.

856
01:00:42,159 --> 01:00:43,840
He says, would you like to come up yourself and

857
01:00:43,880 --> 01:00:46,280
do the filming yourself? I said, no, I better not

858
01:00:46,440 --> 01:00:48,639
leave the vessel. It might not go down too well

859
01:00:48,639 --> 01:00:52,480
in Edinburgh with the civil servants. If if Jack Robertson

860
01:00:52,599 --> 01:00:56,960
was known to have flown off in a Wessex helicopter. Anyway,

861
01:00:56,840 --> 01:01:01,239
the wenchman takes the camera and he does a brilliant

862
01:01:01,360 --> 01:01:04,159
movie and he comes back down hands it over And

863
01:01:04,960 --> 01:01:09,880
what a wonderful, wonderful video we made of that trip,

864
01:01:10,000 --> 01:01:12,679
you know, including the underwater video of the Square Mesh.

865
01:01:13,000 --> 01:01:16,480
And Johnny Thompson of course was delighted to get aerial

866
01:01:16,639 --> 01:01:19,719
film of the shint Kilda as well, so he's very

867
01:01:19,760 --> 01:01:22,320
proud to get that video at the end of the

868
01:01:22,440 --> 01:01:24,480
day from us.

869
01:01:24,039 --> 01:01:29,320
Speaker 1: And fantastic Jack. If I could, maybe I wouldn't say

870
01:01:29,320 --> 01:01:33,480
steal your thunder a bit, but maybe give you one

871
01:01:33,519 --> 01:01:37,760
that you weren't aware of. Oh what's that? You know,

872
01:01:37,840 --> 01:01:44,559
when you're going on about your history lessons, you can

873
01:01:44,679 --> 01:01:51,360
back the nineteen early nineteen nineteen twenty something. Yeah, yeah,

874
01:01:51,639 --> 01:01:53,400
and then you go back to the eatings.

875
01:01:53,480 --> 01:01:56,960
Speaker 2: You said eighteen ninety three. I think it was eighteen

876
01:01:57,840 --> 01:01:59,079
eighteen ninety five.

877
01:02:00,000 --> 01:02:03,119
Speaker 1: I want to steal your thunder, but I'm going to

878
01:02:03,159 --> 01:02:10,760
be looking at a paper when we finish our conversation. Yeah,

879
01:02:11,440 --> 01:02:14,599
I think I'm going to send you on from the

880
01:02:14,639 --> 01:02:22,119
thirteen hundreds. Oh and it was it was talked in

881
01:02:22,280 --> 01:02:26,719
parliament and sent to the King for approval, the then

882
01:02:26,960 --> 01:02:28,039
king for approval.

883
01:02:28,360 --> 01:02:30,000
Speaker 2: Oh, Jim, this is great history.

884
01:02:30,039 --> 01:02:34,480
Speaker 1: Go on, go on, tell me, tell me not just

885
01:02:34,519 --> 01:02:37,639
about immature fishing fish escaping.

886
01:02:37,360 --> 01:02:41,119
Speaker 2: Amateur fish escaping. Ah, right, even in those days, even

887
01:02:41,199 --> 01:02:45,679
in those days, it's always been the concern. I'm delighted.

888
01:02:45,679 --> 01:02:48,960
I want to see that paper for sure. Oh, Jim,

889
01:02:49,239 --> 01:02:52,960
that's that's wonderful. Well, do you know, Jim. And going

890
01:02:53,000 --> 01:02:57,719
from that thirteenth century issue, going from then to the future,

891
01:02:59,199 --> 01:03:02,519
there's the young's coming through in the industry. Now. Their

892
01:03:02,679 --> 01:03:07,639
future depends on letting juvenile fish escape from the from

893
01:03:07,719 --> 01:03:10,960
the gear. They've got to look after their their future,

894
01:03:11,760 --> 01:03:18,360
and they've got to embrace selectivity in the in the nets.

895
01:03:19,519 --> 01:03:23,800
Speaker 1: To take that one. If I could just maybe ask

896
01:03:24,000 --> 01:03:29,920
the question what was happening in fisheries that made selectivity important?

897
01:03:31,599 --> 01:03:33,880
Speaker 2: Oh, without a doubt, it was the destruction of the

898
01:03:34,000 --> 01:03:35,400
juvenile fish.

899
01:03:35,480 --> 01:03:35,679
Speaker 1: Gim.

900
01:03:35,840 --> 01:03:40,159
Speaker 2: I mean, skippers were showing me videos, uh and move

901
01:03:40,360 --> 01:03:44,360
movie films, you know, the old sinny h stuff of

902
01:03:44,960 --> 01:03:48,400
halls that they would have, and they would dump the

903
01:03:48,480 --> 01:03:53,000
juvenile fish and that fish would lie on the surface dead. Okay,

904
01:03:53,079 --> 01:03:55,440
the goals were getting them. It was entering the ecosystem,

905
01:03:55,480 --> 01:03:57,599
but it wasn't doing any good for the fishing industry,

906
01:03:57,840 --> 01:04:03,440
and those fishermen were coming to me and telling me

907
01:04:03,519 --> 01:04:09,719
that long before, long before I started the selectivity work

908
01:04:09,920 --> 01:04:12,920
in the mid nineteen seventies, when I was on the

909
01:04:12,960 --> 01:04:17,079
research vessels, which, as I told you earlier, were crewed

910
01:04:17,719 --> 01:04:23,639
by ex fishermen, inevitably I would ask about the history

911
01:04:23,719 --> 01:04:28,079
of fishing, of their experiences, of the boats that they had,

912
01:04:28,639 --> 01:04:30,800
where they fished, and all the rest of it. And

913
01:04:31,239 --> 01:04:35,599
every one of them started to tell me about the destruction,

914
01:04:36,400 --> 01:04:39,760
and it was foremost in their mind, Gym foremost in

915
01:04:39,800 --> 01:04:42,239
their mind, and they would take me to their houses

916
01:04:42,280 --> 01:04:47,159
and show me the siny eight and I was flabbergasted

917
01:04:47,280 --> 01:04:52,440
because I had no real notion of that up to

918
01:04:52,519 --> 01:04:56,079
that point. But then, as I said to you earlier,

919
01:04:56,119 --> 01:04:58,880
I started diving with John and Graham, and I saw

920
01:04:59,519 --> 01:05:03,480
the capture of the juvenile fish in the nets. So

921
01:05:03,599 --> 01:05:07,519
I was linking those videos from the fishermen to what

922
01:05:07,599 --> 01:05:11,960
I was saying, and that's what moved me into this

923
01:05:12,079 --> 01:05:20,679
whole area of selectivity, because I thought we have to

924
01:05:20,119 --> 01:05:24,679
we must do something to save the juvenile fish, and

925
01:05:24,679 --> 01:05:28,679
that was my driving force. In fact, I became very blinkered. Jim.

926
01:05:28,800 --> 01:05:34,360
It has to be said about selectivity in general now

927
01:05:35,280 --> 01:05:38,239
and square mesh in particular, as you know. But it

928
01:05:38,280 --> 01:05:43,239
wasn't just the square mesh I discovered. And this I

929
01:05:43,280 --> 01:05:46,679
can claim fame for without a shadow of a doubt,

930
01:05:47,679 --> 01:05:54,440
that the selectivity of long extension pieces in troll mates

931
01:05:55,440 --> 01:05:59,800
is very poor and if you shorten the extension piece up,

932
01:06:00,159 --> 01:06:02,480
you're beginning to open the meshes up a little bit.

933
01:06:02,840 --> 01:06:04,400
It's what they do with the design of the troll

934
01:06:04,440 --> 01:06:08,800
et cetera, et cetera. And the escape of juveniles was

935
01:06:09,159 --> 01:06:12,599
a bit better. Now, that was a non starter. I

936
01:06:12,639 --> 01:06:15,280
could never introduce that to the fishery because the fishermen

937
01:06:15,440 --> 01:06:20,159
need the long extension to get from the nets are

938
01:06:20,199 --> 01:06:23,320
taken over the stern of the boat and the cod

939
01:06:23,440 --> 01:06:26,800
end is taken up for it always on the starboard

940
01:06:26,880 --> 01:06:31,400
side to the fishhold, and they had to have that

941
01:06:31,559 --> 01:06:37,800
long extension to get round. So although that discovery was

942
01:06:37,840 --> 01:06:42,679
extremely interesting in terms of selectivity and improving selectivity, the

943
01:06:42,719 --> 01:06:47,599
one that did work and is in legislation now is

944
01:06:48,719 --> 01:06:55,920
the reduced meshes on the circumference of the cordent. And

945
01:06:56,079 --> 01:06:58,559
that was an experiment that I set up in the

946
01:06:58,760 --> 01:07:01,360
again in the early night in eighties in tandem with

947
01:07:01,400 --> 01:07:03,800
all the squirmish stuff that I was doing. So what

948
01:07:03,840 --> 01:07:07,360
the fishermen were doing was they were using a large

949
01:07:07,480 --> 01:07:11,760
number of meshes on the round on the circumforts of

950
01:07:11,800 --> 01:07:15,360
the content, and that would close the meshes up tight.

951
01:07:16,840 --> 01:07:19,440
And I asked fishermen why they were doing that, and

952
01:07:19,480 --> 01:07:24,440
they said, well, it's catching me more fish. I said, okay,

953
01:07:24,800 --> 01:07:29,000
but it's is it catching you more marketable fish? Well,

954
01:07:29,000 --> 01:07:33,079
not really marketable, but it's catching more juveniles. And I said,

955
01:07:33,119 --> 01:07:35,559
but why would you want to catch the juveniles because

956
01:07:35,920 --> 01:07:40,079
they said, it proves to us that the net the

957
01:07:40,199 --> 01:07:46,440
troll is fishing correctly. Now think on that a moment, Jim,

958
01:07:46,840 --> 01:07:53,280
Is that not astonishing? They had the conception, that I

959
01:07:53,320 --> 01:07:56,159
suppose in their minds rightly, that because they were catching

960
01:07:56,199 --> 01:07:59,000
the juveniles as well as the adults, then the net

961
01:07:59,320 --> 01:08:01,480
was on the botto, the foot rope was tight on

962
01:08:01,519 --> 01:08:04,800
the bottom, it was capturing what it needed to capture.

963
01:08:05,000 --> 01:08:08,400
Nothing was getting out and away from the front of

964
01:08:08,440 --> 01:08:10,760
the troll that they were pulling everything in and it

965
01:08:10,800 --> 01:08:15,360
was getting down into the content. And I said, well,

966
01:08:16,000 --> 01:08:19,479
but then you know these are under the minimum landing

967
01:08:19,640 --> 01:08:23,560
size juvenile fish. You're dumping them so it's a complete

968
01:08:23,560 --> 01:08:27,000
and utter way, And they said yes. And I spoke

969
01:08:27,079 --> 01:08:32,279
to a lot of skippers who used that explanation, and

970
01:08:32,319 --> 01:08:35,560
that was in the nineteen seventies. I never ever heard

971
01:08:36,359 --> 01:08:39,399
a skippers or any fishermen say that in the nineteen

972
01:08:39,399 --> 01:08:44,359
eighties or early nineteen nineties, because I believe that it

973
01:08:44,479 --> 01:08:49,720
was the film videos that John Mayne and Graham Sangster

974
01:08:50,399 --> 01:08:55,880
and I were producing on the various experiments that we

975
01:08:55,880 --> 01:08:59,960
were doing, which was showing the fishermen that they did

976
01:09:00,399 --> 01:09:03,079
need to capture the juvenile fish to show them that

977
01:09:03,119 --> 01:09:04,039
the net was fishing.

978
01:09:04,479 --> 01:09:08,560
Speaker 1: Yeah, and there was. Because I was going to ask you,

979
01:09:08,720 --> 01:09:13,119
why were a juvenile such a concern because we're traditional

980
01:09:13,279 --> 01:09:14,119
nets failing.

981
01:09:15,159 --> 01:09:24,239
Speaker 2: Well, now, it was of the time, gym. They weren't

982
01:09:24,319 --> 01:09:28,359
failing because the mesh, the minimum mesh size was what

983
01:09:28,399 --> 01:09:32,920
it was, which was seventy and eighty seventy in the

984
01:09:32,920 --> 01:09:37,960
pron trolls and eighty in the whitefish trolls. It was

985
01:09:38,039 --> 01:09:43,159
of the time. And I suppose esoterically you can say,

986
01:09:43,199 --> 01:09:47,439
yes they were failing, failing the juvenile fish and retaining them, yes,

987
01:09:48,439 --> 01:09:52,560
but they weren't failing the fishermen in a sense because

988
01:09:53,119 --> 01:09:56,159
they had no conception until they saw the video film

989
01:09:56,199 --> 01:09:58,039
of the nets. They had no conception of really what

990
01:09:58,159 --> 01:09:59,399
was going on down there.

991
01:09:59,399 --> 01:10:06,000
Speaker 1: Although yeah, well I could I say maybe stly slightly.

992
01:10:06,039 --> 01:10:11,960
Did personman already understand before science stepped you say.

993
01:10:12,840 --> 01:10:16,079
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. The industry understood

994
01:10:16,720 --> 01:10:20,159
absolutely before before before the industry And listen, if I

995
01:10:20,159 --> 01:10:23,439
can just go back, because I think something I said

996
01:10:23,479 --> 01:10:26,239
a few moments ago was was was not quite right.

997
01:10:26,359 --> 01:10:29,880
I said something like, you know, the fisherman had no

998
01:10:29,920 --> 01:10:33,319
conception of what was going on on the seabeds. Their

999
01:10:33,359 --> 01:10:36,960
net was was being towed over the ground. That's not true. Actually,

1000
01:10:37,479 --> 01:10:40,520
the fisherman knew an awful lot of what was going

1001
01:10:40,560 --> 01:10:46,880
on by telltale signs, damage to natch, wearing tear and

1002
01:10:47,079 --> 01:10:51,800
chain on on the wing ends, wearing tear on the

1003
01:10:52,119 --> 01:10:56,520
foot rope and so on, meshed fish through certain sections

1004
01:10:56,560 --> 01:10:59,279
of the of the troll. You know what, you know

1005
01:10:59,319 --> 01:11:03,039
what I'm talking about. It was telltale signs that were

1006
01:11:03,199 --> 01:11:08,880
demonstrating to fishermen that something wasn't quite right, one of

1007
01:11:08,880 --> 01:11:13,199
which was the amount of juvenile fish that were capturing

1008
01:11:13,399 --> 01:11:18,319
and also the meshed juvenile fish that were meshed in

1009
01:11:18,479 --> 01:11:22,920
the extension pieces in particular, So that was the fish

1010
01:11:23,000 --> 01:11:26,520
that got pinched by the netting as they were trying

1011
01:11:26,520 --> 01:11:31,279
to escape but couldn't, and that came to the surface,

1012
01:11:31,720 --> 01:11:35,600
and the fishermen saw that. So the industry were, without doubt,

1013
01:11:36,680 --> 01:11:41,479
way ahead of the scientists in understanding. I suppose that

1014
01:11:41,640 --> 01:11:45,760
the damage that was being done by the capture of

1015
01:11:45,920 --> 01:11:50,960
juvenile fish in particular, and the damage that that was

1016
01:11:51,000 --> 01:11:56,720
subsequently doing to the stalk sizes I see.

1017
01:11:56,840 --> 01:11:59,880
Speaker 1: I know it made seem as if it's a repetition,

1018
01:12:00,039 --> 01:12:04,479
and you've already spoken about, but it's not. With the

1019
01:12:04,520 --> 01:12:11,239
square mesh. Where do you did the square mesh? Forget

1020
01:12:11,800 --> 01:12:15,840
we're talking now thirteen hundred, eighteen hundred and nineteen hundred,

1021
01:12:16,039 --> 01:12:19,479
forget all that history, but with yourself, where did the

1022
01:12:19,520 --> 01:12:21,960
square mesh idea come from?

1023
01:12:23,159 --> 01:12:28,960
Speaker 2: It? It came, do you mean? For me? For me,

1024
01:12:30,439 --> 01:12:35,479
without any doubt, it just came with the amount of

1025
01:12:36,199 --> 01:12:42,239
thinking that I was doing during my earlier years in

1026
01:12:42,319 --> 01:12:47,800
the lab about the design of trolls. So my remit

1027
01:12:48,079 --> 01:12:51,960
was to improve troll design, to make it more economical,

1028
01:12:52,039 --> 01:12:55,479
to make it more efficient for the fishing fishermen. And

1029
01:12:55,560 --> 01:12:58,239
it was just the thinking that I was doing about

1030
01:12:58,239 --> 01:13:01,199
the opening of meshes, or the lack of opening in

1031
01:13:01,239 --> 01:13:04,640
a lot of cases, and the retention of juvenile fish,

1032
01:13:04,840 --> 01:13:08,039
and thinking how can I open up the mesh, and

1033
01:13:08,159 --> 01:13:11,680
just fiddling about with little bits of netting at home,

1034
01:13:11,760 --> 01:13:14,359
in the marine lab, in my office, all over the

1035
01:13:14,359 --> 01:13:17,239
bloody place. I mean, people in the family were sick

1036
01:13:17,319 --> 01:13:23,199
of me fiddling about with bitsinet because I was determined

1037
01:13:23,560 --> 01:13:28,119
how do I do this? And just turning diamond mesh

1038
01:13:28,560 --> 01:13:32,520
on the square How simple could that be? And as

1039
01:13:32,520 --> 01:13:35,640
I mentioned earlier, looking at hexagonal mesh as well, but

1040
01:13:35,720 --> 01:13:39,479
that was a non starter because of the complication of

1041
01:13:39,520 --> 01:13:45,960
repairing it. But it started with me. Now it's interesting

1042
01:13:46,039 --> 01:13:51,159
because and again this is working against my desire to

1043
01:13:51,199 --> 01:13:54,720
have discovered square metch, which I didn't. But the first

1044
01:13:54,720 --> 01:13:58,920
trip that I had in a gold Seeker, James Calder,

1045
01:14:00,239 --> 01:14:03,520
a Bucky fisherman ex fisherman who was skipper of the

1046
01:14:03,560 --> 01:14:08,039
gold Seeker and the crew watched the video. As I

1047
01:14:08,159 --> 01:14:12,479
was flying the RCTV, I would control it to fly

1048
01:14:12,640 --> 01:14:15,840
around the cod end and the first time that they

1049
01:14:16,000 --> 01:14:21,479
saw the squaremish cought end, they were flabbergasted and James

1050
01:14:21,640 --> 01:14:26,239
immediately almost immediately said to me. He said, Jack, that's

1051
01:14:26,319 --> 01:14:30,560
something that must go into legislation to let more juvenile

1052
01:14:30,560 --> 01:14:33,640
fish escape. And we got talking about it afterwards, and

1053
01:14:33,840 --> 01:14:38,479
there was a lot of discussion, and James described to

1054
01:14:38,560 --> 01:14:43,039
me that square mesh had been used before, and I thought, oh, no,

1055
01:14:43,720 --> 01:14:47,239
I'm blown out of the water. Haven't discovered squaremish. And

1056
01:14:47,399 --> 01:14:51,760
what it was was he himself had actually used squaremish

1057
01:14:51,800 --> 01:14:54,720
behind the foot rope of the troll where they were

1058
01:14:54,760 --> 01:14:59,479
fishing over shell ground or stony ground. The shells and

1059
01:14:59,520 --> 01:15:03,640
the stone would drop through the very large square meshes

1060
01:15:03,640 --> 01:15:06,720
that they would use, and it would just be one

1061
01:15:06,840 --> 01:15:10,680
or two or three rows, and then the diamond mesh

1062
01:15:10,680 --> 01:15:13,680
would be attached to the back end of that, so

1063
01:15:13,760 --> 01:15:18,039
the stones and the shells would come over the foot rope,

1064
01:15:18,359 --> 01:15:22,079
fall through the square mesh and not be caught in

1065
01:15:22,119 --> 01:15:27,600
the net obviously, because of course they knew that if

1066
01:15:27,600 --> 01:15:29,600
the stones and shellfish got back to the court entend,

1067
01:15:29,640 --> 01:15:34,199
it would destroy their catch. It would completely destroy the

1068
01:15:34,279 --> 01:15:38,319
quality of the fish and the nephrops, the prawns that

1069
01:15:38,319 --> 01:15:41,239
they were fishing. So there you go. He told me that,

1070
01:15:41,479 --> 01:15:44,039
you know, square mesh had been used in another application

1071
01:15:44,119 --> 01:15:47,880
which was brilliant, and it adds to the whole history

1072
01:15:47,079 --> 01:15:50,359
of the Squaremish story.

1073
01:15:50,840 --> 01:15:54,680
Speaker 1: And obviously lots of what you're saying, it all makes

1074
01:15:54,720 --> 01:15:59,239
practical sense. Why did it make scientific sense?

1075
01:16:00,199 --> 01:16:07,920
Speaker 2: Well, it made shine of sense because the now I

1076
01:16:07,960 --> 01:16:10,680
need to get a little bit technical here and try

1077
01:16:10,720 --> 01:16:16,640
and describe graphs. Each each time we towed the content,

1078
01:16:16,800 --> 01:16:20,199
we would capture the juvenile fish that came out of

1079
01:16:20,199 --> 01:16:23,920
the content, so we knew what had escaped and what

1080
01:16:24,079 --> 01:16:26,960
had been retained in the content, and we could build

1081
01:16:26,960 --> 01:16:34,640
a graph which displayed fish length, you know, starting at zero, five, ten, fifteen,

1082
01:16:34,760 --> 01:16:39,159
twenty centimeters, thirty centimeters and so on on the bottom

1083
01:16:39,199 --> 01:16:41,960
of the graph, and then on the on the vertical

1084
01:16:42,000 --> 01:16:46,760
axis of the graph, you would have the proportion retained.

1085
01:16:47,680 --> 01:16:50,600
So that was simply comparing what it has had escaped

1086
01:16:50,640 --> 01:16:54,399
at each size of fish against what it'd been retained

1087
01:16:54,560 --> 01:16:59,960
in the content. So you built a picture of retain

1088
01:17:00,439 --> 01:17:07,520
against escapes. And that graph usually pretty much always followed

1089
01:17:07,600 --> 01:17:13,920
an esh shaped curve, what's called an ogive in the trades.

1090
01:17:13,960 --> 01:17:17,199
So it was an ish shaped curve, so that when

1091
01:17:17,279 --> 01:17:20,920
you got up to say forty centimeters, it would be

1092
01:17:21,119 --> 01:17:27,359
at one hundred percent retention of forty centimeter fish, whereas

1093
01:17:27,359 --> 01:17:30,279
if you went down to the juvenile fish size, let's

1094
01:17:30,319 --> 01:17:36,960
say fifteen centimeters, you would be further down the ogive

1095
01:17:37,319 --> 01:17:43,000
curve to a position that would suggest at fifteen centimeters

1096
01:17:43,680 --> 01:17:53,079
you had retained twenty percent of the juveniles and eighty

1097
01:17:53,159 --> 01:17:57,960
percent of them had escaped. Now, for a diamond mesh,

1098
01:17:58,039 --> 01:18:02,399
cod end of the sizes that I was experimenting with,

1099
01:18:03,119 --> 01:18:08,239
the ogive was very flat, usually very flat, so that

1100
01:18:08,439 --> 01:18:16,359
even at the juvenile fish sizes of you know, ten, eleven, twelve, thirty, forty, fifteen, sixteen,

1101
01:18:16,359 --> 01:18:23,640
seventeen centimeters, the retained percentage could be as high as

1102
01:18:23,760 --> 01:18:31,079
thirty forty fifty percent. Still, now here's the croux. When

1103
01:18:31,760 --> 01:18:38,079
we used the square mesh. Firstly, the ogive was always steeper.

1104
01:18:39,279 --> 01:18:45,479
In other words, the cutoff between retaining juveniles and retaining

1105
01:18:46,279 --> 01:18:52,079
marketable species gave a much steeper ogive, so that you

1106
01:18:52,159 --> 01:18:56,520
found when you went down to fifteen centimeter size of

1107
01:18:56,760 --> 01:19:02,199
Haddacker whiting, let's say, there was zero retention of that

1108
01:19:02,319 --> 01:19:05,880
size of fish, meaning all the juveniles of that side

1109
01:19:06,720 --> 01:19:13,439
size had escaped from the cotted. Now, because because the

1110
01:19:14,159 --> 01:19:20,760
ogive was much steeper, and because there was more of

1111
01:19:20,800 --> 01:19:28,159
a discernible cutoff between retained juveniles or shall I say,

1112
01:19:28,560 --> 01:19:34,720
escaped juveniles, as opposed to retained marketable fish, you were

1113
01:19:34,840 --> 01:19:42,319
ending up with more marketable fish at the equivalent size

1114
01:19:42,880 --> 01:19:46,319
of square mesh compared to diamond mesh. So for an

1115
01:19:46,359 --> 01:19:50,640
eighty milimeter square mesh, which was equivalent roughly to a

1116
01:19:50,720 --> 01:19:55,399
ninety milimeter diamond mesh, sometimes a bit more actually, but

1117
01:19:55,520 --> 01:19:59,880
the od jive, the ogive for the diamond mesh would

1118
01:19:59,880 --> 01:20:04,479
be very shallow, and the ogive for the square mesh

1119
01:20:04,920 --> 01:20:10,800
would be quite steep, So the cutoff could be manipulated

1120
01:20:10,840 --> 01:20:14,239
in a way with the mesh size to give you

1121
01:20:14,399 --> 01:20:20,079
a cutoff point for the minimum size of fish that

1122
01:20:20,239 --> 01:20:23,760
was required by law to be retained. And at that

1123
01:20:23,880 --> 01:20:26,319
time for haddock it was, as I recall, it was

1124
01:20:26,359 --> 01:20:32,000
twenty seven centimeters. So for the eighty millimeter square I

1125
01:20:32,159 --> 01:20:38,079
was getting pretty near most of the juvenile escaping out

1126
01:20:38,119 --> 01:20:42,720
of the square mesh. But because it was a steeper ogive,

1127
01:20:42,920 --> 01:20:46,760
I was getting more more marketable fish. And that was

1128
01:20:46,800 --> 01:20:48,039
the incredible thing about it.

1129
01:20:49,479 --> 01:20:52,960
Speaker 1: The other incredible thing that I would ask you, Jacket,

1130
01:20:53,399 --> 01:20:58,119
why was it controversial? This made common sense.

1131
01:20:58,800 --> 01:21:04,239
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, yeah, I mean, well okay, I of course

1132
01:21:04,279 --> 01:21:07,039
I wouldn't call it controversial because I don't think anything

1133
01:21:07,079 --> 01:21:15,479
that is designed to improve conservation controversial. In my mind,

1134
01:21:15,479 --> 01:21:20,840
it's not controversial, but it was controversial. Yeah, But to

1135
01:21:20,960 --> 01:21:23,880
many people it was controversial. And I used to say

1136
01:21:23,880 --> 01:21:26,560
to them, why is it controversial? Do you not want

1137
01:21:26,600 --> 01:21:30,720
to improve the escape of juvenile fish? They would answer yes,

1138
01:21:30,800 --> 01:21:33,199
of course we do. And I said, well, you know

1139
01:21:33,720 --> 01:21:34,760
why is it controversial?

1140
01:21:34,760 --> 01:21:34,880
Speaker 1: Oh?

1141
01:21:34,920 --> 01:21:37,680
Speaker 2: Well, it's because it's so different. And I say, well,

1142
01:21:38,039 --> 01:21:43,000
if the fishing industry accept it, then it's not controversial.

1143
01:21:44,479 --> 01:21:48,199
Have you spoken to any fishermen that are against it

1144
01:21:48,279 --> 01:21:53,159
completely and utterly? No, I haven't. Well I hadn't either,

1145
01:21:53,319 --> 01:21:55,600
because most of the fishermen that I spoke to who

1146
01:21:55,680 --> 01:21:58,479
I showed the movie to, the underwater video showed the

1147
01:21:58,560 --> 01:22:01,960
data to convinced all the skippers that I went away

1148
01:22:01,960 --> 01:22:04,800
in the commercial charters with, every single one of them,

1149
01:22:04,880 --> 01:22:07,960
were convinced totally that it worked and that it showed

1150
01:22:08,000 --> 01:22:11,279
the attributes that I'm discussing in terms of retaining more

1151
01:22:11,319 --> 01:22:15,520
marketable at certain sizes, letting much more juvenile, many more

1152
01:22:15,640 --> 01:22:20,880
juveniles escape, et cetera, et cetera. So I could to

1153
01:22:20,920 --> 01:22:26,239
this day, I cannot understand why people thought it to

1154
01:22:26,279 --> 01:22:31,640
be controversial. In fact, many many of those people thought

1155
01:22:31,680 --> 01:22:39,359
it's so controversial that they tried to stop it going

1156
01:22:39,359 --> 01:22:45,039
into legislation. Now I'm talking about, you know, the odd

1157
01:22:46,520 --> 01:22:52,560
scientist and the odd civil servant. Now, the fishing industry

1158
01:22:52,600 --> 01:22:55,359
came into play, and I've described meetings I had with

1159
01:22:55,399 --> 01:22:57,199
Willie Hay and all the rest of it. When they

1160
01:22:57,199 --> 01:23:00,800
went back to the civil servants, they said, well, you know,

1161
01:23:00,840 --> 01:23:03,720
we want the square mesh. And the civil servants said, yes,

1162
01:23:03,760 --> 01:23:07,920
but you know, aren't their problems of strength and so

1163
01:23:08,000 --> 01:23:10,159
on and so forth. Yes, but that's all been solved

1164
01:23:10,239 --> 01:23:14,079
by the Marine Lab. The Marine lap has done strength tests.

1165
01:23:14,199 --> 01:23:20,279
They've devised means of necessarily strengthening up the salvages of

1166
01:23:20,319 --> 01:23:25,199
the square mesh, running ropes along the mesh to ensure

1167
01:23:25,239 --> 01:23:28,479
that it was strong enough to lift caught ins of

1168
01:23:28,600 --> 01:23:31,439
fish aboard, et cetera, et cetera. So that's all been solved.

1169
01:23:31,439 --> 01:23:34,640
So why why is it still controversial in your mind?

1170
01:23:35,119 --> 01:23:43,199
And gradually the fishing industry itself persuaded the legislators to

1171
01:23:45,319 --> 01:23:49,319
accept that the industry itself didn't find it controversial that

1172
01:23:49,359 --> 01:23:52,760
they were quite happy with it because they could see

1173
01:23:52,920 --> 01:23:56,199
they could see the benefit of its introduction in terms

1174
01:23:56,239 --> 01:24:01,279
of letting more juveniles escape, letting the babies, the baby's escape,

1175
01:24:02,159 --> 01:24:04,039
and it became the mantra.

1176
01:24:04,840 --> 01:24:08,840
Speaker 1: Yeah, and if I could ask you, Joe for a moment,

1177
01:24:08,960 --> 01:24:14,439
to take your scientist start off and just give us

1178
01:24:15,880 --> 01:24:23,039
our listeners are insane because obviously, as a scientists, you're

1179
01:24:23,079 --> 01:24:28,920
going on what we described earlier, dirty fishing, smelly fishing boats.

1180
01:24:29,239 --> 01:24:34,079
What was your experiences like going to see any of

1181
01:24:34,079 --> 01:24:37,560
the practical problems when you were there, if there were

1182
01:24:37,640 --> 01:24:46,600
gear failures, bad weather, you must have some memories that well.

1183
01:24:46,239 --> 01:24:49,239
Speaker 2: Well, absolutely, there are a lot of memories. I mean,

1184
01:24:49,560 --> 01:24:52,640
the predominant memory for me has always been just how good,

1185
01:24:53,439 --> 01:24:56,760
how nice the fishermen were, the skippers and their crews were,

1186
01:24:57,479 --> 01:25:01,079
and also how how nice the boats were. The boats

1187
01:25:01,079 --> 01:25:03,800
weren't smelly, dirty, The boats were some of the finest,

1188
01:25:03,800 --> 01:25:07,880
cleanest vessels I've ever been on. Because fishermen are proud

1189
01:25:07,960 --> 01:25:10,680
of their ships, they're proud of their vessels, they're proud

1190
01:25:10,680 --> 01:25:14,279
of what they do, and that showed through an abundance

1191
01:25:14,359 --> 01:25:17,720
to me in every single boat that I went on. However,

1192
01:25:18,199 --> 01:25:23,720
there were some funny incidences, and one of which I

1193
01:25:24,159 --> 01:25:28,399
to this day dispute completely and utterly. However, with tongue

1194
01:25:28,439 --> 01:25:31,479
in cheek, I have to add and Tom, I think

1195
01:25:31,560 --> 01:25:37,000
one of one of your other guests, Tom from what

1196
01:25:37,479 --> 01:25:43,840
you called catch Cam, his Tom Rossiter. He relates this

1197
01:25:43,960 --> 01:25:48,399
story because he was told it by James May. Jim May,

1198
01:25:48,760 --> 01:25:53,159
the skipper of Harvest Reaper. Well, Jim, as you know,

1199
01:25:53,359 --> 01:25:56,439
was the first boat that I went away on and

1200
01:25:58,960 --> 01:26:02,720
and we did a fantastic trip. That was a great trip,

1201
01:26:02,760 --> 01:26:06,239
and I went on many trips with Jim May. However,

1202
01:26:06,920 --> 01:26:09,319
on one of the trips I had a lot of

1203
01:26:09,760 --> 01:26:14,199
changing of cod ends and extension pieces, because not only

1204
01:26:14,359 --> 01:26:16,079
was I looking at the square mesh, but I was

1205
01:26:16,119 --> 01:26:19,640
looking at the idea of long and short extensions and

1206
01:26:20,000 --> 01:26:25,199
full cought ends and squaremish cought ends and so on.

1207
01:26:26,039 --> 01:26:29,920
And Jim and I, I mean I always got involved

1208
01:26:30,000 --> 01:26:33,159
in the practical side of changing the gear over whinning

1209
01:26:33,319 --> 01:26:37,720
if I could. And with Jim, he enjoyed working on

1210
01:26:37,800 --> 01:26:40,159
the deck with me. So while the crew were sorting

1211
01:26:40,239 --> 01:26:44,199
the catch, Jim and I would change the cod end

1212
01:26:44,720 --> 01:26:46,439
or the extension piece or whatever.

1213
01:26:46,520 --> 01:26:46,880
Speaker 1: It was.

1214
01:26:47,159 --> 01:26:49,640
Speaker 2: So Jim and I are chatting away and having a

1215
01:26:49,720 --> 01:26:52,920
grand old time. It's a lovely day off Fraser Bragh

1216
01:26:53,560 --> 01:26:56,720
and the sun was shining, and we do our job

1217
01:26:57,319 --> 01:27:03,960
of attaching a new a different extension to the extension

1218
01:27:04,960 --> 01:27:08,600
of the troll that was about to be shot again

1219
01:27:08,720 --> 01:27:13,760
once the crew had sorted the fish out, so the

1220
01:27:13,920 --> 01:27:16,520
net is shot away, so the core end goes over

1221
01:27:16,680 --> 01:27:23,640
first Jim and then the extension and nothing behind it.

1222
01:27:24,079 --> 01:27:27,279
We hadn't attached the extension to the troll. We did

1223
01:27:27,319 --> 01:27:30,880
attach the we did. We had attacked we'd attached the

1224
01:27:31,000 --> 01:27:36,039
extension to another piece of extension that was lying on

1225
01:27:36,159 --> 01:27:41,720
the deck. So James May shouts from the wheelhouse. He said,

1226
01:27:42,439 --> 01:27:46,079
Jack Robertson, you haven attached it in the right place.

1227
01:27:46,840 --> 01:27:50,439
I said, no, no, it's your fault. Anyway, long story short,

1228
01:27:50,520 --> 01:27:52,880
we've always had a laugh over the years about it,

1229
01:27:53,039 --> 01:27:56,960
Jim and the and and Jim related that to Tom

1230
01:27:57,079 --> 01:28:00,399
Rossiter some years.

1231
01:28:00,439 --> 01:28:03,319
Speaker 1: Did you ever did you ever get it back? Yeah?

1232
01:28:03,479 --> 01:28:06,000
Speaker 2: Of course, yeah, we did, of course, because you know

1233
01:28:06,079 --> 01:28:08,279
it was it was poly ethylene, so it was floaty

1234
01:28:08,880 --> 01:28:11,439
and we just turned around and picked it up. But

1235
01:28:11,520 --> 01:28:14,399
there was James and I James and I the experiment,

1236
01:28:15,119 --> 01:28:17,920
you know, it was, it was. It was not helped

1237
01:28:18,000 --> 01:28:20,880
by not attaching it correctly. And I I can't I

1238
01:28:20,960 --> 01:28:23,600
can't tell you need a few pints in a pub

1239
01:28:23,760 --> 01:28:27,439
or you know, to really appreciate the funny side of

1240
01:28:27,520 --> 01:28:29,560
that story. I can't really tell it.

1241
01:28:30,119 --> 01:28:32,720
Speaker 1: That would be a cracker, that story.

1242
01:28:33,439 --> 01:28:36,880
Speaker 2: Absolutely, but you know that that that was great. But

1243
01:28:37,399 --> 01:28:40,319
there were there were lots of stories with with all

1244
01:28:40,439 --> 01:28:43,960
the guys, really, but the overriding.

1245
01:28:47,199 --> 01:28:48,920
Speaker 1: Have been a few suspectious of you.

1246
01:28:51,319 --> 01:28:57,600
Speaker 2: Well I suppose I suppose there were. But I'll tell

1247
01:28:57,600 --> 01:29:02,479
you what, Jim, I I had a neat way of

1248
01:29:04,279 --> 01:29:08,319
dealing with that. And the neat way, well, there's suspicionly

1249
01:29:08,680 --> 01:29:11,680
high falutin scientists. I wasn't a high faluting scientist at all.

1250
01:29:11,760 --> 01:29:15,239
I was just a practical man that was just interested

1251
01:29:15,279 --> 01:29:18,399
in helping the industry out, you know. And they were

1252
01:29:18,439 --> 01:29:22,840
all flabbergasted when I went down to the deck if

1253
01:29:22,880 --> 01:29:26,039
there was any damage to the net. I did it

1254
01:29:26,119 --> 01:29:28,439
in the early days, but not in the latter days

1255
01:29:29,039 --> 01:29:31,760
on the bigger boats like the Kila and so forth.

1256
01:29:31,840 --> 01:29:35,239
But when I was on the likes of the Harvest

1257
01:29:35,319 --> 01:29:39,039
Reaper and a few other boats, smaller boats in the

1258
01:29:39,159 --> 01:29:42,880
kind of sixty five foot class like the Idle Voice

1259
01:29:42,920 --> 01:29:47,159
from Fraserberg as well. I used to help out if

1260
01:29:47,199 --> 01:29:49,520
the crew were sorting the fish. For me, I would

1261
01:29:49,560 --> 01:29:51,199
help out with a bit of repair if there was

1262
01:29:51,239 --> 01:29:54,720
any damage to the net. Now I learned to repair nets.

1263
01:29:54,800 --> 01:30:01,720
Would you believe that the Fishermen's Traller School in Aberdeen

1264
01:30:02,680 --> 01:30:08,880
in nineteen seventy two and Alec Duffy was the ex

1265
01:30:10,079 --> 01:30:14,640
Aberdeen skipper who ran that school, and he ran fabulous

1266
01:30:14,760 --> 01:30:20,359
courses for young fishermen starting out in their careers. For

1267
01:30:21,479 --> 01:30:24,319
there are various courses, you know, a week or three

1268
01:30:24,359 --> 01:30:28,039
weeks or sometimes a month, et cetera. Net mending and

1269
01:30:28,239 --> 01:30:31,000
navigation and all that kind of stuff you know for

1270
01:30:31,159 --> 01:30:35,119
the apprentice fishermen. And when I joined the lab, the

1271
01:30:35,199 --> 01:30:37,600
first thing that I asked the then leader of the

1272
01:30:38,159 --> 01:30:41,079
fish capture group, John Foster, I said, look, I'd like

1273
01:30:41,199 --> 01:30:44,960
to I'd like to learn how to mend. He said

1274
01:30:44,960 --> 01:30:46,840
why would you want to do that, Jack, and said, well,

1275
01:30:47,239 --> 01:30:49,680
you know our businesses nets, we need to know them

1276
01:30:49,720 --> 01:30:52,880
inside out. So I went on a course to learn

1277
01:30:53,279 --> 01:30:57,000
how to mend and I used that on the fishing

1278
01:30:57,039 --> 01:30:58,880
boats in the early days. You know, I'd go down

1279
01:30:58,960 --> 01:31:01,079
the day and the guys would say, did look at me?

1280
01:31:01,159 --> 01:31:04,159
In amazement? Where are the earth did you learn how

1281
01:31:04,199 --> 01:31:07,920
to mean? I said, well, I went to fisherman's supprentice school.

1282
01:31:08,760 --> 01:31:12,680
Gee was And I think that opened their eyes. It really,

1283
01:31:13,239 --> 01:31:15,319
it really did, Jim, because I was just down there

1284
01:31:15,439 --> 01:31:18,520
with some doing it with them, and I think there

1285
01:31:18,560 --> 01:31:22,560
were obviously they were impressed, but they were also I

1286
01:31:22,640 --> 01:31:26,239
think they were just pleased. Well one of us, you're

1287
01:31:26,319 --> 01:31:30,159
one of us, Yeah exactly. Yeah, yeah you're not. You're

1288
01:31:30,199 --> 01:31:32,960
not above USh, You're you're you're down on the deck

1289
01:31:33,039 --> 01:31:34,039
getting dirty with us.

1290
01:31:34,800 --> 01:31:38,439
Speaker 1: Yeah. No, that's brilliant. Well done you as well. There

1291
01:31:38,479 --> 01:31:40,720
must have been some There must have been in your

1292
01:31:40,840 --> 01:31:43,880
time as well. There must have been some real personalities

1293
01:31:43,960 --> 01:31:46,000
on board. We real characters.

1294
01:31:46,680 --> 01:31:51,039
Speaker 2: Oh, there were there were, And well there's some stories

1295
01:31:51,079 --> 01:31:53,720
I can't relate here, Jim, unfortunately.

1296
01:31:56,199 --> 01:31:58,720
Speaker 1: Some very unless you're back in the pub.

1297
01:31:59,640 --> 01:32:01,840
Speaker 2: Well yeah it would would. Yeah, we'd have to be

1298
01:32:01,880 --> 01:32:05,239
in the pub for those with with no recording devices.

1299
01:32:06,720 --> 01:32:10,680
But yes, I I I can't relate them. But yeah,

1300
01:32:10,720 --> 01:32:13,760
there were there were tremendous characters. Every one of them

1301
01:32:14,159 --> 01:32:17,760
were characters in their own way, and some of them

1302
01:32:17,800 --> 01:32:20,399
have gone on to great things. I mean, you know,

1303
01:32:20,520 --> 01:32:23,960
and with Tom Tom Harkas, his nephew was on board,

1304
01:32:24,039 --> 01:32:27,439
Ian Harkas that you know very well, and and Lee

1305
01:32:27,560 --> 01:32:30,560
Grot they went off and got bought their own boat.

1306
01:32:30,600 --> 01:32:34,399
They all skier. And that's that's the thing that I

1307
01:32:34,640 --> 01:32:38,039
observed a lot. And I was so delighted in a

1308
01:32:38,079 --> 01:32:41,840
way to see that that crewman skippers would bring crewman

1309
01:32:41,920 --> 01:32:44,359
on and encourage them to go off and get their

1310
01:32:44,359 --> 01:32:48,119
own boats, et cetera. And Ian and and Lee went

1311
01:32:48,239 --> 01:32:50,880
on and made great success of the all skier. Lee

1312
01:32:50,960 --> 01:32:57,319
eventually took his his deep sea captain's ticket, didn't he.

1313
01:32:57,479 --> 01:33:03,800
And I understand he's now up in Orkney. Yeah right, okay,

1314
01:33:03,920 --> 01:33:06,479
so all skippering up there. So yeah, and.

1315
01:33:08,960 --> 01:33:10,960
Speaker 1: He's got a really fantastic job.

1316
01:33:11,880 --> 01:33:16,319
Speaker 2: Oh but and think about Tom's sons as well, I

1317
01:33:16,359 --> 01:33:20,520
mean Peter. I understand that Peter's still fishing and still

1318
01:33:20,560 --> 01:33:21,319
doing great things.

1319
01:33:21,800 --> 01:33:25,560
Speaker 1: They've built the boat Jack. They've got a boat they

1320
01:33:25,600 --> 01:33:29,039
call it the West of Fiord, but if you go

1321
01:33:29,239 --> 01:33:33,159
the West Fiord, but if they built it was built

1322
01:33:33,199 --> 01:33:37,359
in Denmark. If you break that down really basically, and

1323
01:33:37,439 --> 01:33:40,800
I'm sure you'll remember that day as we Tom himself

1324
01:33:41,239 --> 01:33:45,039
west refiord an hour speak would be the Westry first.

1325
01:33:45,560 --> 01:33:49,359
Speaker 2: The Westry first, Yeah yeah, yeah, oh yeah. And names

1326
01:33:49,399 --> 01:33:51,479
of boats are so important to them and that that

1327
01:33:51,680 --> 01:33:53,159
family and to Tom.

1328
01:33:53,239 --> 01:33:57,359
Speaker 1: And listen, I'll tell you sorry, I'll just before all

1329
01:33:57,399 --> 01:34:00,359
I was going to say on that one, Jack is

1330
01:34:01,119 --> 01:34:04,800
when you when I think, I mean to Tom, Tom

1331
01:34:04,920 --> 01:34:08,119
as we all know him, I would put him in

1332
01:34:09,119 --> 01:34:12,079
top list as far as one of my closest friends,

1333
01:34:12,680 --> 01:34:17,039
go back a long long time with them. But and

1334
01:34:17,159 --> 01:34:19,640
this is what I often think back in the days

1335
01:34:20,159 --> 01:34:24,199
when you were involved in the Square mesh and that's yeah,

1336
01:34:24,600 --> 01:34:28,640
that was a Yes, he was a successful fisherman, but

1337
01:34:28,800 --> 01:34:31,760
he had vision and he had for the future. And

1338
01:34:31,880 --> 01:34:35,960
when you think of it, you ask a question. Yes,

1339
01:34:36,560 --> 01:34:42,840
both Paul Peter is on board. But their son, so

1340
01:34:43,319 --> 01:34:48,039
you could say Tom and Liz's grandsons they're on boarded

1341
01:34:48,119 --> 01:34:52,800
as well. So when they hear the other dreaded word,

1342
01:34:53,359 --> 01:34:57,239
he committed to the fishing like sustainability and looking at

1343
01:34:57,279 --> 01:35:01,520
the future. That's why they're looking the future. I want

1344
01:35:01,640 --> 01:35:06,560
it to be sustainable, Jack, and I give you ten

1345
01:35:06,800 --> 01:35:11,960
the No. Twenty out of ten because you recognize that

1346
01:35:12,239 --> 01:35:15,079
and what they're doing. But it's not just to make

1347
01:35:15,199 --> 01:35:19,039
more money. Their sons and grandsons are coming through.

1348
01:35:19,159 --> 01:35:21,960
Speaker 2: Now, that's why I did it. And you know, all

1349
01:35:22,119 --> 01:35:26,439
the fishing communities around Scotland, Bucky and Fezerberund, peter Head

1350
01:35:26,479 --> 01:35:30,560
and so forth have been decimated, losty Mouth, decimated. Orkney's

1351
01:35:30,600 --> 01:35:33,960
standing firm and they're standing firm because of the type

1352
01:35:34,000 --> 01:35:37,720
of skipper that Tom harkass is and his sons, and

1353
01:35:38,720 --> 01:35:43,159
I'm amazed and and Ian Harkis as well. You know,

1354
01:35:43,520 --> 01:35:46,319
good luck to them. Keep going, keep pushing, keep doing it.

1355
01:35:46,520 --> 01:35:55,840
But you've got to really unfold around selectivity of the

1356
01:35:55,920 --> 01:36:01,399
fishing gear. But but the legislator have got to stop

1357
01:36:01,600 --> 01:36:05,760
doing this continual increasing of square mesh size and the

1358
01:36:05,880 --> 01:36:10,039
fishing industry losing marketable fish as a consequence. The industry

1359
01:36:10,079 --> 01:36:15,600
have got to fight harder against the legislators to get

1360
01:36:15,680 --> 01:36:21,000
their point across that yes, they want conservation and they

1361
01:36:21,079 --> 01:36:24,119
want the juvenile fish to escape, but they must retain

1362
01:36:25,159 --> 01:36:27,800
all of the marketable fish that enter the troll on

1363
01:36:27,840 --> 01:36:32,079
a Halby Hall basis, because if they don't, they're going

1364
01:36:32,159 --> 01:36:34,960
to have to end up doing more halls, more time

1365
01:36:35,000 --> 01:36:39,640
at sea, more fuel consumption and so on. It's a

1366
01:36:39,680 --> 01:36:44,159
fisious circle, but it's got to happen. Jim, if I may,

1367
01:36:44,680 --> 01:36:48,079
can I just go back to the west of Jord.

1368
01:36:48,239 --> 01:36:50,920
You know the meaning of the name. And I was

1369
01:36:51,000 --> 01:36:55,239
delighted when I asked Tom Harkas the first time that

1370
01:36:55,319 --> 01:36:58,800
I was away on the Kila where the name came from.

1371
01:37:00,079 --> 01:37:05,640
He said that it was the Norwegian for a female

1372
01:37:05,920 --> 01:37:11,680
cod and I thought, that is a fantastic name for

1373
01:37:11,800 --> 01:37:17,000
a boat. Unbelievably good named for a boat. I very

1374
01:37:17,119 --> 01:37:19,760
nearly I got a yacht many years ago, which I

1375
01:37:19,880 --> 01:37:23,479
no longer have, but I very nearly called it Kila

1376
01:37:24,199 --> 01:37:27,439
because I was so impressed by that name. But I didn't.

1377
01:37:27,479 --> 01:37:30,000
I named it after the dog instead, Finn.

1378
01:37:34,920 --> 01:37:35,680
Speaker 1: But there you go.

1379
01:37:36,159 --> 01:37:39,119
Speaker 2: But oh, Jim, uh, you know, the industry have got

1380
01:37:39,159 --> 01:37:43,520
to fight hard because they're they're being inundated by closed

1381
01:37:43,560 --> 01:37:48,039
areas and so on and quatas and it just becomes

1382
01:37:48,199 --> 01:37:52,239
mind boggling. I had. I had a quick look the

1383
01:37:52,359 --> 01:37:58,760
other day at Scotland's future catching policy Selectivity Proposals Consultation

1384
01:37:59,039 --> 01:38:04,560
from the Government twenty twenty six, which actually closed in

1385
01:38:05,640 --> 01:38:10,760
just the consultation closed just recently, and I was I

1386
01:38:10,960 --> 01:38:16,119
was flabbergasted, but also delighted to see that there is

1387
01:38:16,199 --> 01:38:20,880
a proposal from the government that the full square mesh

1388
01:38:21,159 --> 01:38:25,760
cort end be introduced into certain fisheries. So that was

1389
01:38:25,840 --> 01:38:29,600
what I started off with, the full cot end with

1390
01:38:29,800 --> 01:38:33,079
square meshes all the way around the court end, which

1391
01:38:33,159 --> 01:38:37,640
is by far the best for release in juvenile had

1392
01:38:37,680 --> 01:38:42,640
it cought and waiting, isn't Isn't that a credible incredible

1393
01:38:42,720 --> 01:38:45,199
how things go around?

1394
01:38:46,319 --> 01:38:48,640
Speaker 1: It is? It is, And I'm not trying to make

1395
01:38:48,680 --> 01:38:54,640
it turn that negative. But when you say about just

1396
01:38:54,760 --> 01:38:57,560
say we were to say about how things are done now,

1397
01:38:58,880 --> 01:39:05,119
I'll reiterate conversation for fairness to the guy will not

1398
01:39:05,399 --> 01:39:09,640
mention his name, but I'm on scrubs their pier. A

1399
01:39:09,800 --> 01:39:14,239
good friend of mine, Skipper, is on the key with me,

1400
01:39:15,800 --> 01:39:19,439
just been landing his fish, and he had a letter

1401
01:39:19,640 --> 01:39:25,560
in his hand, and this letter was from the Department

1402
01:39:25,720 --> 01:39:32,000
mean directory with his basically the dos and don'ts, what

1403
01:39:32,239 --> 01:39:36,479
he had to do, regulations and all he had that

1404
01:39:36,640 --> 01:39:39,720
here to and he says to me, Jim, he says,

1405
01:39:40,239 --> 01:39:45,399
I'm reading this letter and it's clearly shows me that

1406
01:39:45,600 --> 01:39:49,520
this was done by somebody that has never been in

1407
01:39:49,600 --> 01:39:51,079
a fishing boat in their lives.

1408
01:39:51,880 --> 01:39:56,239
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely, it's it's it's the same now

1409
01:39:56,279 --> 01:39:59,159
as it was in my time. It was the lab.

1410
01:39:59,279 --> 01:40:05,159
And that's that's why words fail me, actually, that it

1411
01:40:05,319 --> 01:40:08,760
just carries on. I think one of the big problems

1412
01:40:08,960 --> 01:40:13,279
is always that the scientists are potentially not very good

1413
01:40:13,520 --> 01:40:19,760
at making their argument with the civil servants sitting behind

1414
01:40:20,079 --> 01:40:23,840
the desk. I might be wrong in that, and certainly

1415
01:40:23,880 --> 01:40:25,800
a lot of the scientists would take issue with that

1416
01:40:26,439 --> 01:40:30,439
with me, But I found with all my selectivity work,

1417
01:40:30,720 --> 01:40:34,720
you had to you really had to get a hold

1418
01:40:34,800 --> 01:40:39,039
of them and set them down and show them the video,

1419
01:40:39,439 --> 01:40:42,800
show them the data, talk it through, talk about the

1420
01:40:42,880 --> 01:40:47,760
practical side of it, because they really have no conception

1421
01:40:48,159 --> 01:40:52,800
at all, no conception. But it's worrying to hear that

1422
01:40:52,920 --> 01:40:56,680
it's the same as it always was. But I would

1423
01:40:56,760 --> 01:41:00,119
just reiterate to the fishing industry spend more time with

1424
01:41:00,600 --> 01:41:03,880
the legislators. I mean, they're spending time with the scientific

1425
01:41:03,920 --> 01:41:08,680
community and science and industry partnerships and all the rest

1426
01:41:08,720 --> 01:41:10,319
of it, and that's all to the good, but you

1427
01:41:10,399 --> 01:41:11,920
need to go further than that, you need to you

1428
01:41:12,000 --> 01:41:14,479
need to shit the desks in Edinburgh, sit in the

1429
01:41:14,520 --> 01:41:19,439
civil servants desks and talk to them a lot, a lot.

1430
01:41:20,239 --> 01:41:25,159
Speaker 1: Yeah, But unfortunately it seems to be becoming the way

1431
01:41:25,279 --> 01:41:28,800
and all industries now and all walks of life. It

1432
01:41:29,000 --> 01:41:32,880
just seems that people sitting on desks and they're just

1433
01:41:33,359 --> 01:41:36,800
all the legislation and anybody and everybody.

1434
01:41:37,640 --> 01:41:42,359
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't yeah, yeah, absolutely yeah.

1435
01:41:43,800 --> 01:41:49,319
Speaker 1: Almost now summed up would use it? Did square mesh

1436
01:41:50,079 --> 01:41:55,880
help save fist stocks? What lesson still matters today?

1437
01:41:56,520 --> 01:42:00,239
Speaker 2: Well, definitely it saved the hurrican waiting because if you're Amber,

1438
01:42:00,279 --> 01:42:05,720
in the early nineties nineteen nineties, the hurrican whiting stocks

1439
01:42:05,720 --> 01:42:09,560
had been going down quite markedly and there was real

1440
01:42:09,640 --> 01:42:12,119
concern in the industry. And if you look at the

1441
01:42:12,319 --> 01:42:16,000
spawning stock biomass for the ten years following the introduction

1442
01:42:16,359 --> 01:42:21,119
of square mesh, the spawning stock biomasses of hardock in

1443
01:42:21,199 --> 01:42:26,439
particular and whiting as well started to rise very markedly.

1444
01:42:28,680 --> 01:42:31,560
It's not entirely as clear nowadays as it might have

1445
01:42:31,640 --> 01:42:37,560
been then, but definitely it helped hurrican whiting. It's all

1446
01:42:37,560 --> 01:42:38,640
about the hurrican whiting.

1447
01:42:39,359 --> 01:42:44,039
Speaker 1: Do you think the fishing industry receives enough recognition for

1448
01:42:44,279 --> 01:42:49,119
the conservation work it has contributed to over the years.

1449
01:42:49,720 --> 01:42:57,119
Speaker 2: Oh probably not. Actually, I think that there wasn't enough

1450
01:42:57,159 --> 01:43:01,880
recognition given to anyone gym, to the fishing industry, or

1451
01:43:02,000 --> 01:43:07,800
to scientists, although I think I was reading this. No,

1452
01:43:10,600 --> 01:43:13,640
it's a very difficult question that I mean, in a sense,

1453
01:43:14,279 --> 01:43:17,000
we don't want recognition. All we want is to save

1454
01:43:17,079 --> 01:43:20,520
the babyfish and to increase the stock sizes, and that

1455
01:43:20,680 --> 01:43:24,279
was my driving force all the time, and it was

1456
01:43:24,359 --> 01:43:27,239
with the skippers as well. But no, I think that

1457
01:43:27,399 --> 01:43:31,640
there was never an occasion at any meetings with the

1458
01:43:31,920 --> 01:43:36,840
senior scientists and the fishing industry where the senior scientists

1459
01:43:36,880 --> 01:43:40,119
would congratulate the industry for what they had done in

1460
01:43:40,199 --> 01:43:44,800
the introduction of the squirmish panel or even taking part

1461
01:43:44,920 --> 01:43:48,119
in the trials that they did. I mean, I recognized

1462
01:43:48,159 --> 01:43:53,680
the skippers and I gave them the thanks that they

1463
01:43:53,800 --> 01:44:00,479
deserved all the time. But no, they just didn't receive

1464
01:44:00,680 --> 01:44:04,720
the recognition, either in the press or or or or

1465
01:44:04,800 --> 01:44:11,479
anywhere else. There are many of those skippers who who

1466
01:44:11,560 --> 01:44:15,960
should have been recognized for going above and beyond in

1467
01:44:16,039 --> 01:44:20,359
the introduction of the square mesh that we were never

1468
01:44:21,039 --> 01:44:25,319
were never recognized. I'm not sure where you're coming from, Jim.

1469
01:44:25,399 --> 01:44:29,119
I mean, are you suggesting that they should have been

1470
01:44:29,159 --> 01:44:35,800
given civil recognition you know, a war? No, not that, no, no, no, no, no, no,

1471
01:44:36,479 --> 01:44:39,119
just just the fact that they had they had taken

1472
01:44:39,239 --> 01:44:42,880
part and done it all. I think I think all

1473
01:44:42,960 --> 01:44:46,920
the recognition. They're all recognized in all of the scientific

1474
01:44:47,039 --> 01:44:52,439
papers that I produced, and indeed that other people have produced.

1475
01:44:54,359 --> 01:44:56,960
But but you know, that doesn't go to a wide audience.

1476
01:44:58,960 --> 01:45:02,600
And in the Earth early days, sometimes the fishing news

1477
01:45:02,640 --> 01:45:06,159
would pick up on some of the trials that were done,

1478
01:45:06,520 --> 01:45:10,920
and you know, the story would be told of what

1479
01:45:11,319 --> 01:45:13,840
happened on the trial, and the skipper would be interviewed

1480
01:45:13,880 --> 01:45:15,960
and give some comments. I suppose in a sense that

1481
01:45:16,079 --> 01:45:19,079
was recognition of the fact that they were involved and

1482
01:45:19,960 --> 01:45:23,039
so on. But no, I don't think anyone got enough

1483
01:45:23,159 --> 01:45:27,079
recognition for what they did. It was it's it was

1484
01:45:27,159 --> 01:45:33,039
a huge, huge thing of huge historical significance, the introduction

1485
01:45:33,199 --> 01:45:38,119
of the square mesh and for that matter, the limiting

1486
01:45:38,359 --> 01:45:41,119
of the number of messures on the cod end round

1487
01:45:41,880 --> 01:45:42,319
as well.

1488
01:45:43,079 --> 01:45:45,279
Speaker 1: Yeah, and do you think what the dameser the losing

1489
01:45:45,399 --> 01:45:48,079
cooperation between science and the industry.

1490
01:45:48,880 --> 01:45:52,079
Speaker 2: Oh gosh, Jim, do you know, I think I'm so

1491
01:45:52,239 --> 01:45:57,039
far removed from it nowadays that I can't really comment

1492
01:45:57,199 --> 01:46:01,000
on that to any great depth, other other than saying

1493
01:46:01,119 --> 01:46:06,600
that it appears to me that there is still cooperation

1494
01:46:07,800 --> 01:46:10,560
between the industry. Just reading I picked up in the

1495
01:46:10,600 --> 01:46:13,560
Fishing News just recently, I took a subscription out. I

1496
01:46:13,640 --> 01:46:15,840
haven't had one for many a long year, and I

1497
01:46:16,600 --> 01:46:18,880
got interested enough, and what I'm reading in the in

1498
01:46:18,960 --> 01:46:24,239
the Fishing News suggests that there is still cooperation. But

1499
01:46:24,840 --> 01:46:30,039
my fear is that as more of the scientific community

1500
01:46:30,520 --> 01:46:35,760
is reduced by the government, which it apparently seems to

1501
01:46:35,840 --> 01:46:39,840
be doing in the likes of the Marine Lab in Aberdeen.

1502
01:46:40,439 --> 01:46:48,279
As they're reducing, there'll be perhaps less opportunity to get

1503
01:46:48,319 --> 01:46:53,079
involved with and cooperate with the between the industry and scientists.

1504
01:46:53,159 --> 01:46:57,239
But I'm sorry, Jen, I find'gult be in answering that, really,

1505
01:46:57,800 --> 01:46:58,520
I feel enough.

1506
01:46:58,760 --> 01:47:01,359
Speaker 1: I'll tell you a quote it has given me in

1507
01:47:01,479 --> 01:47:05,880
a podcast and by a guy I'm sure I'm almost

1508
01:47:06,079 --> 01:47:09,640
positive you know very well you would have I'm sure

1509
01:47:09,720 --> 01:47:12,680
you'd even even work in the lab with him. And

1510
01:47:13,159 --> 01:47:18,319
what he reckoned was the biggest mistake made was putting

1511
01:47:18,399 --> 01:47:25,880
a value on quota and license. Yes, yes, And he said,

1512
01:47:26,079 --> 01:47:32,039
and his view was it was the end almost to

1513
01:47:33,760 --> 01:47:37,239
the stage where he was at. Probably, well certainly I

1514
01:47:37,479 --> 01:47:43,359
was at. We've all been at. Was young guys ambition

1515
01:47:43,800 --> 01:47:48,039
was to be a fisherman and then to be skipper

1516
01:47:48,800 --> 01:47:52,039
and eventually to have their own boat. And they said

1517
01:47:52,600 --> 01:47:56,319
putting a value monetary value on the quota and the

1518
01:47:56,439 --> 01:48:02,720
lycis that is now impossible. Unlets it's a fan or

1519
01:48:03,039 --> 01:48:08,479
family of an owner, a fishing boat owner, that is impossible.

1520
01:48:09,479 --> 01:48:11,600
Well you know that said that?

1521
01:48:12,399 --> 01:48:12,840
Speaker 2: Who is that?

1522
01:48:13,600 --> 01:48:14,279
Speaker 1: Dave McKay.

1523
01:48:18,119 --> 01:48:23,159
Speaker 2: Sorry Ian McKay, Oh, sorry, Dave mckaye, I'm miss misheard that,

1524
01:48:23,319 --> 01:48:26,720
Dave McKay. Dave McKay is absolutely correct. Dave comes from

1525
01:48:27,159 --> 01:48:30,680
a fishing family background as well. And and and Dave,

1526
01:48:30,800 --> 01:48:34,039
Dave would have been horrified as I was with with

1527
01:48:34,279 --> 01:48:38,760
the the putting a price on the quota. I always

1528
01:48:38,840 --> 01:48:42,399
remember speaking to a skipper that I hadn't seen for

1529
01:48:42,840 --> 01:48:45,880
quite a long time, how are you getting on and

1530
01:48:45,920 --> 01:48:48,600
how's the fishing going? And he said, he says, I

1531
01:48:48,680 --> 01:48:51,039
don't really know. Jack, He said, I'm not fishing. Oh,

1532
01:48:51,079 --> 01:48:53,560
I said, why why aren't you fishing? Have you retired

1533
01:48:53,720 --> 01:48:55,640
or come out of it or whatever. No, no, he said,

1534
01:48:56,039 --> 01:49:00,800
I'm a slipper. Skipper. Now you know what that means, Jim.

1535
01:49:00,960 --> 01:49:04,039
He's sitting in the house with his slippers on, and

1536
01:49:04,159 --> 01:49:08,119
he's rented out his quota to other fishermen. So he's

1537
01:49:08,119 --> 01:49:12,399
sitting at home, not fishing, not doing anything other than

1538
01:49:12,760 --> 01:49:16,479
you know, taking cruises around the world. And it's wrong.

1539
01:49:17,039 --> 01:49:21,880
It's wrong that somebody should hold quota in that manner

1540
01:49:22,279 --> 01:49:27,319
that can be sold at very high cost to fishermen

1541
01:49:27,399 --> 01:49:29,880
that are trying to get into the industry. It's wrong

1542
01:49:30,399 --> 01:49:31,840
and it needs to stop.

1543
01:49:33,039 --> 01:49:33,960
Speaker 1: One hundred percent.

1544
01:49:34,720 --> 01:49:39,439
Speaker 3: And to the point where I was talking to a

1545
01:49:39,600 --> 01:49:46,760
guy Irish and he was saying there he said, obviously

1546
01:49:46,880 --> 01:49:50,199
they are still it was Southern Ireland, not Northern Ireland,

1547
01:49:50,640 --> 01:49:55,560
and obviously they're still in the EU. And the way

1548
01:49:55,600 --> 01:49:58,439
he described it, they were, you know, it was to

1549
01:49:58,520 --> 01:50:03,319
do with the deathimation, the mark quote and how they've

1550
01:50:03,399 --> 01:50:06,880
been treated by it. But he says, it's not come

1551
01:50:07,000 --> 01:50:12,840
from Brussels, it's come from Dutch billionaires. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

1552
01:50:13,520 --> 01:50:14,640
that's who's got the powet.

1553
01:50:15,239 --> 01:50:19,319
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, I don't know any of the insine outs.

1554
01:50:19,359 --> 01:50:22,039
But was it not the case a few years ago

1555
01:50:22,239 --> 01:50:25,039
that there was a court case that was trying to

1556
01:50:25,960 --> 01:50:32,199
stop this quota selling. I don't know anyway, it needs,

1557
01:50:32,600 --> 01:50:36,479
it needs the government to to actually resolve it and

1558
01:50:36,600 --> 01:50:40,479
take the quarta back for the fishermen rather than these people.

1559
01:50:41,920 --> 01:50:44,399
It's it's shocking. It's absolutely shocking.

1560
01:50:44,560 --> 01:50:48,720
Speaker 1: It is it is. I Finally, when history looks back

1561
01:50:49,000 --> 01:50:53,439
at square based panel development, what do you hope people

1562
01:50:53,720 --> 01:50:57,479
understand about the work that was done in Aberdeen?

1563
01:50:58,359 --> 01:51:02,239
Speaker 2: Well, I just hope they see that for the period

1564
01:51:02,960 --> 01:51:06,119
there was a need for a change in the way

1565
01:51:06,199 --> 01:51:10,800
that we look at selectivity and a desperate need to

1566
01:51:11,359 --> 01:51:15,239
save the juvenile fish as there had been for one

1567
01:51:15,319 --> 01:51:18,920
hundred years before. Back to Holt in eighteen ninety five,

1568
01:51:19,119 --> 01:51:22,720
back to Gelder in nineteen twenty eight, and so on.

1569
01:51:22,920 --> 01:51:25,520
It just went. It was going on and on and on,

1570
01:51:26,520 --> 01:51:29,960
and something needed to change. And I hope people might

1571
01:51:30,039 --> 01:51:33,439
look back and say, well, wow, you know that was

1572
01:51:33,479 --> 01:51:38,000
a big change and it was a good change and

1573
01:51:38,319 --> 01:51:41,920
it helped. And let's hope that now the fishing industry

1574
01:51:41,960 --> 01:51:47,920
into the future grasp it. The whole notion of making

1575
01:51:48,039 --> 01:51:52,319
gears more selective, as long as they're practical, as long

1576
01:51:52,399 --> 01:51:57,000
as as long as they can be handled well on

1577
01:51:57,079 --> 01:52:01,600
the fishing boat, and use them to their benefit, use

1578
01:52:01,680 --> 01:52:05,680
them to the benefit of the fishing industry, because you know,

1579
01:52:05,920 --> 01:52:10,000
I go back to the old thing, that the point

1580
01:52:10,039 --> 01:52:12,159
that I made in the early nineteen eighties. It's a

1581
01:52:12,239 --> 01:52:16,199
food industry, it's fresh food, it's a food industry. We

1582
01:52:17,880 --> 01:52:20,800
can't keep destroying juvenile fish the way that we've been

1583
01:52:20,880 --> 01:52:25,159
doing over the years. We've got to let them grow

1584
01:52:26,039 --> 01:52:33,000
to spawn and produce bigger stocks to keep the industry going.

1585
01:52:33,399 --> 01:52:37,680
Jobs in the industry are very important as well. Jimmy Way,

1586
01:52:37,760 --> 01:52:42,000
you remember Scotland. I don't know how many boats were

1587
01:52:42,039 --> 01:52:46,239
around the ports in Scotland, but it's nothing like it

1588
01:52:46,399 --> 01:52:46,760
used to be.

1589
01:52:48,279 --> 01:52:53,279
Speaker 1: Absolutely, we'll just go ruin the buddy first, Jack, I

1590
01:52:53,359 --> 01:52:59,399
mean there's hardly a boat and Bucky, you got Lossy Mouth,

1591
01:53:00,039 --> 01:53:05,279
no boats and lots as a marina, Burghead, little little bit.

1592
01:53:05,720 --> 01:53:09,760
Then you come round Helmsville, the village I'm from, there's

1593
01:53:09,840 --> 01:53:17,880
no whitefish boats, lives, there no boats. There's one WUK

1594
01:53:18,119 --> 01:53:23,600
registered whitefish boat now Jack and that's the boy Andrew Woow.

1595
01:53:24,439 --> 01:53:28,520
When you think when you think my younger days, they

1596
01:53:28,520 --> 01:53:30,479
would have been thirty or forty.

1597
01:53:31,079 --> 01:53:33,359
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'd have.

1598
01:53:33,439 --> 01:53:35,560
Speaker 1: To see them all the way around. It's really sad.

1599
01:53:36,880 --> 01:53:40,239
Speaker 2: It's sad. But you know, I suppose you've got to

1600
01:53:40,319 --> 01:53:44,000
get somebody on your your podcast, the people with the

1601
01:53:44,119 --> 01:53:47,720
power who can change all that, you know, the administrators

1602
01:53:47,880 --> 01:53:51,760
or the government officials, or the or the MP's, and

1603
01:53:53,079 --> 01:53:57,319
get a plan to bring all that back. But well,

1604
01:53:58,680 --> 01:54:00,720
oh dear, we can end up crying here.

1605
01:54:00,840 --> 01:54:10,920
Speaker 1: Jim, what would you going back from that? What would

1606
01:54:10,960 --> 01:54:14,359
you like younger fishermen and scientists to understand.

1607
01:54:16,960 --> 01:54:21,760
Speaker 2: Just work for each other, and in particular the scientific community.

1608
01:54:22,000 --> 01:54:28,359
Get the mindset that you are working to for the industry,

1609
01:54:28,520 --> 01:54:31,960
to make it better, to improve fish stocks, to get

1610
01:54:32,119 --> 01:54:37,000
more fish in the sea by using more selective gears.

1611
01:54:37,520 --> 01:54:40,720
Forget about all the closed areas and the quotes and

1612
01:54:40,840 --> 01:54:46,000
so forth. Just get into selectivity in a big way

1613
01:54:46,960 --> 01:54:50,600
going forward. I would say that to young fishermen in particular,

1614
01:54:51,119 --> 01:54:57,119
because youngsters these days can visualize better gear design and

1615
01:54:57,439 --> 01:55:02,680
so forth, and just just do however difficult it seems,

1616
01:55:03,319 --> 01:55:06,880
there's always a way with selectivity and fishing gear to

1617
01:55:07,039 --> 01:55:11,600
make it manageable. And handleable on the vessel, and that's

1618
01:55:11,720 --> 01:55:14,159
what you need, and that's what the scientists need to

1619
01:55:14,319 --> 01:55:19,680
understand to give you. And I don't know, Jim, I

1620
01:55:20,319 --> 01:55:26,800
get very uptight about the need for much more cooperation

1621
01:55:27,560 --> 01:55:30,840
between the two. We had fantastic cooperation in the nineteen

1622
01:55:30,920 --> 01:55:37,520
eighties up to the introduction of the Squirmish panel, and

1623
01:55:37,880 --> 01:55:38,800
that was a very good time.

1624
01:55:39,319 --> 01:55:39,720
Speaker 1: What it's like.

1625
01:55:40,079 --> 01:55:41,800
Speaker 2: Bear in mind, Jim, that I left the Lab in

1626
01:55:41,920 --> 01:55:44,760
nineteen ninety five. Since when I've not been involved with

1627
01:55:45,000 --> 01:55:53,000
industry at all. So from nineteen nineteen eighty one to date,

1628
01:55:53,800 --> 01:55:58,399
it's forty five years ago that I started experimenting with

1629
01:55:58,520 --> 01:56:00,880
the square mesh. It's unbelieved able to think on it

1630
01:56:01,000 --> 01:56:01,279
that way.

1631
01:56:02,079 --> 01:56:06,479
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, we'll have a celebration for its fiftieth anniversary.

1632
01:56:07,399 --> 01:56:11,119
Speaker 2: Let's do might need to have one earlier than that.

1633
01:56:14,960 --> 01:56:16,520
Speaker 1: We'll get Tom Harks along.

1634
01:56:18,439 --> 01:56:20,920
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, We've got all the skippers along. That'll be

1635
01:56:21,000 --> 01:56:21,399
some sh.

1636
01:56:24,359 --> 01:56:29,680
Speaker 1: Absolutely, have you online presence we're going to listeners fully Yeah.

1637
01:56:30,600 --> 01:56:35,479
Speaker 2: No, no, no, I'm not on social media or or anything. No, well,

1638
01:56:35,600 --> 01:56:37,920
actually that's not true. I'm on Facebook, but it's just

1639
01:56:38,520 --> 01:56:43,479
family and close friends, so I know I don't have

1640
01:56:43,600 --> 01:56:47,439
any any means of being contacted.

1641
01:56:48,119 --> 01:56:51,920
Speaker 1: I would say, that's giving you a happy, live well answer.

1642
01:56:53,319 --> 01:56:56,000
I'm just going to fold up. But I would honestly

1643
01:56:56,199 --> 01:56:59,680
like to thank you. My goodness, Jack, You're going to

1644
01:56:59,800 --> 01:57:02,800
good down in history. I have no question of that.

1645
01:57:03,039 --> 01:57:04,000
Thank you very much.

1646
01:57:04,720 --> 01:57:05,960
Speaker 2: I hope it's in a good way.

1647
01:57:07,640 --> 01:57:09,840
Speaker 1: It's in a very positive way.

1648
01:57:09,920 --> 01:57:13,560
Speaker 2: It's well, thanks, Jim. I do appreciate you know. I

1649
01:57:13,640 --> 01:57:17,760
love to talk about square mesh selectivity and saving the babies.

1650
01:57:17,800 --> 01:57:20,279
That's what it's all about. Thank you ever so much.

1651
01:57:21,239 --> 01:57:23,560
Speaker 1: I'm sure it was your words to me on the

1652
01:57:23,680 --> 01:57:30,319
pier one night back in the eighties. Survive and thrive, Yes,

1653
01:57:31,239 --> 01:57:32,359
survive and thrive.