Speaker 1: Hello everyone, and welcome to Seafood Matters. Thank you for
Speaker 1: joining us again. My guest today is Jack Robertson. When
Speaker 1: people talk about the development of square mesh panels in
Speaker 1: the fishing industry, Jack Robertson's name is never far from
Speaker 1: the conversation. So I am absolutely thrilled to welcome Jack
Speaker 1: to Seafood Matters. It's means so much to me, genuinely,
Speaker 1: Hi Jack, thank you for coming on.
Speaker 2: Oh lovely, Jim Lovely, that's a fantastic introduction and it's
Speaker 2: great to talk to you. We haven't actually talked for
Speaker 2: many a long year, and we should have been. But yes,
Speaker 2: I certainly had good fun with, say, the square mesh development,
Speaker 2: and it was a wonderful time that I had in
Speaker 2: the Marine lab in Aberdeen, developing the whole idea and
Speaker 2: doing the experiments on it, and then eventually getting it
Speaker 2: introduced to legislation to help the fishing industry.
Speaker 1: I was never on board during the trials, but still
Speaker 1: felt part of it as I believed in it, mainly
Speaker 1: because I had the utmost respect for you. I'm the
Speaker 1: fisherman you worked with.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Jim, listen, you've said it. My initial experiment started
Speaker 2: on the research vessels, but I quickly needed to get
Speaker 2: into going on board with the commercial fishermen, because not
Speaker 2: only could they produce more fish, but I could also
Speaker 2: show them what was going on with the underwater cameras,
Speaker 2: with the square mession, with their own nets, and every
Speaker 2: one of the skippers, and I sailed with many, many
Speaker 2: many skippers. To a man, they were all brilliant, absolutely brilliant,
Speaker 2: welcomed me on board. We had a fabulous time, worked
Speaker 2: very hard, Jim, because it was twenty four to seven,
Speaker 2: it was a commercial trip. We just fished with them
Speaker 2: as they would fish normally, and we just changed the
Speaker 2: court ends as required to satisfy the experiment. We measured
Speaker 2: the fish as they were working up the fish, and
Speaker 2: they could have been nicer, could have been better, every single.
Speaker 1: One of them. It was brilliant, fantastic, Jack. When you
Speaker 1: mentioned that the research vessels, there's a guy I've done
Speaker 1: some recordings with, but I would class them as a
Speaker 1: friend as well. He's an officially scientist in Iceland, Chap
Speaker 1: Young Christiansen. Now when your men, it just comes to
Speaker 1: my mind when you mentioned the research vessels, because I
Speaker 1: mean John's and his eighties now obviously long time retired.
Speaker 1: That like yourself, he had a real passion and an
Speaker 1: interest in what he did. And his view about the
Speaker 1: research vessels he reckoned that the way he put it,
Speaker 1: he says they were started building nice new research vessels
Speaker 1: because they didn't want to be going out to see
Speaker 1: on dirty trawlers. That he reckoned that was the biggest
Speaker 1: mistake they made because what it actually what actually, what
Speaker 1: it actually did, was it to fishermen and scientists apart.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Jim, you've said it all, and it was the
Speaker 2: best thing I did. Was started going away with say,
Speaker 2: the fishermen, not I'm not speaking against the research vessels
Speaker 2: because actually the first square mesh experiment was undertaken on
Speaker 2: a research vessel, the small gold Seeker, and then the Klipeia.
Speaker 2: I did a few trips of square mesh on that
Speaker 2: and the skippers and the crew of the research vessels
Speaker 2: were all ex fishermen and they they were fascinated by
Speaker 2: the square mesh and they helped me enormously. Were they
Speaker 2: were fabulous and in what they did in the development
Speaker 2: of this square mesh. But they were restricted, Jim, by
Speaker 2: the civil service requirement for almost a nine to five
Speaker 2: on on the vessels, so you had to stop to
Speaker 2: give them their the rest and so forth. And that
Speaker 2: was the system we worked to on the research vessels
Speaker 2: and there was no changing that. But what I needed
Speaker 2: was volume volume of fish, particularly lots of small fish,
Speaker 2: to see them escaping. And that's why I moved on
Speaker 2: to the the commercial vessels. And and it was certainly
Speaker 2: the best thing that I could have done for the
Speaker 2: development of the experiments and the idea.
Speaker 1: And what was the atmosphere in the industry, Like then Zark.
Speaker 2: The atmosphere was I this is the late nineteen seventies
Speaker 2: early nineteen eighties, and they were going through quite a
Speaker 2: good period. The fish stocks were large, and the atmosphere
Speaker 2: was actually quite good gym. It was a positive atmosphere.
Speaker 2: There were new boats being built, there was quite a
Speaker 2: bit of money in the industry. But things were beginning
Speaker 2: to happen in that stock assessments were suggesting the need
Speaker 2: for quotas. Quotas were being introduced, which the industry obviously
Speaker 2: were a bit concerned about. And then quotas were were
Speaker 2: reduced gradually and so forth, So gradually the atmosphere changed
Speaker 2: to one of tremendous optimism with lots of fish catching
Speaker 2: potential and opportunities to fewer opportunities, And that's why they
Speaker 2: became interested in the whole idea of saving juvenile fish,
Speaker 2: which is what the Squaremish was all about. I wanted
Speaker 2: to save the juveniles to pump back into the fish stocks,
Speaker 2: to enhance the fish stocks for the fishing industry. That
Speaker 2: was my burning ambition all the time. It was to
Speaker 2: help the industry. And when they saw that come along,
Speaker 2: they became very interested, actually, And there was a great
Speaker 2: atmosphere of optimism developed through the nineteen eighties as I
Speaker 2: went on board more and more of the commercial boats
Speaker 2: and met more skippers, and more skippers talked about it,
Speaker 2: and there was certainly a tremendous feeling of optimism that
Speaker 2: perhaps something could be done to bring the stocks back
Speaker 2: a little bit, because by the late nineteen eighties, the
Speaker 2: hardock stocks in particular had to decreased markedly, so opportunities
Speaker 2: for the industry were becoming rather more difficult. And of course,
Speaker 2: you know, we were unfortunately still in the EU and
Speaker 2: the EUS dictating what we had to do in terms
Speaker 2: of catch limits and so forth, and boats had to
Speaker 2: be taken out and then gradually there was a pall
Speaker 2: came over the industry of real unhappiness. Jim, I don't
Speaker 2: know whether you would agree with me that it was
Speaker 2: a period of a bit of unhappiness about the way
Speaker 2: things were going.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I remember back when you were doing the trials. Oh,
Speaker 1: you explained how and showed I'm sure I saw some
Speaker 1: of the videos how it wasn't just a case of
Speaker 1: square mesh panels. More fish would get out. I'm not
Speaker 1: right and saying when they were trying to get out
Speaker 1: of the diamond net they lost a lot of scales
Speaker 1: picking up infections, and so there was much better for
Speaker 1: the fish when they escape of even the small fish
Speaker 1: escaping escape from us square mesh rather than a diamond Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's correct.
Speaker 2: My colleagues John Maine and Graham Sangster, who by the way,
Speaker 2: developed the separator troll, which is another great story about
Speaker 2: the development of that. But they were concerned about the
Speaker 2: survival of juvenile fish escaping from diamond mesh. That's what
Speaker 2: they started on. And then I asked them to look
Speaker 2: at the square mesh as well, and their results showed
Speaker 2: that survival rates from the square mesh were improved for sure,
Speaker 2: and you can understand why, just as you described it, Gim,
Speaker 2: the diamond meshes are tight closed and a juvenile fish
Speaker 2: trying to escape out through wriggling away like crazy, and
Speaker 2: you can see the scales flying off them in clouds
Speaker 2: of scales in some cases, and yet coming out of
Speaker 2: the square mesh. It was both pop out straight out
Speaker 2: through the square, hardly touching the sides, hardly touching the
Speaker 2: mesh at all, and no evidence of clouds of scales
Speaker 2: running down the length of the cod end. And of
Speaker 2: course we were filming all this with a remote control
Speaker 2: television vehicle which was controlled from the surface, so it
Speaker 2: was flying alongside the court ends and observing all the
Speaker 2: experimental cod ends that I used, and it was quite fascinating.
Speaker 2: The thing that started me off was I began diving
Speaker 2: in the middle nineteen seventies, began diving with John and
Speaker 2: Graham on troll gear, so they were looking at design
Speaker 2: improvements to design of troll nets, etc. That was the
Speaker 2: remit at the time in the lab, or at least
Speaker 2: in the gear section of the lab, and that diving
Speaker 2: really taught me a lot about net design. It also
Speaker 2: taught me a lot about how many juvenile fish were
Speaker 2: being destroyed. Now, in discussions with a colleague in the
Speaker 2: lab Stand German, he told me in the late nineteen
Speaker 2: seventies that's something in the region of seventy percent of
Speaker 2: what was captured in the North Sea of harrick and whiting.
Speaker 2: I'm talking about here, seventy percent of what was caught
Speaker 2: was discarded over the side as dead juvenile fish. So
Speaker 2: this was babies that didn't get a chance to spawn.
Speaker 2: This was babies who were not feeding other fish species,
Speaker 2: because the ecosystem requires lots of different species around and
Speaker 2: they feed on each other, and that's important. Caught in
Speaker 2: the southern North Sea on sand deals sand eals were
Speaker 2: fished out. Where did the cod go? They disappeared out
Speaker 2: of the Dogger Bank Doga bank. Cord fishery was one
Speaker 2: of the biggest in the world. It's no longer, it
Speaker 2: hasn't been for thirty forty fifty years because of the
Speaker 2: sandal fishery. So their food was taken from them. So
Speaker 2: these juvenile haddick and whiting, which could have been potentially
Speaker 2: food for cord and for haddock themselves, for adult haddock
Speaker 2: and adult whiting and so forth, it wasn't available to them.
Speaker 2: So it was a huge waste, huge waste, and it
Speaker 2: had to stop. But the way that the government wanted
Speaker 2: to stop it was by increasing the diamond mash size,
Speaker 2: but that didn't work. You were still getting discards. If
Speaker 2: you increased from seventy eighty to ninety two hundred mil,
Speaker 2: there were still discards, maybe not as many as there
Speaker 2: had been before, but nonetheless way too many to accept.
Speaker 1: Yeah, really interesting, but Jimmy it was.
Speaker 2: And of course the diving on the next with John
Speaker 2: and Graham showed all that to me, and I thought,
Speaker 2: I've got to do something about this. I really have to,
Speaker 2: and you dead, well, yeah, I mean it's something simple
Speaker 2: like turning diamond mesh onto the square. But actually there
Speaker 2: was something I did before that. I had to look
Speaker 2: at hexagonal mesh six six sided mesh, which is when
Speaker 2: you turn it a certain way, you can end up
Speaker 2: with a rectangle. And I thought, oh, now a rectangle
Speaker 2: is going to be good because it'll let more juvenile
Speaker 2: fish out, but it'll let the flatfish out as well.
Speaker 2: And I had a look at that and that was
Speaker 2: really good. But then I thought, m hexagonal mesh no,
Speaker 2: too expensive and not very practical. For mending and so forth.
Speaker 2: So it had to be What I wanted to develop
Speaker 2: was something, and I think you'll agree with me, Jim.
Speaker 2: It had to be practical, and it had to be
Speaker 2: acceptable to the industry. So I moved on to the
Speaker 2: square mesh and began trials, many many hundreds of trials,
Speaker 2: many many hundreds of toes over different horsepower vessels, say nets,
Speaker 2: troll nets, big and small vessels with full square mesh cottage.
Speaker 2: Now get that, Jim, it's full square mesh cottage. And
Speaker 2: I did. I did that, and the results were unbelievable. However, however,
Speaker 2: there was a potential problem in that if the square
Speaker 2: mesh was too big, you would lose too many marketable fish,
Speaker 2: and I didn't want that. The industry can't cope with
Speaker 2: any conservation device which on a whul By Hall basis
Speaker 2: restricts the amount of adult fish that they can capture.
Speaker 2: In other words, if the adult fish was escaping, what's
Speaker 2: the point in spending money and fuel and towing for
Speaker 2: hours and hours an end if you're getting you know,
Speaker 2: ten boxes as opposed to of adult fish, as oppos
Speaker 2: to thirty or forty or fifty boxes.
Speaker 1: Of adult fish.
Speaker 2: But at the same but at the same time let
Speaker 2: the juvenile fish escape, so that that became that became
Speaker 2: an issue which I had to look at very very carefully.
Speaker 2: And actually the best size for whitefish trolls of square
Speaker 2: mesh was eighty millimeters, which with which compared roughly to
Speaker 2: about one hundred millimeter diamond, but it didn't compare in
Speaker 2: terms of the release of juvenile fish. The square eighty
Speaker 2: still reduced more juvenile hrdrican whiting, so you can see that.
Speaker 2: You know, it was a long it was a long
Speaker 2: process of experimentation to find to find a mesh size
Speaker 2: that was acceptable to the industry and by the way,
Speaker 2: getting the industry to accept it as well. But but
Speaker 2: that was helped enormously by these fabulous skippers that I
Speaker 2: went away with on on on their their boats and
Speaker 2: you know, just dropping and I love to name drop
Speaker 2: when it comes to square mesh. I mean Tom Harks,
Speaker 2: you know, he he was, he was, he was on
Speaker 2: board excuse the pun for square mesh, you know. And
Speaker 2: and I was away with I was away with John
Speaker 2: Smith on the heather Sprigue. He was another great supporter
Speaker 2: of the square mesh and and and I could go
Speaker 2: on and on about it, you know, in terms of names.
Speaker 2: But people are sure that supported the square mesh were
Speaker 2: were very helpful in persuading the industry, in getting the
Speaker 2: idea cross, in showing results in discussing it. The likes
Speaker 2: of John Ashworth was sometime. Do you remember John Ashworth? Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: he was. He was very vocal in support of the industry.
Speaker 2: Everything that that man did was totally in support of
Speaker 2: the industry.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I remember that. But then it's interesting, Jacket
Speaker 1: You've mentioned Tom hark Is, because it was just the
Speaker 1: very person I was going to mention just now because
Speaker 1: I remember your trials. Obviously, I did a lot of
Speaker 1: business with Tom and all that Orkney boats, and I
Speaker 1: remember Tom saying and just exactly what you were saying
Speaker 1: with it, but it was eighty mullimeter and he was
Speaker 1: I think the trials were ninety on the Diamond and
Speaker 1: he reckoned not on the square, sorry, And he was
Speaker 1: concerned that there were letting just everything that you said,
Speaker 1: mature fish escape and it wasn't going to work. But
Speaker 1: I'm right in saying that, which I thought was crazy
Speaker 1: at the time, that they weren't allowed to come down
Speaker 1: because from ninety because because of the regulations on mesh size,
Speaker 1: and they wouldn't they wouldn't budge on the fact that
Speaker 1: square mesh was much greater. As you said there, eighty
Speaker 1: was the equivalent to one hundred and probably ninety what
Speaker 1: would be equivalent to maybe one hundred and ten or
Speaker 1: one hundred and twenty, But they wouldn't let them take
Speaker 1: it down. Is that right? Am I remembering that correctly?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right. It's a complicated issue, but essense,
Speaker 2: you're right. I mean, we're talking about the civil servants
Speaker 2: in head Office. They had control of the introduction of legislation,
Speaker 2: so we were, you know, the scientists in the marine lab.
Speaker 2: We're merely putting our data to them and they decided
Speaker 2: from there, so any recommendations that we made would not
Speaker 2: necessarily been taken.
Speaker 1: Up by them.
Speaker 2: But I do recall a conversation with one civil servant
Speaker 2: who said, when I put to him that the eighty
Speaker 2: millimeter would be the best for the fishing industry in
Speaker 2: terms of retaining marketable fish but still allowing a much
Speaker 2: higher escape rate of the juvenile fish than nineteen one
Speaker 2: hundred mili diamond. And he said, no, we can't let
Speaker 2: them go down to eighty because they might cheat. Now
Speaker 2: I found that a fascinating statement, and I mean it
Speaker 2: actually demonstrates a lack of understanding of a civil servants
Speaker 2: sitting at a desk in Edinburgh compared to us out
Speaker 2: there on the fishing boats with the fisherman doing the stuff.
Speaker 2: And I asked him. I asked him, I said, what
Speaker 2: do you mean precisely by they would cheat with it? Oh? Well,
Speaker 2: can't they close the meshus up and restrict the And
Speaker 2: I said, well, okay, they could perhaps snotter you know
Speaker 2: what I mean by snortering accordagem just tying a rope
Speaker 2: rounded and closing the meshes up. And I said, well, okay,
Speaker 2: you know a fisherman could do that. But then why
Speaker 2: would he do that if the idea of eighty millimeter
Speaker 2: or even ninety milimeters square mesh is sold to the industry.
Speaker 2: And he looked at me and he said, you know
Speaker 2: what do you mean? I said, well, look, we've got
Speaker 2: to undertake a teaching process of of getting across the
Speaker 2: idea to the industry and showing them the data, showing
Speaker 2: them the video film and persuading them to use the
Speaker 2: square mesh in the manner that it was meant to
Speaker 2: be used. And I said, and this is the telling factor.
Speaker 2: I said, Look, even even if thirty percent of the
Speaker 2: fishing industry were to cheat with the square mesh caught end,
Speaker 2: you would still with the remaining seventy percent, be something
Speaker 2: in the region of sixty to seventy percent better off
Speaker 2: in terms of the destruction of juvenile fish in reducing
Speaker 2: the destruction of juvenile fish. And he looked at me,
Speaker 2: he said, is that right? And I said, well, you know,
Speaker 2: as far as one can one can calculate. And of
Speaker 2: course these calculations are very difficult to make, Jim, you know,
Speaker 2: it's stock assessment work and so on. Is open to
Speaker 2: all sorts of questions. But basically that was the argument
Speaker 2: that even if some of them did snorter their the
Speaker 2: squaremish caught in, there would still be a benefit in
Speaker 2: terms of increasing the spawning stock biomass by allowing the
Speaker 2: juvenile fish to escape. Well, okay, so this argument goes
Speaker 2: on for years and years and years, and I'm talking.
Speaker 2: My first filming of square mesh happened in September nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty one, and from there it took ten years to
Speaker 2: get the square mesh panel into legislation, and interestingly, Jim,
Speaker 2: the panel for prontrolls when it was introduced in nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety one was eighty millimeters. The panel for whitefish trolls
Speaker 2: was ninety millimeters. So you know, the acceptance of eighteen
Speaker 2: milimeter was okay eventually, but only for the prontrol that
Speaker 2: that ten year period. GYM was extremely frustrating because within
Speaker 2: about four years five years of nineteen eighty one, I
Speaker 2: had gathered a huge amount of data on squaremesh cought ents,
Speaker 2: and I wanted and felt that it would be the
Speaker 2: best for the industry to introduce squaremish cought ens at
Speaker 2: eighty millimeters. And I wish that had happened, I really do,
Speaker 2: But there was no persuading the civil servants who controlled
Speaker 2: the legislation. No matter how well we put across our
Speaker 2: argument or data, etc. There was no way it was
Speaker 2: going to happen. So from about nineteen eighty six we
Speaker 2: began thinking, how are we going to get round this?
Speaker 2: How are we going to get square mesh in? Because
Speaker 2: we were totally convinced that square mesh was going to
Speaker 2: be good for certainly for hardick and waiting stocks, how
Speaker 2: we're going to do it, and the square mesh panel
Speaker 2: on the top side of the cord end was mooted.
Speaker 2: Now I'll tell you a little story here, and it's
Speaker 2: a funny story in a way because I to this
Speaker 2: day I still have a laugh with Ken Arkley. Do
Speaker 2: you remember Ken Arkley from the Seafish Industry Authority? Now,
Speaker 2: Ken Ken was yeah, yeah, SFI. Ken was a very
Speaker 2: practical down to earth lad and I was having discussions
Speaker 2: with him about, you know, what to do in terms
Speaker 2: of oh well, he said, let's let's have a look
Speaker 2: at a panel, and I said okay, and I invited
Speaker 2: them up on one of the trips and we did
Speaker 2: some work on the panel, different positions in the cord end,
Speaker 2: and it was great. And the panel on the top
Speaker 2: side of the cord end works so well because it
Speaker 2: depends on the behavior of the huddeken whiting, which always
Speaker 2: rise up as they're running down the extension, or at
Speaker 2: least swimming backwards as it were, or swimming to keep
Speaker 2: up with the net, but the nets overtaking them as
Speaker 2: they exhausts, so gradually they're dropping down the extension. They
Speaker 2: come into the cod end and immediately they're pushing upwards
Speaker 2: as they had been pushing upwards against the diamond mesh
Speaker 2: but couldn't get out, and they were upwards. So this
Speaker 2: behavior was incredible. They were always going upwards, so the
Speaker 2: panel on the top side was just ideal. Now, this
Speaker 2: behavior of Hardig and Whiting rising up was first discovered
Speaker 2: by John Mayne and Graham Sangster when they started working
Speaker 2: on their separator troll. Well actually before they started working
Speaker 2: on the separator troll, they were filming fish behavior in
Speaker 2: the mouth of the troll and they discovered that Haddig
Speaker 2: and whiting when they exhausted and they couldn't keep up
Speaker 2: swimming with the net with the troll as it was
Speaker 2: trundling over the seabed, they would always rise up. Unbelievable,
Speaker 2: and John and Graham said, wow, this is incredible. They
Speaker 2: rise up, the whiting rise up, not to such a
Speaker 2: high level, but all the had all the flatfish were
Speaker 2: staying low, as you would imagine flatfish would always do,
Speaker 2: and cod were staying low as well. So they came
Speaker 2: up with a brilliant idea. Let's try a horizontal separator
Speaker 2: panel along the full length of the net from the
Speaker 2: from the mouth of the net just above the foot
Speaker 2: rope right back into the court ends and have a
Speaker 2: cought end on top and a cought end down below.
Speaker 2: And lo and behold, the top cought end caught all
Speaker 2: the hurdigan waiting. The lower cot end caught all the
Speaker 2: flatfish and the cord. So that's that's why, that's why
Speaker 2: the panel worked in my mind, because I knew that
Speaker 2: behavior from John and Graham, and I knew they were
Speaker 2: going to push out on the top side. But but
Speaker 2: but my real problem was I wanted juvenile cod to
Speaker 2: escape as well. Cod do not rise up. They always
Speaker 2: they always tend to go down. And I knew from
Speaker 2: the filming of my square mesh cought end, the full
Speaker 2: cod end with the square mesh on the full circumference,
Speaker 2: I had film of juvenile cod escaping from the lower part.
Speaker 2: Now you can understand, Jim, that's why, that's why I
Speaker 2: wanted to use the full square mesh cod end square
Speaker 2: mesh on the circumference, because it would deal with the cod,
Speaker 2: the juvenile cod, and it would going down, and it
Speaker 2: would deal with the haddache juvenile haddigan waiting going up. Okay,
Speaker 2: So the next problem, the next problem that the industry
Speaker 2: quite rightly raised was what about the flatfish? If you're
Speaker 2: using a full square mesh codent, are they going to escape? Well,
Speaker 2: the simple answer was that tiny flatfish do escape from
Speaker 2: square mesh eighteen ninety mili, but the regulation minimum size
Speaker 2: and below doesn't necessarily do so. So to solve that problem,
Speaker 2: we put a short length of diamond mesh on the
Speaker 2: back end of the full square mesh cod ent and
Speaker 2: that solved the problem. So cod juvenile cord were going
Speaker 2: out down below in the square mesh, hurrigon whiting were
Speaker 2: going out the top. The flat undersized flatfish were going
Speaker 2: out with the diamond mesh at the back end. And
Speaker 2: it couldn't have been better, But would would the legislators
Speaker 2: except that no. Now, part of the reason was, of course,
Speaker 2: that the industry were concerned about the full square mesh
Speaker 2: cord end on the round. They wondered about the strength.
Speaker 2: So I did a lot of its strength experiments, and
Speaker 2: I use different type of netting. I used not Japanese
Speaker 2: knutless netting and so forth, and we felt that we
Speaker 2: had resolved all their questions about the strength, but it
Speaker 2: didn't really gather traction. However, However, the squamish idea did
Speaker 2: gather traction with the industry and certainly the squaremish panel
Speaker 2: was acceptable to them. Uh. And then the whole sort
Speaker 2: of political process of by the industry to to actually
Speaker 2: get it introduced was was undertaken. And I met I
Speaker 2: met some great guys you know who represented the industry.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you remember Willy Hay very well,
Speaker 2: Willie Willy willy Hay was he was extremely interested in
Speaker 2: the squamish and we had a meeting well, in fact,
Speaker 2: willy Hay invited Ken Arkley and myself down to Edinburgh
Speaker 2: along with other representatives from Willy Hay was the president
Speaker 2: of the s FF at the time and and uh
Speaker 2: and and Tom Hay was at that time president or
Speaker 2: chairman of of the s w f p A. He
Speaker 2: later moved on and created f A L the Fisherman's Association. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but but Tom Tom was there representing the s w
Speaker 2: f p A, and he was he was in favor
Speaker 2: of it because because their skippers had fed through the associations,
Speaker 2: their their interest and and in many cases their delight
Speaker 2: in the idea of the square mesh panel and reducing
Speaker 2: the the juvenile Hurricane Whiting and and Willie Hay, I
Speaker 2: mean Willie I had. I had seen Willie at some
Speaker 2: meetings that had occurred in the lab and and and
Speaker 2: and I thought, oh, dere being invited down to Edinburgh
Speaker 2: by Willie Hay is probably going to tell me off
Speaker 2: about the square mesh because I've seen him up, I'd
Speaker 2: seen him operate at some other meetings, and by haven't
Speaker 2: seen he wouldn't hold back with the scientists, you know,
Speaker 2: he would give them hell. But you know what he
Speaker 2: could he couldn't have been nicer. So we were in
Speaker 2: a hood. I can't even remember which hotel. It was,
Speaker 2: the meeting room in the hotel, and it was it
Speaker 2: was laid out with the tables, and he met he
Speaker 2: met Ken and I at the door of the hotel.
Speaker 2: And I'll never forget He's come in. Lads. She says,
Speaker 2: you must be starving. I've set up I've set you
Speaker 2: up for a plate of fish and chips. So we
Speaker 2: sat we sat down with all these industry leaders around us,
Speaker 2: you know, including the likes of John Thompson, including you
Speaker 2: know John Smith. He was he was in the s
Speaker 2: w f P A one one of the office bearers
Speaker 2: et cetera, and some names I can't even remember now,
Speaker 2: but there were a lot of them, and they were
Speaker 2: just questioning Ken and I about the whole business, and
Speaker 2: we just we just laid it out as I'm laying
Speaker 2: it out to you, about the squaremish, the full squaremish
Speaker 2: caught end, they caught in with the diamond piece on
Speaker 2: the end, the squamish panels, uh and so on, and
Speaker 2: they were very much in favor of it. And I believe,
Speaker 2: although there's a lot going on in the background with
Speaker 2: many other people, including John Ashworth who was pushing for
Speaker 2: it in Math, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food in
Speaker 2: in in England, that I believe that that was a
Speaker 2: turning point that meeting where they they accepted that certainly
Speaker 2: to help the industry and to minimize the destruction of
Speaker 2: the juvenile fish, that the squaremish panel was worth seeing
Speaker 2: or putting into legislation, and they then went to the
Speaker 2: legislators and persuaded them to introduce it. And of course
Speaker 2: the first introduction was in nineteen ninety one, as I said,
Speaker 2: and believe it or not, Jim, of course you'll be
Speaker 2: well aware square mesh has been in legislation continuously since
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety one in the UK fishery at various sizes
Speaker 2: and configurations, etc. It's been in European legislation since the
Speaker 2: early nineteen nineties because they took it on board after
Speaker 2: we introduced it in the UK, and it's been in Iceland,
Speaker 2: it's been in Canada, it's been in America, it's been
Speaker 2: in Norway, it's been in a wide range of countries
Speaker 2: in the Northern Hemisphere, including in the Southern Hemisphere. Australia's
Speaker 2: big and square mesh as well. So it it really,
Speaker 2: it really did start something. But Jim, but now here's me.
Speaker 2: I'm a young scientist and I come up with this
Speaker 2: square mesh idea. Let's open the mass shop. And I
Speaker 2: come up with this idea and I think, oh, this
Speaker 2: is fabulous. I'm the first one. I'm the inventor, and
Speaker 2: I thought, oh wow, this is something big, and I
Speaker 2: was I was very proud of myself having invented it. Anyway,
Speaker 2: after the first trial that I had with it, I thought,
Speaker 2: do you know what I need to get into this
Speaker 2: selectivity of cought ins more than I had done up
Speaker 2: till that time, Because up till that time in the
Speaker 2: Marine Lab Gym. I was looking at fishing gear design.
Speaker 2: That's what I was employed for, to improve fishing gear design,
Speaker 2: and that's all I've been doing. I hadn't developed into selectivity,
Speaker 2: so I needed to get a background on what had
Speaker 2: been done in selectivity. And along to the librarian in
Speaker 2: the lab, John Byrne. And in those days, of course,
Speaker 2: we didn't have the Internet. He couldn't email, he couldn't
Speaker 2: He had to phone around all of the libraries in
Speaker 2: the UK, in Europe and across the world to ask them.
Speaker 2: My question to him, which was has square mesh ever
Speaker 2: been used before? I was hoping it hadn't because I
Speaker 2: wanted to be the inventor. But it had. It had
Speaker 2: because John came back with And this is where the
Speaker 2: history just fascinates me about the whole thing. Apparently a fellow,
Speaker 2: a Dutchman by the name of Guelder, first child square
Speaker 2: mesh panel. It was a panel in a in a
Speaker 2: in a four panel caught end which was held open
Speaker 2: by a frame. He tried square mesh in nineteen twenty eight.
Speaker 2: Would you imagine nineteen twenty eight. It was incredible. And
Speaker 2: John went even further back a fishery scientist in England,
Speaker 2: an Englishman in eighteen ninety five, had you used square
Speaker 2: mesh as well? So that was me blown out of
Speaker 2: the water. I hadn't invented it after all, But Jim
Speaker 2: I wasn't disappointed because the more that I got into
Speaker 2: the whole selectivity issue and looked at the history of it, well,
Speaker 2: there was Holt in eighteen ninety five, Guilder in nineteen
Speaker 2: twenty eight. In the early nineteen hundreds there was a
Speaker 2: rash of scientists Danish, Dutch and so forth who were
Speaker 2: concerned about the destruction of juvenile fish, and they started
Speaker 2: playing around with different designs of troll which they called
Speaker 2: savings trolls. They were saving the juvenile fish, saving the babyfish.
Speaker 2: But none of them, none of them took off in
Speaker 2: the legislation, and it needs to go into legislation because fishermen.
Speaker 2: Although in recent times I understand there have been some
Speaker 2: fishermen who've wanted to trial their own designs and have
Speaker 2: been refused by by the ministries to use them legally,
Speaker 2: when in fact they've been shown to be much better
Speaker 2: than what we've got at the moment. However, that's another story.
Speaker 2: But none of the early devices were ever introduced into
Speaker 2: legislation because at that time there was no legislation. There
Speaker 2: was no minimum size mesh size. That didn't occur until
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty three in the UK fishery when a mesh
Speaker 2: size of roughly roughly seventy seventy five millimeters was introduced
Speaker 2: to the troll fishery for the first time. Solation built
Speaker 2: around the world into legislation from the nineteen thirties up
Speaker 2: to the nineteen eighties where I was trying to introduce
Speaker 2: the square mesh. So the history of the whole thing
Speaker 2: was fascinating, and the history also included the then director
Speaker 2: of the Marine Lab, Basil Parish. Now you might remember
Speaker 2: Basil Parish. He was a great director of the Marine
Speaker 2: Lab and he was very much in favor of the
Speaker 2: square mesh. And when I came back from my first
Speaker 2: trial on the Gold Seeker with the video film and
Speaker 2: the data showing the juveniles escaping, he saw the film
Speaker 2: and it was in September, and he said, what do
Speaker 2: you want to do with this, Jack? And I said, well,
Speaker 2: obviously we've got to do some experiments on it. I said,
Speaker 2: well absolutely, he said, but what do you want to
Speaker 2: do immediately, because he was so keen to get something
Speaker 2: done immediately in terms of more fish data to prove
Speaker 2: whether it was better or not. And I said, well,
Speaker 2: I can't get any any funding because the annual funding
Speaker 2: had been allocated. And he said, don't worry about that.
Speaker 2: He said, how much do you need to charter a
Speaker 2: fishing vessel and go off and do some experiments. So
Speaker 2: within a month and made me returning from that trip,
Speaker 2: Basil Parish had found funding and I had chartered a vessel,
Speaker 2: the Harvest Reaper, out of the Fraserburg with James May
Speaker 2: the skipper, and James was brilliant, absolutely brilliant, and we
Speaker 2: got some very good data which showed to Basil that
Speaker 2: the square was certainly performing better than the the Diamond
Speaker 2: mesh in certain circumstances. And from there it blossomed. From
Speaker 2: there I couldn't. I was never refused any funding that
Speaker 2: I requested for, you know, chartering boats, going away with
Speaker 2: the fishermen, et cetera, which was absolutely phenomenal. Now, one
Speaker 2: interesting thing, Jim Listen, that trip with James May was staggering,
Speaker 2: not only because of what they saw, they were staggered
Speaker 2: by what they saw both from the video film and
Speaker 2: from the data that I produced. But I was staggered
Speaker 2: because James said to me one day, and it was
Speaker 2: about the second day of the trials, he says, you
Speaker 2: know something, Jack, I'm comparing the diamond mesh fish with
Speaker 2: the square mesh caught fish, and I'm seeing a better
Speaker 2: quality in the square mesh fish. And we looked at
Speaker 2: it closely and it was true. Visually we could see
Speaker 2: that there was a better quality. Now why was that, well,
Speaker 2: of course James explained it. He said, because there's debris
Speaker 2: escaping out of the square mesh, you know, the kind
Speaker 2: of the sort of debris that you pick off the
Speaker 2: seabedstones and shells and bit pieces, which when it grinds
Speaker 2: around at the end of the cought end with the
Speaker 2: fish accumulated, it's rubbing against the fish. They're losing scales.
Speaker 2: They're not as good quality as the square mesh. And
Speaker 2: do you know what James did, He said to me,
Speaker 2: He said, do you know what, it's well worth keeping
Speaker 2: those two groups of fish separate on the market, because
Speaker 2: we landed on the market at the end of the
Speaker 2: week and lo and behold the square Now nobody knew no,
Speaker 2: but he knew and nobody had been forewarned that the
Speaker 2: two fish had been separated. Lo and behold, the square
Speaker 2: mesh fish was picking up about two to three pounds
Speaker 2: of box more than the diamond mesh caught fish. Now
Speaker 2: we asked to buy, I asked the buyers. I asked
Speaker 2: the buyers afterwards, why did you buy that fish? And
Speaker 2: he said, well, look, he said, the quality is better
Speaker 2: on them. I can see that. He said, I'd still
Speaker 2: buy the other fish. And then we told them that
Speaker 2: the difference was diamond and square. So that was an
Speaker 2: amazing finding.
Speaker 1: That that's one way to get a fisherman's heart.
Speaker 2: Oh absolutely, I'll tell you. I'll tell you the other
Speaker 2: way to get this heart. My biggest selling point, apart
Speaker 2: from the fact that it shaved juvenile fish with the
Speaker 2: full square mesh caught end, was that there was less
Speaker 2: sorting on deck because you didn't have the debris and
Speaker 2: you didn't have.
Speaker 1: That would be an improvement on quality.
Speaker 2: As well, and that's an improvement on quality. But they
Speaker 2: had less work on deck. So every hall with the
Speaker 2: Harvard Streeber boys, they kept saying they were cheering by
Speaker 2: the end of the trips when they saw the squaremish
Speaker 2: caught in coming up. Oh, we don't have much sorting.
Speaker 2: But they were still getting they were still getting the
Speaker 2: equivalent marketable marketable adult fish as they had got with
Speaker 2: the diamond mesh. So there were lots of selling points
Speaker 2: early on. And as time went on, of course, and
Speaker 2: more and more skippers and crew got to learn about
Speaker 2: the square mesh, then they began to realize that there
Speaker 2: were huge advantages.
Speaker 1: But when you say that, Jock, is it not sad
Speaker 1: when you go back, so the vibes you were getting
Speaker 1: when they might sheet of.
Speaker 2: Fat, it's very sad and.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 2: And you know, to pick up on your point about
Speaker 2: your Icelandic Johann the Icelandic scientists, Christensen and him saying,
Speaker 2: you know that they wanted research vessels because they were
Speaker 2: nice and clean and cozy and everything was nice, and
Speaker 2: they didn't want to go away in commercial boats because
Speaker 2: it was smelly and dirty. I had exactly the same
Speaker 2: experience with a senior scientist in the marine lab in
Speaker 2: the early days of the square meshed when I mooted
Speaker 2: that I start charting now. To put it to you, Jim,
Speaker 2: the charting hadn't taken place to any great extent in
Speaker 2: the marine lab, and they were kind of against it.
Speaker 2: They wanted the research vessels to be used for the experiments.
Speaker 2: But I I persuaded them that I was going to
Speaker 2: get greater quantities of fish. I could work twenty four
Speaker 2: to seven on the commercial boats. And one of the
Speaker 2: senior scientists said to me one day, he said, he said,
Speaker 2: I don't understand why you want to go in commercial
Speaker 2: boats chat because they're dirty, smelly fishermen now, And I
Speaker 2: said to it, I actually chastised him for that. I said,
Speaker 2: you mustn't speak that way. We're in a sense representing
Speaker 2: we're working for the industry, and that should be at
Speaker 2: the forefront of every scientist's thinking, that you're there for
Speaker 2: the industry. Whatever aspect of work you're doing, whether it's
Speaker 2: stock assessment, environmental issues, whether it's selectivity work, you should
Speaker 2: always be mindful that you're working for the industry. And
Speaker 2: he was taken aback by that. He was taken aback.
Speaker 2: He never ever said anything against the charters after that.
Speaker 1: He didn't see himself as working for the industry.
Speaker 2: Well, whether it was that Jim or not, I don't know,
Speaker 2: but I was I was. I was really horrified by it,
Speaker 2: because well, listen, it was you know. And I think
Speaker 2: to the other extent is that I think a lot
Speaker 2: of scientists in those days, I don't know what it's
Speaker 2: like these days. I've been away from it for a
Speaker 2: long long time, Jim, But those days, a lot of
Speaker 2: the scientists thought that the industry were perhaps, you know,
Speaker 2: not very intelligent. And nothing could be further from the truth.
Speaker 2: The most intelligent people I have ever met on Earth
Speaker 2: are some of the fishermen that I went away with. Well,
Speaker 2: in fact, all of the fishermen, I would say, I mean,
Speaker 2: look at Andrew Bremner on the boy Andrew and his father,
Speaker 2: Norri I chartered. I chartered them a few times and
Speaker 2: couldn't have been better. And Norrie putting across understanding immediately
Speaker 2: the the you know, the whole concept of guaremation and
Speaker 2: the need for it and pushing for it. And there
Speaker 2: was there was Andrew and and and John Gary A
Speaker 2: Cup and Shetland. I mean, what a clever, clever man.
Speaker 2: And Sunbeam exactly yeah, and and and of course we
Speaker 2: go back to Tom Harkas. I mean, my word, look
Speaker 2: at the man, how he developed I was on both
Speaker 2: his boats, by the way, the Orkney Reaver, which was
Speaker 2: a fantastic seaboat, but the Kila, I love the Kila.
Speaker 2: I've never been on a fishing boat quite like it
Speaker 2: in seakeeping qualities and oh man alive. It was just
Speaker 2: a superb, superb vessel.
Speaker 1: I love your passion and I think it's absolutely brilliant
Speaker 1: the way you're giving recognition the guys commercial fishing boats.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, skippers that you worked, oh yeah for them,
Speaker 1: and they worked for the Marine Lab.
Speaker 2: Well yeah they were they were working for the lab,
Speaker 2: and and and they they enjoyed every minute of it.
Speaker 2: I enjoyed every minute of it. But I mean, you know, Jim,
Speaker 2: I always said at the time, and I and I
Speaker 2: still say it, and I'll say it to anyone who
Speaker 2: wants to listen to me until they're bored silly, because
Speaker 2: you know what I'm like when I get stuck on
Speaker 2: square mesh.
Speaker 1: But I would say with that, you'll talk, and you'll
Speaker 1: talk until they're bold board silly, you said, but you
Speaker 1: won't stop then.
Speaker 2: But but the thing was that the thing was Jim,
Speaker 2: that to me, all of the skippers, including a lot
Speaker 2: of people, are sure, including one or two in the
Speaker 2: Marine lab as well are the unsung heroes of the
Speaker 2: square Mesh story. Because the square mesh story was so
Speaker 2: far away from anything that the industry had had ever
Speaker 2: experienced that it must have been so difficult for them
Speaker 2: to accept in a lot of a lot of cases.
Speaker 2: And I mean, I'm spinning your story here of what
Speaker 2: I saw in the industry, which was their acceptance was brilliant.
Speaker 1: What I could say to you, obviously, when you're talking
Speaker 1: you get back to the eighties. I was much younger.
Speaker 1: I was involved to degree, not the same as the
Speaker 1: fisherman because I wasn't actively on the boat hands on
Speaker 1: that I was talking to you when you would commend
Speaker 1: when the boat would we be come in into land
Speaker 1: and be talking to the fisherman. And I can remember
Speaker 1: I just thought it was so exciting what it was
Speaker 1: going to do for the future. So I know exactly
Speaker 1: what you're all what you're saying there, Jack, I know exactly.
Speaker 1: I can remember it clearly now.
Speaker 2: Jim, I don't want to embarrass You've given me. You've
Speaker 2: given me the ideal opportunity to say that you you
Speaker 2: are one of the unsung heroes. All those discussions that
Speaker 2: we had, I didn't know who I was talking to
Speaker 2: when when we were landing with the boats, except that
Speaker 2: you know, you were buying from from the boats, the
Speaker 2: fish from the boats. And of course you know me,
Speaker 2: I'll talk to anyone in the on the pier, anyone
Speaker 2: that comes up to me. In fact, I'll even grab
Speaker 2: people and start talking to them when they don't want
Speaker 2: to talk. And you, you, you listened, and I could
Speaker 2: see the excitement in your eyes. But Jim, I saw
Speaker 2: that excitement in so many other people's eyes. And you
Speaker 2: went on and you chatted about that to every fisherman
Speaker 2: that you encounter. I know for a fact, because fishermen
Speaker 2: would feed back to me, always speaking to Jim Kwi
Speaker 2: and he was telling me about the skirmish, tell me
Speaker 2: something about it, and Jim was Shane, it's a great idea.
Speaker 2: And Jim, you were all over the place. You were.
Speaker 2: You were definitely one of the unsung heroes that that
Speaker 2: that pushed it into into legislation eventually. But no, I
Speaker 2: mean a lot of people, a lot of people were involved. Uh.
Speaker 1: And but as well as that, Jack, I appreciate it,
Speaker 1: and I thank you for that really kind words. I
Speaker 1: didn't see myself as that, but good back a wee
Speaker 1: bit one of the other points you made earlier, and
Speaker 1: I really do respect the way that you speak so
Speaker 1: fondly and highly of the fisherman you had connections with
Speaker 1: on my goodness worth plenty that I'll go back. I
Speaker 1: remember we were still in the EU midterm review, That's
Speaker 1: what it was, a midterm review the common Fisheries policy
Speaker 1: in Shetland. I went up for it. I was we
Speaker 1: were Tom and myself for coming back. We were in
Speaker 1: Sambra airport waiting for her plane and who was sitting
Speaker 1: on the airport waiting for their plane? And honestly that
Speaker 1: live with me to the rest of my days. The
Speaker 1: foresight and the knowledge and intelligence. Who was at three
Speaker 1: guys everyone you mentioned, So I know and appreciate what
Speaker 1: you're saying and who you're talking about, Willly Hay, Tom
Speaker 1: Hay and Johnny Thompson.
Speaker 2: Johnny Thompson. Yes, yes, three unsung heroes.
Speaker 1: Oh absolutely totally. And what I just come away from
Speaker 1: we were just buzzing so fool What foresaid? What foresaid?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, absolutely, I'm big characters, Oh, huge characters, and
Speaker 2: you know every one of them should have been knighted.
Speaker 2: I firmly believe that that what they did for the industry,
Speaker 2: and I sincerely wish and hope that the industry knew
Speaker 2: it at the time, and I'm quite sure that a
Speaker 2: lot of the industry did knew just what they sacrificed
Speaker 2: for the industry and pushed for the industry. They were
Speaker 2: all great, great men. And John Thompson, I'm glad you
Speaker 2: mentioned him because the Saint Kilda, the Saint Kilda, Oh
Speaker 2: what a beautiful boat.
Speaker 1: Wouldn't boat. And I remember one time they commend to
Speaker 1: land in lochand that I was. I was buying a
Speaker 1: lot of fish at the time. At that time that
Speaker 1: would be before that, that would be well before the eighties.
Speaker 1: That would be either late sixties or into the seventies.
Speaker 1: And I was buying fish on and John came in
Speaker 1: to land. He had his fish on the market. Now
Speaker 1: there was a customer in Edinburgh, give me an order.
Speaker 1: He wanted fish, told me about the quality, the size,
Speaker 1: and I thought, well, I can't go wrong, I don't.
Speaker 1: I think it was before the St Kilda as well.
Speaker 1: I think it would be the Horizon. So I bought
Speaker 1: the fish the customer wanted from. It was Johnny's Thompson's
Speaker 1: fish because I knew the quality, knew the exactly what
Speaker 1: he wanted. So customer got the fish. He was happy.
Speaker 1: I was happy. And that was on the Thursday.
Speaker 2: And you know that.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you remember at that time that guy's landed.
Speaker 1: There were fished out. They would land on the Thursday night,
Speaker 1: go home, and then start again on the Sunday night.
Speaker 1: And I was back up on the Tuesday and Johnny
Speaker 1: was in again to land and he came up. He
Speaker 1: came up to me and he says, how did you
Speaker 1: get on with my fish last week? And I says,
Speaker 1: I got on fine with it, Johnny. I had an
Speaker 1: order from a customer. He wanted them, so I got
Speaker 1: them at he's happy with them. So I don't know,
Speaker 1: you're what you're getting at? I says, all good, you know,
Speaker 1: and he's lossy accent. Oh, he says, I'm fine. Pleased
Speaker 1: to hear that, Jem. He says, I was a wee
Speaker 1: bit worried you paid too much for them.
Speaker 2: It's amazing. When when did you ever hear but when
Speaker 2: you ever hear a fishermen? Well that was that was
Speaker 2: That was the man, that was.
Speaker 1: The because because on the market. George McKay it was
Speaker 1: you could say, mister Lochan where he owned the Lochander
Speaker 1: fish selling company, and there was buyers coming up from Aberdeen.
Speaker 1: Was was still operating a support buyers coming up from
Speaker 1: Bucky Aberdeen all over. And of course here's me, young lad,
Speaker 1: bidding on the fish. Of course what do they do,
Speaker 1: push me up, making me, force me to pay more
Speaker 1: pay And Johnny, when you think of it now, Jack,
Speaker 1: Johnny had he at the foresight that he could see
Speaker 1: it's new, young I wasn't buying a lot of that
Speaker 1: size of headaches at the time, and here was him saying, well,
Speaker 1: this could be the future.
Speaker 2: And he was.
Speaker 1: Rather than think it's more money for me, he thought, well,
Speaker 1: I hope it doesn't damage in a way that he's
Speaker 1: not he doesn't come in buying in the future.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was very thoughtful that way.
Speaker 1: John That's that's the measure of the mind he was.
Speaker 2: He was also the most patient skipper I think I've
Speaker 2: ever come across I did. I did a couple of
Speaker 2: trips with him. One trip I was filming the Shane
Speaker 2: Net now is Shane Net to film with the RCTV
Speaker 2: them remote control television vehicle is very, very difficult, and
Speaker 2: it took us three weeks to get some good film
Speaker 2: of juvenile fish escaping from the cot end. And I'll
Speaker 2: forever be in John Thompson's dead for the patients that
Speaker 2: he displayed during that three weeks until we got the film.
Speaker 2: When we got the film, he celebrated it far and wide.
Speaker 2: He plastered that video anywhere and everywhere he could send
Speaker 2: it because he was so enthused by the square mesh.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I can't believe that.
Speaker 2: Great. Great, I'll tell you. I'm sorry take up your
Speaker 2: time here, but listen another funny story, Johnny. When we
Speaker 2: were on that trip. You know how the rescue helicopters
Speaker 2: very often come over a fishing boat and ask permission
Speaker 2: to do some practice landings aboard. And that happened to us,
Speaker 2: you know, regularly. Anyway, the Wessex I think it was
Speaker 2: a Wessex helicopter at the time, I'm sure it was.
Speaker 2: It came over us and the radio comes on, skipper,
Speaker 2: can we could we do a practice and John John
Speaker 2: turns to me and he says, you okay for this, Jack,
Speaker 2: you know it's your charter. I said absolutely, I said no,
Speaker 2: I'm in full encouragement of, you know, practicing for the
Speaker 2: rescue services. Anyway, the winchman comes down onto the deck,
Speaker 2: he releases and I get chatting to him. Well what
Speaker 2: was I chatting to him about? Square Mesh? Of course,
Speaker 2: Jim and telling him, telling him, telling him what we
Speaker 2: are doing. And I could see him glaze over gradually,
Speaker 2: you know, and he started he started signaling, is his
Speaker 2: pilot to come in and lift him off? And I
Speaker 2: said to him, I said, just before he lifted off,
Speaker 2: I said, look, you wouldn't mind taking the camera. I
Speaker 2: had a video camera on board and I was videoing
Speaker 2: the whole thing, you know, And that's what I did.
Speaker 2: I made videos of each trip and distributed it around. Anyway,
Speaker 2: I said to him, wouldn't mind taking the camera up
Speaker 2: and filming us? Oh? He's just no bother at all.
Speaker 2: He says, would you like to come up yourself and
Speaker 2: do the filming yourself? I said, no, I better not
Speaker 2: leave the vessel. It might not go down too well
Speaker 2: in Edinburgh with the civil servants. If if Jack Robertson
Speaker 2: was known to have flown off in a Wessex helicopter. Anyway,
Speaker 2: the wenchman takes the camera and he does a brilliant
Speaker 2: movie and he comes back down hands it over And
Speaker 2: what a wonderful, wonderful video we made of that trip,
Speaker 2: you know, including the underwater video of the Square Mesh.
Speaker 2: And Johnny Thompson of course was delighted to get aerial
Speaker 2: film of the shint Kilda as well, so he's very
Speaker 2: proud to get that video at the end of the
Speaker 2: day from us.
Speaker 1: And fantastic Jack. If I could, maybe I wouldn't say
Speaker 1: steal your thunder a bit, but maybe give you one
Speaker 1: that you weren't aware of. Oh what's that? You know,
Speaker 1: when you're going on about your history lessons, you can
Speaker 1: back the nineteen early nineteen nineteen twenty something. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and then you go back to the eatings.
Speaker 2: You said eighteen ninety three. I think it was eighteen
Speaker 2: eighteen ninety five.
Speaker 1: I want to steal your thunder, but I'm going to
Speaker 1: be looking at a paper when we finish our conversation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I'm going to send you on from the
Speaker 1: thirteen hundreds. Oh and it was it was talked in
Speaker 1: parliament and sent to the King for approval, the then
Speaker 1: king for approval.
Speaker 2: Oh, Jim, this is great history.
Speaker 1: Go on, go on, tell me, tell me not just
Speaker 1: about immature fishing fish escaping.
Speaker 2: Amateur fish escaping. Ah, right, even in those days, even
Speaker 2: in those days, it's always been the concern. I'm delighted.
Speaker 2: I want to see that paper for sure. Oh, Jim,
Speaker 2: that's that's wonderful. Well, do you know, Jim. And going
Speaker 2: from that thirteenth century issue, going from then to the future,
Speaker 2: there's the young's coming through in the industry. Now. Their
Speaker 2: future depends on letting juvenile fish escape from the from
Speaker 2: the gear. They've got to look after their their future,
Speaker 2: and they've got to embrace selectivity in the in the nets.
Speaker 1: To take that one. If I could just maybe ask
Speaker 1: the question what was happening in fisheries that made selectivity important?
Speaker 2: Oh, without a doubt, it was the destruction of the
Speaker 2: juvenile fish.
Speaker 1: Gim.
Speaker 2: I mean, skippers were showing me videos, uh and move
Speaker 2: movie films, you know, the old sinny h stuff of
Speaker 2: halls that they would have, and they would dump the
Speaker 2: juvenile fish and that fish would lie on the surface dead. Okay,
Speaker 2: the goals were getting them. It was entering the ecosystem,
Speaker 2: but it wasn't doing any good for the fishing industry,
Speaker 2: and those fishermen were coming to me and telling me
Speaker 2: that long before, long before I started the selectivity work
Speaker 2: in the mid nineteen seventies, when I was on the
Speaker 2: research vessels, which, as I told you earlier, were crewed
Speaker 2: by ex fishermen, inevitably I would ask about the history
Speaker 2: of fishing, of their experiences, of the boats that they had,
Speaker 2: where they fished, and all the rest of it. And
Speaker 2: every one of them started to tell me about the destruction,
Speaker 2: and it was foremost in their mind, Gym foremost in
Speaker 2: their mind, and they would take me to their houses
Speaker 2: and show me the siny eight and I was flabbergasted
Speaker 2: because I had no real notion of that up to
Speaker 2: that point. But then, as I said to you earlier,
Speaker 2: I started diving with John and Graham, and I saw
Speaker 2: the capture of the juvenile fish in the nets. So
Speaker 2: I was linking those videos from the fishermen to what
Speaker 2: I was saying, and that's what moved me into this
Speaker 2: whole area of selectivity, because I thought we have to
Speaker 2: we must do something to save the juvenile fish, and
Speaker 2: that was my driving force. In fact, I became very blinkered. Jim.
Speaker 2: It has to be said about selectivity in general now
Speaker 2: and square mesh in particular, as you know. But it
Speaker 2: wasn't just the square mesh I discovered. And this I
Speaker 2: can claim fame for without a shadow of a doubt,
Speaker 2: that the selectivity of long extension pieces in troll mates
Speaker 2: is very poor and if you shorten the extension piece up,
Speaker 2: you're beginning to open the meshes up a little bit.
Speaker 2: It's what they do with the design of the troll
Speaker 2: et cetera, et cetera. And the escape of juveniles was
Speaker 2: a bit better. Now, that was a non starter. I
Speaker 2: could never introduce that to the fishery because the fishermen
Speaker 2: need the long extension to get from the nets are
Speaker 2: taken over the stern of the boat and the cod
Speaker 2: end is taken up for it always on the starboard
Speaker 2: side to the fishhold, and they had to have that
Speaker 2: long extension to get round. So although that discovery was
Speaker 2: extremely interesting in terms of selectivity and improving selectivity, the
Speaker 2: one that did work and is in legislation now is
Speaker 2: the reduced meshes on the circumference of the cordent. And
Speaker 2: that was an experiment that I set up in the
Speaker 2: again in the early night in eighties in tandem with
Speaker 2: all the squirmish stuff that I was doing. So what
Speaker 2: the fishermen were doing was they were using a large
Speaker 2: number of meshes on the round on the circumforts of
Speaker 2: the content, and that would close the meshes up tight.
Speaker 2: And I asked fishermen why they were doing that, and
Speaker 2: they said, well, it's catching me more fish. I said, okay,
Speaker 2: but it's is it catching you more marketable fish? Well,
Speaker 2: not really marketable, but it's catching more juveniles. And I said,
Speaker 2: but why would you want to catch the juveniles because
Speaker 2: they said, it proves to us that the net the
Speaker 2: troll is fishing correctly. Now think on that a moment, Jim,
Speaker 2: Is that not astonishing? They had the conception, that I
Speaker 2: suppose in their minds rightly, that because they were catching
Speaker 2: the juveniles as well as the adults, then the net
Speaker 2: was on the botto, the foot rope was tight on
Speaker 2: the bottom, it was capturing what it needed to capture.
Speaker 2: Nothing was getting out and away from the front of
Speaker 2: the troll that they were pulling everything in and it
Speaker 2: was getting down into the content. And I said, well,
Speaker 2: but then you know these are under the minimum landing
Speaker 2: size juvenile fish. You're dumping them so it's a complete
Speaker 2: and utter way, And they said yes. And I spoke
Speaker 2: to a lot of skippers who used that explanation, and
Speaker 2: that was in the nineteen seventies. I never ever heard
Speaker 2: a skippers or any fishermen say that in the nineteen
Speaker 2: eighties or early nineteen nineties, because I believe that it
Speaker 2: was the film videos that John Mayne and Graham Sangster
Speaker 2: and I were producing on the various experiments that we
Speaker 2: were doing, which was showing the fishermen that they did
Speaker 2: need to capture the juvenile fish to show them that
Speaker 2: the net was fishing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and there was. Because I was going to ask you,
Speaker 1: why were a juvenile such a concern because we're traditional
Speaker 1: nets failing.
Speaker 2: Well, now, it was of the time, gym. They weren't
Speaker 2: failing because the mesh, the minimum mesh size was what
Speaker 2: it was, which was seventy and eighty seventy in the
Speaker 2: pron trolls and eighty in the whitefish trolls. It was
Speaker 2: of the time. And I suppose esoterically you can say,
Speaker 2: yes they were failing, failing the juvenile fish and retaining them, yes,
Speaker 2: but they weren't failing the fishermen in a sense because
Speaker 2: they had no conception until they saw the video film
Speaker 2: of the nets. They had no conception of really what
Speaker 2: was going on down there.
Speaker 1: Although yeah, well I could I say maybe stly slightly.
Speaker 1: Did personman already understand before science stepped you say.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. The industry understood
Speaker 2: absolutely before before before the industry And listen, if I
Speaker 2: can just go back, because I think something I said
Speaker 2: a few moments ago was was was not quite right.
Speaker 2: I said something like, you know, the fisherman had no
Speaker 2: conception of what was going on on the seabeds. Their
Speaker 2: net was was being towed over the ground. That's not true. Actually,
Speaker 2: the fisherman knew an awful lot of what was going
Speaker 2: on by telltale signs, damage to natch, wearing tear and
Speaker 2: chain on on the wing ends, wearing tear on the
Speaker 2: foot rope and so on, meshed fish through certain sections
Speaker 2: of the of the troll. You know what, you know
Speaker 2: what I'm talking about. It was telltale signs that were
Speaker 2: demonstrating to fishermen that something wasn't quite right, one of
Speaker 2: which was the amount of juvenile fish that were capturing
Speaker 2: and also the meshed juvenile fish that were meshed in
Speaker 2: the extension pieces in particular, So that was the fish
Speaker 2: that got pinched by the netting as they were trying
Speaker 2: to escape but couldn't, and that came to the surface,
Speaker 2: and the fishermen saw that. So the industry were, without doubt,
Speaker 2: way ahead of the scientists in understanding. I suppose that
Speaker 2: the damage that was being done by the capture of
Speaker 2: juvenile fish in particular, and the damage that that was
Speaker 2: subsequently doing to the stalk sizes I see.
Speaker 1: I know it made seem as if it's a repetition,
Speaker 1: and you've already spoken about, but it's not. With the
Speaker 1: square mesh. Where do you did the square mesh? Forget
Speaker 1: we're talking now thirteen hundred, eighteen hundred and nineteen hundred,
Speaker 1: forget all that history, but with yourself, where did the
Speaker 1: square mesh idea come from?
Speaker 2: It? It came, do you mean? For me? For me,
Speaker 2: without any doubt, it just came with the amount of
Speaker 2: thinking that I was doing during my earlier years in
Speaker 2: the lab about the design of trolls. So my remit
Speaker 2: was to improve troll design, to make it more economical,
Speaker 2: to make it more efficient for the fishing fishermen. And
Speaker 2: it was just the thinking that I was doing about
Speaker 2: the opening of meshes, or the lack of opening in
Speaker 2: a lot of cases, and the retention of juvenile fish,
Speaker 2: and thinking how can I open up the mesh, and
Speaker 2: just fiddling about with little bits of netting at home,
Speaker 2: in the marine lab, in my office, all over the
Speaker 2: bloody place. I mean, people in the family were sick
Speaker 2: of me fiddling about with bitsinet because I was determined
Speaker 2: how do I do this? And just turning diamond mesh
Speaker 2: on the square How simple could that be? And as
Speaker 2: I mentioned earlier, looking at hexagonal mesh as well, but
Speaker 2: that was a non starter because of the complication of
Speaker 2: repairing it. But it started with me. Now it's interesting
Speaker 2: because and again this is working against my desire to
Speaker 2: have discovered square metch, which I didn't. But the first
Speaker 2: trip that I had in a gold Seeker, James Calder,
Speaker 2: a Bucky fisherman ex fisherman who was skipper of the
Speaker 2: gold Seeker and the crew watched the video. As I
Speaker 2: was flying the RCTV, I would control it to fly
Speaker 2: around the cod end and the first time that they
Speaker 2: saw the squaremish cought end, they were flabbergasted and James
Speaker 2: immediately almost immediately said to me. He said, Jack, that's
Speaker 2: something that must go into legislation to let more juvenile
Speaker 2: fish escape. And we got talking about it afterwards, and
Speaker 2: there was a lot of discussion, and James described to
Speaker 2: me that square mesh had been used before, and I thought, oh, no,
Speaker 2: I'm blown out of the water. Haven't discovered squaremish. And
Speaker 2: what it was was he himself had actually used squaremish
Speaker 2: behind the foot rope of the troll where they were
Speaker 2: fishing over shell ground or stony ground. The shells and
Speaker 2: the stone would drop through the very large square meshes
Speaker 2: that they would use, and it would just be one
Speaker 2: or two or three rows, and then the diamond mesh
Speaker 2: would be attached to the back end of that, so
Speaker 2: the stones and the shells would come over the foot rope,
Speaker 2: fall through the square mesh and not be caught in
Speaker 2: the net obviously, because of course they knew that if
Speaker 2: the stones and shellfish got back to the court entend,
Speaker 2: it would destroy their catch. It would completely destroy the
Speaker 2: quality of the fish and the nephrops, the prawns that
Speaker 2: they were fishing. So there you go. He told me that,
Speaker 2: you know, square mesh had been used in another application
Speaker 2: which was brilliant, and it adds to the whole history
Speaker 2: of the Squaremish story.
Speaker 1: And obviously lots of what you're saying, it all makes
Speaker 1: practical sense. Why did it make scientific sense?
Speaker 2: Well, it made shine of sense because the now I
Speaker 2: need to get a little bit technical here and try
Speaker 2: and describe graphs. Each each time we towed the content,
Speaker 2: we would capture the juvenile fish that came out of
Speaker 2: the content, so we knew what had escaped and what
Speaker 2: had been retained in the content, and we could build
Speaker 2: a graph which displayed fish length, you know, starting at zero, five, ten, fifteen,
Speaker 2: twenty centimeters, thirty centimeters and so on on the bottom
Speaker 2: of the graph, and then on the on the vertical
Speaker 2: axis of the graph, you would have the proportion retained.
Speaker 2: So that was simply comparing what it has had escaped
Speaker 2: at each size of fish against what it'd been retained
Speaker 2: in the content. So you built a picture of retain
Speaker 2: against escapes. And that graph usually pretty much always followed
Speaker 2: an esh shaped curve, what's called an ogive in the trades.
Speaker 2: So it was an ish shaped curve, so that when
Speaker 2: you got up to say forty centimeters, it would be
Speaker 2: at one hundred percent retention of forty centimeter fish, whereas
Speaker 2: if you went down to the juvenile fish size, let's
Speaker 2: say fifteen centimeters, you would be further down the ogive
Speaker 2: curve to a position that would suggest at fifteen centimeters
Speaker 2: you had retained twenty percent of the juveniles and eighty
Speaker 2: percent of them had escaped. Now, for a diamond mesh,
Speaker 2: cod end of the sizes that I was experimenting with,
Speaker 2: the ogive was very flat, usually very flat, so that
Speaker 2: even at the juvenile fish sizes of you know, ten, eleven, twelve, thirty, forty, fifteen, sixteen,
Speaker 2: seventeen centimeters, the retained percentage could be as high as
Speaker 2: thirty forty fifty percent. Still, now here's the croux. When
Speaker 2: we used the square mesh. Firstly, the ogive was always steeper.
Speaker 2: In other words, the cutoff between retaining juveniles and retaining
Speaker 2: marketable species gave a much steeper ogive, so that you
Speaker 2: found when you went down to fifteen centimeter size of
Speaker 2: Haddacker whiting, let's say, there was zero retention of that
Speaker 2: size of fish, meaning all the juveniles of that side
Speaker 2: size had escaped from the cotted. Now, because because the
Speaker 2: ogive was much steeper, and because there was more of
Speaker 2: a discernible cutoff between retained juveniles or shall I say,
Speaker 2: escaped juveniles, as opposed to retained marketable fish, you were
Speaker 2: ending up with more marketable fish at the equivalent size
Speaker 2: of square mesh compared to diamond mesh. So for an
Speaker 2: eighty milimeter square mesh, which was equivalent roughly to a
Speaker 2: ninety milimeter diamond mesh, sometimes a bit more actually, but
Speaker 2: the od jive, the ogive for the diamond mesh would
Speaker 2: be very shallow, and the ogive for the square mesh
Speaker 2: would be quite steep, So the cutoff could be manipulated
Speaker 2: in a way with the mesh size to give you
Speaker 2: a cutoff point for the minimum size of fish that
Speaker 2: was required by law to be retained. And at that
Speaker 2: time for haddock it was, as I recall, it was
Speaker 2: twenty seven centimeters. So for the eighty millimeter square I
Speaker 2: was getting pretty near most of the juvenile escaping out
Speaker 2: of the square mesh. But because it was a steeper ogive,
Speaker 2: I was getting more more marketable fish. And that was
Speaker 2: the incredible thing about it.
Speaker 1: The other incredible thing that I would ask you, Jacket,
Speaker 1: why was it controversial? This made common sense.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, yeah, I mean, well okay, I of course
Speaker 2: I wouldn't call it controversial because I don't think anything
Speaker 2: that is designed to improve conservation controversial. In my mind,
Speaker 2: it's not controversial, but it was controversial. Yeah, But to
Speaker 2: many people it was controversial. And I used to say
Speaker 2: to them, why is it controversial? Do you not want
Speaker 2: to improve the escape of juvenile fish? They would answer yes,
Speaker 2: of course we do. And I said, well, you know
Speaker 2: why is it controversial?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 2: Well, it's because it's so different. And I say, well,
Speaker 2: if the fishing industry accept it, then it's not controversial.
Speaker 2: Have you spoken to any fishermen that are against it
Speaker 2: completely and utterly? No, I haven't. Well I hadn't either,
Speaker 2: because most of the fishermen that I spoke to who
Speaker 2: I showed the movie to, the underwater video showed the
Speaker 2: data to convinced all the skippers that I went away
Speaker 2: in the commercial charters with, every single one of them,
Speaker 2: were convinced totally that it worked and that it showed
Speaker 2: the attributes that I'm discussing in terms of retaining more
Speaker 2: marketable at certain sizes, letting much more juvenile, many more
Speaker 2: juveniles escape, et cetera, et cetera. So I could to
Speaker 2: this day, I cannot understand why people thought it to
Speaker 2: be controversial. In fact, many many of those people thought
Speaker 2: it's so controversial that they tried to stop it going
Speaker 2: into legislation. Now I'm talking about, you know, the odd
Speaker 2: scientist and the odd civil servant. Now, the fishing industry
Speaker 2: came into play, and I've described meetings I had with
Speaker 2: Willie Hay and all the rest of it. When they
Speaker 2: went back to the civil servants, they said, well, you know,
Speaker 2: we want the square mesh. And the civil servants said, yes,
Speaker 2: but you know, aren't their problems of strength and so
Speaker 2: on and so forth. Yes, but that's all been solved
Speaker 2: by the Marine Lab. The Marine lap has done strength tests.
Speaker 2: They've devised means of necessarily strengthening up the salvages of
Speaker 2: the square mesh, running ropes along the mesh to ensure
Speaker 2: that it was strong enough to lift caught ins of
Speaker 2: fish aboard, et cetera, et cetera. So that's all been solved.
Speaker 2: So why why is it still controversial in your mind?
Speaker 2: And gradually the fishing industry itself persuaded the legislators to
Speaker 2: accept that the industry itself didn't find it controversial that
Speaker 2: they were quite happy with it because they could see
Speaker 2: they could see the benefit of its introduction in terms
Speaker 2: of letting more juveniles escape, letting the babies, the baby's escape,
Speaker 2: and it became the mantra.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and if I could ask you, Joe for a moment,
Speaker 1: to take your scientist start off and just give us
Speaker 1: our listeners are insane because obviously, as a scientists, you're
Speaker 1: going on what we described earlier, dirty fishing, smelly fishing boats.
Speaker 1: What was your experiences like going to see any of
Speaker 1: the practical problems when you were there, if there were
Speaker 1: gear failures, bad weather, you must have some memories that well.
Speaker 2: Well, absolutely, there are a lot of memories. I mean,
Speaker 2: the predominant memory for me has always been just how good,
Speaker 2: how nice the fishermen were, the skippers and their crews were,
Speaker 2: and also how how nice the boats were. The boats
Speaker 2: weren't smelly, dirty, The boats were some of the finest,
Speaker 2: cleanest vessels I've ever been on. Because fishermen are proud
Speaker 2: of their ships, they're proud of their vessels, they're proud
Speaker 2: of what they do, and that showed through an abundance
Speaker 2: to me in every single boat that I went on. However,
Speaker 2: there were some funny incidences, and one of which I
Speaker 2: to this day dispute completely and utterly. However, with tongue
Speaker 2: in cheek, I have to add and Tom, I think
Speaker 2: one of one of your other guests, Tom from what
Speaker 2: you called catch Cam, his Tom Rossiter. He relates this
Speaker 2: story because he was told it by James May. Jim May,
Speaker 2: the skipper of Harvest Reaper. Well, Jim, as you know,
Speaker 2: was the first boat that I went away on and
Speaker 2: and we did a fantastic trip. That was a great trip,
Speaker 2: and I went on many trips with Jim May. However,
Speaker 2: on one of the trips I had a lot of
Speaker 2: changing of cod ends and extension pieces, because not only
Speaker 2: was I looking at the square mesh, but I was
Speaker 2: looking at the idea of long and short extensions and
Speaker 2: full cought ends and squaremish cought ends and so on.
Speaker 2: And Jim and I, I mean I always got involved
Speaker 2: in the practical side of changing the gear over whinning
Speaker 2: if I could. And with Jim, he enjoyed working on
Speaker 2: the deck with me. So while the crew were sorting
Speaker 2: the catch, Jim and I would change the cod end
Speaker 2: or the extension piece or whatever.
Speaker 1: It was.
Speaker 2: So Jim and I are chatting away and having a
Speaker 2: grand old time. It's a lovely day off Fraser Bragh
Speaker 2: and the sun was shining, and we do our job
Speaker 2: of attaching a new a different extension to the extension
Speaker 2: of the troll that was about to be shot again
Speaker 2: once the crew had sorted the fish out, so the
Speaker 2: net is shot away, so the core end goes over
Speaker 2: first Jim and then the extension and nothing behind it.
Speaker 2: We hadn't attached the extension to the troll. We did
Speaker 2: attach the we did. We had attacked we'd attached the
Speaker 2: extension to another piece of extension that was lying on
Speaker 2: the deck. So James May shouts from the wheelhouse. He said,
Speaker 2: Jack Robertson, you haven attached it in the right place.
Speaker 2: I said, no, no, it's your fault. Anyway, long story short,
Speaker 2: we've always had a laugh over the years about it,
Speaker 2: Jim and the and and Jim related that to Tom
Speaker 2: Rossiter some years.
Speaker 1: Did you ever did you ever get it back? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Of course, yeah, we did, of course, because you know
Speaker 2: it was it was poly ethylene, so it was floaty
Speaker 2: and we just turned around and picked it up. But
Speaker 2: there was James and I James and I the experiment,
Speaker 2: you know, it was, it was. It was not helped
Speaker 2: by not attaching it correctly. And I I can't I
Speaker 2: can't tell you need a few pints in a pub
Speaker 2: or you know, to really appreciate the funny side of
Speaker 2: that story. I can't really tell it.
Speaker 1: That would be a cracker, that story.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, but you know that that that was great. But
Speaker 2: there were there were lots of stories with with all
Speaker 2: the guys, really, but the overriding.
Speaker 1: Have been a few suspectious of you.
Speaker 2: Well I suppose I suppose there were. But I'll tell
Speaker 2: you what, Jim, I I had a neat way of
Speaker 2: dealing with that. And the neat way, well, there's suspicionly
Speaker 2: high falutin scientists. I wasn't a high faluting scientist at all.
Speaker 2: I was just a practical man that was just interested
Speaker 2: in helping the industry out, you know. And they were
Speaker 2: all flabbergasted when I went down to the deck if
Speaker 2: there was any damage to the net. I did it
Speaker 2: in the early days, but not in the latter days
Speaker 2: on the bigger boats like the Kila and so forth.
Speaker 2: But when I was on the likes of the Harvest
Speaker 2: Reaper and a few other boats, smaller boats in the
Speaker 2: kind of sixty five foot class like the Idle Voice
Speaker 2: from Fraserberg as well. I used to help out if
Speaker 2: the crew were sorting the fish. For me, I would
Speaker 2: help out with a bit of repair if there was
Speaker 2: any damage to the net. Now I learned to repair nets.
Speaker 2: Would you believe that the Fishermen's Traller School in Aberdeen
Speaker 2: in nineteen seventy two and Alec Duffy was the ex
Speaker 2: Aberdeen skipper who ran that school, and he ran fabulous
Speaker 2: courses for young fishermen starting out in their careers. For
Speaker 2: there are various courses, you know, a week or three
Speaker 2: weeks or sometimes a month, et cetera. Net mending and
Speaker 2: navigation and all that kind of stuff you know for
Speaker 2: the apprentice fishermen. And when I joined the lab, the
Speaker 2: first thing that I asked the then leader of the
Speaker 2: fish capture group, John Foster, I said, look, I'd like
Speaker 2: to I'd like to learn how to mend. He said
Speaker 2: why would you want to do that, Jack, and said, well,
Speaker 2: you know our businesses nets, we need to know them
Speaker 2: inside out. So I went on a course to learn
Speaker 2: how to mend and I used that on the fishing
Speaker 2: boats in the early days. You know, I'd go down
Speaker 2: the day and the guys would say, did look at me?
Speaker 2: In amazement? Where are the earth did you learn how
Speaker 2: to mean? I said, well, I went to fisherman's supprentice school.
Speaker 2: Gee was And I think that opened their eyes. It really,
Speaker 2: it really did, Jim, because I was just down there
Speaker 2: with some doing it with them, and I think there
Speaker 2: were obviously they were impressed, but they were also I
Speaker 2: think they were just pleased. Well one of us, you're
Speaker 2: one of us, Yeah exactly. Yeah, yeah you're not. You're
Speaker 2: not above USh, You're you're you're down on the deck
Speaker 2: getting dirty with us.
Speaker 1: Yeah. No, that's brilliant. Well done you as well. There
Speaker 1: must have been some There must have been in your
Speaker 1: time as well. There must have been some real personalities
Speaker 1: on board. We real characters.
Speaker 2: Oh, there were there were, And well there's some stories
Speaker 2: I can't relate here, Jim, unfortunately.
Speaker 1: Some very unless you're back in the pub.
Speaker 2: Well yeah it would would. Yeah, we'd have to be
Speaker 2: in the pub for those with with no recording devices.
Speaker 2: But yes, I I I can't relate them. But yeah,
Speaker 2: there were there were tremendous characters. Every one of them
Speaker 2: were characters in their own way, and some of them
Speaker 2: have gone on to great things. I mean, you know,
Speaker 2: and with Tom Tom Harkas, his nephew was on board,
Speaker 2: Ian Harkas that you know very well, and and Lee
Speaker 2: Grot they went off and got bought their own boat.
Speaker 2: They all skier. And that's that's the thing that I
Speaker 2: observed a lot. And I was so delighted in a
Speaker 2: way to see that that crewman skippers would bring crewman
Speaker 2: on and encourage them to go off and get their
Speaker 2: own boats, et cetera. And Ian and and Lee went
Speaker 2: on and made great success of the all skier. Lee
Speaker 2: eventually took his his deep sea captain's ticket, didn't he.
Speaker 2: And I understand he's now up in Orkney. Yeah right, okay,
Speaker 2: so all skippering up there. So yeah, and.
Speaker 1: He's got a really fantastic job.
Speaker 2: Oh but and think about Tom's sons as well, I
Speaker 2: mean Peter. I understand that Peter's still fishing and still
Speaker 2: doing great things.
Speaker 1: They've built the boat Jack. They've got a boat they
Speaker 1: call it the West of Fiord, but if you go
Speaker 1: the West Fiord, but if they built it was built
Speaker 1: in Denmark. If you break that down really basically, and
Speaker 1: I'm sure you'll remember that day as we Tom himself
Speaker 1: west refiord an hour speak would be the Westry first.
Speaker 2: The Westry first, Yeah yeah, yeah, oh yeah. And names
Speaker 2: of boats are so important to them and that that
Speaker 2: family and to Tom.
Speaker 1: And listen, I'll tell you sorry, I'll just before all
Speaker 1: I was going to say on that one, Jack is
Speaker 1: when you when I think, I mean to Tom, Tom
Speaker 1: as we all know him, I would put him in
Speaker 1: top list as far as one of my closest friends,
Speaker 1: go back a long long time with them. But and
Speaker 1: this is what I often think back in the days
Speaker 1: when you were involved in the Square mesh and that's yeah,
Speaker 1: that was a Yes, he was a successful fisherman, but
Speaker 1: he had vision and he had for the future. And
Speaker 1: when you think of it, you ask a question. Yes,
Speaker 1: both Paul Peter is on board. But their son, so
Speaker 1: you could say Tom and Liz's grandsons they're on boarded
Speaker 1: as well. So when they hear the other dreaded word,
Speaker 1: he committed to the fishing like sustainability and looking at
Speaker 1: the future. That's why they're looking the future. I want
Speaker 1: it to be sustainable, Jack, and I give you ten
Speaker 1: the No. Twenty out of ten because you recognize that
Speaker 1: and what they're doing. But it's not just to make
Speaker 1: more money. Their sons and grandsons are coming through.
Speaker 2: Now, that's why I did it. And you know, all
Speaker 2: the fishing communities around Scotland, Bucky and Fezerberund, peter Head
Speaker 2: and so forth have been decimated, losty Mouth, decimated. Orkney's
Speaker 2: standing firm and they're standing firm because of the type
Speaker 2: of skipper that Tom harkass is and his sons, and
Speaker 2: I'm amazed and and Ian Harkis as well. You know,
Speaker 2: good luck to them. Keep going, keep pushing, keep doing it.
Speaker 2: But you've got to really unfold around selectivity of the
Speaker 2: fishing gear. But but the legislator have got to stop
Speaker 2: doing this continual increasing of square mesh size and the
Speaker 2: fishing industry losing marketable fish as a consequence. The industry
Speaker 2: have got to fight harder against the legislators to get
Speaker 2: their point across that yes, they want conservation and they
Speaker 2: want the juvenile fish to escape, but they must retain
Speaker 2: all of the marketable fish that enter the troll on
Speaker 2: a Halby Hall basis, because if they don't, they're going
Speaker 2: to have to end up doing more halls, more time
Speaker 2: at sea, more fuel consumption and so on. It's a
Speaker 2: fisious circle, but it's got to happen. Jim, if I may,
Speaker 2: can I just go back to the west of Jord.
Speaker 2: You know the meaning of the name. And I was
Speaker 2: delighted when I asked Tom Harkas the first time that
Speaker 2: I was away on the Kila where the name came from.
Speaker 2: He said that it was the Norwegian for a female
Speaker 2: cod and I thought, that is a fantastic name for
Speaker 2: a boat. Unbelievably good named for a boat. I very
Speaker 2: nearly I got a yacht many years ago, which I
Speaker 2: no longer have, but I very nearly called it Kila
Speaker 2: because I was so impressed by that name. But I didn't.
Speaker 2: I named it after the dog instead, Finn.
Speaker 1: But there you go.
Speaker 2: But oh, Jim, uh, you know, the industry have got
Speaker 2: to fight hard because they're they're being inundated by closed
Speaker 2: areas and so on and quatas and it just becomes
Speaker 2: mind boggling. I had. I had a quick look the
Speaker 2: other day at Scotland's future catching policy Selectivity Proposals Consultation
Speaker 2: from the Government twenty twenty six, which actually closed in
Speaker 2: just the consultation closed just recently, and I was I
Speaker 2: was flabbergasted, but also delighted to see that there is
Speaker 2: a proposal from the government that the full square mesh
Speaker 2: cort end be introduced into certain fisheries. So that was
Speaker 2: what I started off with, the full cot end with
Speaker 2: square meshes all the way around the court end, which
Speaker 2: is by far the best for release in juvenile had
Speaker 2: it cought and waiting, isn't Isn't that a credible incredible
Speaker 2: how things go around?
Speaker 1: It is? It is, And I'm not trying to make
Speaker 1: it turn that negative. But when you say about just
Speaker 1: say we were to say about how things are done now,
Speaker 1: I'll reiterate conversation for fairness to the guy will not
Speaker 1: mention his name, but I'm on scrubs their pier. A
Speaker 1: good friend of mine, Skipper, is on the key with me,
Speaker 1: just been landing his fish, and he had a letter
Speaker 1: in his hand, and this letter was from the Department
Speaker 1: mean directory with his basically the dos and don'ts, what
Speaker 1: he had to do, regulations and all he had that
Speaker 1: here to and he says to me, Jim, he says,
Speaker 1: I'm reading this letter and it's clearly shows me that
Speaker 1: this was done by somebody that has never been in
Speaker 1: a fishing boat in their lives.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely, it's it's it's the same now
Speaker 2: as it was in my time. It was the lab.
Speaker 2: And that's that's why words fail me, actually, that it
Speaker 2: just carries on. I think one of the big problems
Speaker 2: is always that the scientists are potentially not very good
Speaker 2: at making their argument with the civil servants sitting behind
Speaker 2: the desk. I might be wrong in that, and certainly
Speaker 2: a lot of the scientists would take issue with that
Speaker 2: with me, But I found with all my selectivity work,
Speaker 2: you had to you really had to get a hold
Speaker 2: of them and set them down and show them the video,
Speaker 2: show them the data, talk it through, talk about the
Speaker 2: practical side of it, because they really have no conception
Speaker 2: at all, no conception. But it's worrying to hear that
Speaker 2: it's the same as it always was. But I would
Speaker 2: just reiterate to the fishing industry spend more time with
Speaker 2: the legislators. I mean, they're spending time with the scientific
Speaker 2: community and science and industry partnerships and all the rest
Speaker 2: of it, and that's all to the good, but you
Speaker 2: need to go further than that, you need to you
Speaker 2: need to shit the desks in Edinburgh, sit in the
Speaker 2: civil servants desks and talk to them a lot, a lot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, But unfortunately it seems to be becoming the way
Speaker 1: and all industries now and all walks of life. It
Speaker 1: just seems that people sitting on desks and they're just
Speaker 1: all the legislation and anybody and everybody.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't yeah, yeah, absolutely yeah.
Speaker 1: Almost now summed up would use it? Did square mesh
Speaker 1: help save fist stocks? What lesson still matters today?
Speaker 2: Well, definitely it saved the hurrican waiting because if you're Amber,
Speaker 2: in the early nineties nineteen nineties, the hurrican whiting stocks
Speaker 2: had been going down quite markedly and there was real
Speaker 2: concern in the industry. And if you look at the
Speaker 2: spawning stock biomass for the ten years following the introduction
Speaker 2: of square mesh, the spawning stock biomasses of hardock in
Speaker 2: particular and whiting as well started to rise very markedly.
Speaker 2: It's not entirely as clear nowadays as it might have
Speaker 2: been then, but definitely it helped hurrican whiting. It's all
Speaker 2: about the hurrican whiting.
Speaker 1: Do you think the fishing industry receives enough recognition for
Speaker 1: the conservation work it has contributed to over the years.
Speaker 2: Oh probably not. Actually, I think that there wasn't enough
Speaker 2: recognition given to anyone gym, to the fishing industry, or
Speaker 2: to scientists, although I think I was reading this. No,
Speaker 2: it's a very difficult question that I mean, in a sense,
Speaker 2: we don't want recognition. All we want is to save
Speaker 2: the babyfish and to increase the stock sizes, and that
Speaker 2: was my driving force all the time, and it was
Speaker 2: with the skippers as well. But no, I think that
Speaker 2: there was never an occasion at any meetings with the
Speaker 2: senior scientists and the fishing industry where the senior scientists
Speaker 2: would congratulate the industry for what they had done in
Speaker 2: the introduction of the squirmish panel or even taking part
Speaker 2: in the trials that they did. I mean, I recognized
Speaker 2: the skippers and I gave them the thanks that they
Speaker 2: deserved all the time. But no, they just didn't receive
Speaker 2: the recognition, either in the press or or or or
Speaker 2: anywhere else. There are many of those skippers who who
Speaker 2: should have been recognized for going above and beyond in
Speaker 2: the introduction of the square mesh that we were never
Speaker 2: were never recognized. I'm not sure where you're coming from, Jim.
Speaker 2: I mean, are you suggesting that they should have been
Speaker 2: given civil recognition you know, a war? No, not that, no, no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 2: just just the fact that they had they had taken
Speaker 2: part and done it all. I think I think all
Speaker 2: the recognition. They're all recognized in all of the scientific
Speaker 2: papers that I produced, and indeed that other people have produced.
Speaker 2: But but you know, that doesn't go to a wide audience.
Speaker 2: And in the Earth early days, sometimes the fishing news
Speaker 2: would pick up on some of the trials that were done,
Speaker 2: and you know, the story would be told of what
Speaker 2: happened on the trial, and the skipper would be interviewed
Speaker 2: and give some comments. I suppose in a sense that
Speaker 2: was recognition of the fact that they were involved and
Speaker 2: so on. But no, I don't think anyone got enough
Speaker 2: recognition for what they did. It was it's it was
Speaker 2: a huge, huge thing of huge historical significance, the introduction
Speaker 2: of the square mesh and for that matter, the limiting
Speaker 2: of the number of messures on the cod end round
Speaker 2: as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and do you think what the dameser the losing
Speaker 1: cooperation between science and the industry.
Speaker 2: Oh gosh, Jim, do you know, I think I'm so
Speaker 2: far removed from it nowadays that I can't really comment
Speaker 2: on that to any great depth, other other than saying
Speaker 2: that it appears to me that there is still cooperation
Speaker 2: between the industry. Just reading I picked up in the
Speaker 2: Fishing News just recently, I took a subscription out. I
Speaker 2: haven't had one for many a long year, and I
Speaker 2: got interested enough, and what I'm reading in the in
Speaker 2: the Fishing News suggests that there is still cooperation. But
Speaker 2: my fear is that as more of the scientific community
Speaker 2: is reduced by the government, which it apparently seems to
Speaker 2: be doing in the likes of the Marine Lab in Aberdeen.
Speaker 2: As they're reducing, there'll be perhaps less opportunity to get
Speaker 2: involved with and cooperate with the between the industry and scientists.
Speaker 2: But I'm sorry, Jen, I find'gult be in answering that, really,
Speaker 2: I feel enough.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you a quote it has given me in
Speaker 1: a podcast and by a guy I'm sure I'm almost
Speaker 1: positive you know very well you would have I'm sure
Speaker 1: you'd even even work in the lab with him. And
Speaker 1: what he reckoned was the biggest mistake made was putting
Speaker 1: a value on quota and license. Yes, yes, And he said,
Speaker 1: and his view was it was the end almost to
Speaker 1: the stage where he was at. Probably, well certainly I
Speaker 1: was at. We've all been at. Was young guys ambition
Speaker 1: was to be a fisherman and then to be skipper
Speaker 1: and eventually to have their own boat. And they said
Speaker 1: putting a value monetary value on the quota and the
Speaker 1: lycis that is now impossible. Unlets it's a fan or
Speaker 1: family of an owner, a fishing boat owner, that is impossible.
Speaker 1: Well you know that said that?
Speaker 2: Who is that?
Speaker 1: Dave McKay.
Speaker 2: Sorry Ian McKay, Oh, sorry, Dave mckaye, I'm miss misheard that,
Speaker 2: Dave McKay. Dave McKay is absolutely correct. Dave comes from
Speaker 2: a fishing family background as well. And and and Dave,
Speaker 2: Dave would have been horrified as I was with with
Speaker 2: the the putting a price on the quota. I always
Speaker 2: remember speaking to a skipper that I hadn't seen for
Speaker 2: quite a long time, how are you getting on and
Speaker 2: how's the fishing going? And he said, he says, I
Speaker 2: don't really know. Jack, He said, I'm not fishing. Oh,
Speaker 2: I said, why why aren't you fishing? Have you retired
Speaker 2: or come out of it or whatever. No, no, he said,
Speaker 2: I'm a slipper. Skipper. Now you know what that means, Jim.
Speaker 2: He's sitting in the house with his slippers on, and
Speaker 2: he's rented out his quota to other fishermen. So he's
Speaker 2: sitting at home, not fishing, not doing anything other than
Speaker 2: you know, taking cruises around the world. And it's wrong.
Speaker 2: It's wrong that somebody should hold quota in that manner
Speaker 2: that can be sold at very high cost to fishermen
Speaker 2: that are trying to get into the industry. It's wrong
Speaker 2: and it needs to stop.
Speaker 1: One hundred percent.
Speaker 3: And to the point where I was talking to a
Speaker 3: guy Irish and he was saying there he said, obviously
Speaker 3: they are still it was Southern Ireland, not Northern Ireland,
Speaker 3: and obviously they're still in the EU. And the way
Speaker 3: he described it, they were, you know, it was to
Speaker 3: do with the deathimation, the mark quote and how they've
Speaker 3: been treated by it. But he says, it's not come
Speaker 3: from Brussels, it's come from Dutch billionaires. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: that's who's got the powet.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, I don't know any of the insine outs.
Speaker 2: But was it not the case a few years ago
Speaker 2: that there was a court case that was trying to
Speaker 2: stop this quota selling. I don't know anyway, it needs,
Speaker 2: it needs the government to to actually resolve it and
Speaker 2: take the quarta back for the fishermen rather than these people.
Speaker 2: It's it's shocking. It's absolutely shocking.
Speaker 1: It is it is. I Finally, when history looks back
Speaker 1: at square based panel development, what do you hope people
Speaker 1: understand about the work that was done in Aberdeen?
Speaker 2: Well, I just hope they see that for the period
Speaker 2: there was a need for a change in the way
Speaker 2: that we look at selectivity and a desperate need to
Speaker 2: save the juvenile fish as there had been for one
Speaker 2: hundred years before. Back to Holt in eighteen ninety five,
Speaker 2: back to Gelder in nineteen twenty eight, and so on.
Speaker 2: It just went. It was going on and on and on,
Speaker 2: and something needed to change. And I hope people might
Speaker 2: look back and say, well, wow, you know that was
Speaker 2: a big change and it was a good change and
Speaker 2: it helped. And let's hope that now the fishing industry
Speaker 2: into the future grasp it. The whole notion of making
Speaker 2: gears more selective, as long as they're practical, as long
Speaker 2: as as long as they can be handled well on
Speaker 2: the fishing boat, and use them to their benefit, use
Speaker 2: them to the benefit of the fishing industry, because you know,
Speaker 2: I go back to the old thing, that the point
Speaker 2: that I made in the early nineteen eighties. It's a
Speaker 2: food industry, it's fresh food, it's a food industry. We
Speaker 2: can't keep destroying juvenile fish the way that we've been
Speaker 2: doing over the years. We've got to let them grow
Speaker 2: to spawn and produce bigger stocks to keep the industry going.
Speaker 2: Jobs in the industry are very important as well. Jimmy Way,
Speaker 2: you remember Scotland. I don't know how many boats were
Speaker 2: around the ports in Scotland, but it's nothing like it
Speaker 2: used to be.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, we'll just go ruin the buddy first, Jack, I
Speaker 1: mean there's hardly a boat and Bucky, you got Lossy Mouth,
Speaker 1: no boats and lots as a marina, Burghead, little little bit.
Speaker 1: Then you come round Helmsville, the village I'm from, there's
Speaker 1: no whitefish boats, lives, there no boats. There's one WUK
Speaker 1: registered whitefish boat now Jack and that's the boy Andrew Woow.
Speaker 1: When you think when you think my younger days, they
Speaker 1: would have been thirty or forty.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'd have.
Speaker 1: To see them all the way around. It's really sad.
Speaker 2: It's sad. But you know, I suppose you've got to
Speaker 2: get somebody on your your podcast, the people with the
Speaker 2: power who can change all that, you know, the administrators
Speaker 2: or the government officials, or the or the MP's, and
Speaker 2: get a plan to bring all that back. But well,
Speaker 2: oh dear, we can end up crying here.
Speaker 1: Jim, what would you going back from that? What would
Speaker 1: you like younger fishermen and scientists to understand.
Speaker 2: Just work for each other, and in particular the scientific community.
Speaker 2: Get the mindset that you are working to for the industry,
Speaker 2: to make it better, to improve fish stocks, to get
Speaker 2: more fish in the sea by using more selective gears.
Speaker 2: Forget about all the closed areas and the quotes and
Speaker 2: so forth. Just get into selectivity in a big way
Speaker 2: going forward. I would say that to young fishermen in particular,
Speaker 2: because youngsters these days can visualize better gear design and
Speaker 2: so forth, and just just do however difficult it seems,
Speaker 2: there's always a way with selectivity and fishing gear to
Speaker 2: make it manageable. And handleable on the vessel, and that's
Speaker 2: what you need, and that's what the scientists need to
Speaker 2: understand to give you. And I don't know, Jim, I
Speaker 2: get very uptight about the need for much more cooperation
Speaker 2: between the two. We had fantastic cooperation in the nineteen
Speaker 2: eighties up to the introduction of the Squirmish panel, and
Speaker 2: that was a very good time.
Speaker 1: What it's like.
Speaker 2: Bear in mind, Jim, that I left the Lab in
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety five. Since when I've not been involved with
Speaker 2: industry at all. So from nineteen nineteen eighty one to date,
Speaker 2: it's forty five years ago that I started experimenting with
Speaker 2: the square mesh. It's unbelieved able to think on it
Speaker 2: that way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, we'll have a celebration for its fiftieth anniversary.
Speaker 2: Let's do might need to have one earlier than that.
Speaker 1: We'll get Tom Harks along.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, We've got all the skippers along. That'll be
Speaker 2: some sh.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, have you online presence we're going to listeners fully Yeah.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, I'm not on social media or or anything. No, well,
Speaker 2: actually that's not true. I'm on Facebook, but it's just
Speaker 2: family and close friends, so I know I don't have
Speaker 2: any any means of being contacted.
Speaker 1: I would say, that's giving you a happy, live well answer.
Speaker 1: I'm just going to fold up. But I would honestly
Speaker 1: like to thank you. My goodness, Jack, You're going to
Speaker 1: good down in history. I have no question of that.
Speaker 1: Thank you very much.
Speaker 2: I hope it's in a good way.
Speaker 1: It's in a very positive way.
Speaker 2: It's well, thanks, Jim. I do appreciate you know. I
Speaker 2: love to talk about square mesh selectivity and saving the babies.
Speaker 2: That's what it's all about. Thank you ever so much.
Speaker 1: I'm sure it was your words to me on the
Speaker 1: pier one night back in the eighties. Survive and thrive, Yes,
Speaker 1: survive and thrive.