Recent measures make little impact to save our bass: demand politicians do more!

The European Union’s own scientist state we need an 80% reduction in bass landings to prevent imminent stock collapse, yet early French statistics for the year to date show bass catches are down only 14% ! The temporary suspension of “pair trawling” announced in January was a start, but this was meant to reduce landings by 25% for the whole year. Given the ban is supposed to bring about this annual overall effect through only being in place from the New Year to the end of April, we should actually have been seeing around a three-quarters drop in catches right now. We reliably here the “pair trawlers” have been stoped, therefore it seems other forms of commercial bass fishing have increased. Given this, only a total ban on bass landings in this period it seems will effectively protect our pre-spawning bass shoals in the future.

The truth is that the ban on pair trawling is actually supposed to be just one of many measures to reduce bass catches, yet still it remains the only (and TEMPOARY) measure on commercial bass fishing announced to date. The noises coming from the EU meeting rooms suggest certain parties are seeking to block or delay measures. Clearly some don’t care about our bass, just their short term profits or political gains.

No doubt you are as incensed about all this as we are on the BASS blog team! Yet if we take a breath and consider the bigger picture, it is nowhere the time to use our rods as beanpoles and to take up golf instead. Discussions on reducing bass landings remain very much ongoing and what is more the majority of those involved in the process have heard our message and are on our side. So we ask you (again!) to direct your frustration towards the relevant EU and UK politicians and decision makers and (politely) express your feelings. Tell them of your anger that the measures to date (although a start) are wholly insufficient and that bass landings are barely reducing at a time our scientists state we must have an 80% reduction to prevent a catastrophic stock collapse. In a nutshell, demand the politicians and fisheries managers do more, soon.

We have said it here before: every single email helps to keep up the pressure. The greater the pressure, the greater the political will to move further towards the full 80% recommended bass landing reduction – though you can’t help but fear if truly meaningful changes doesn’t happen in fairly soon any measures will amount to an 80% reduction of nothing!

Those we urge you to urgently express your thoughts:

defra.helpline@defra.gsi.gov.uk (George Eustice – Fisheries Mininster);