Chinese Fishing Vesselss.

[Captain Kong]

I have just watched a Prog, on Russian TV. RT. Very Very Interesting, 10am to 11 am
It was about huge fishing fleets from China fishing off West Africa, millions of tons of fish being taken, then it goes to Las Palmas as that is part of the european Union for transhipment into europe and UK.
The ships are registered in Mongolia and other countries that have no Agreements with the rest of the world.
The West Africans are starving because there is no fish for them.
It showed the beach in Senegal, the surf boats loaded with a hundred at a time sailing off to Las Palmas for asylum in europe and UK. many die on the voyage.
They said the reason they all wanted to come to europe and the UK, is because if you can take all our fish then you can take all our people.
I had some friends who were on the beach on holiday in the Canaries and as they sat on the beach hundreds af African immigrants were pouring in off the surf boats and walking past them up the beach.
Then Spain sends them all to England.
These progs are never shown in UK, I WONDER WHY??
Cheers
Brian.

[j.sabourn]

A very plausible excuse Brian, suppose it does have a deal of truth in it. Shows how the world is going and yet people such as the Greens still rabbit on about climate change and how to tax people to change something they haven't a hope in hell of changing. The world as most see it now is run by big business, I get the impression that Europe just wants to be the biggest co-operative shop on the block. The U.S. is run by big business, and the poorer nations have been brainwashed by TV movies and such as to believe they have every right to take up residence in these countries. The sooner if ever we get some pollies with balls enough to stand up and say no, and properly enforce border control and not these tuppence halfpenny movies about such the better. It is time for another Churchill who at the very least would call a spade a spade. Cheers John Sabourn

[John Arton]

Brian
That area off West Africa has been overfished for years. I can remember back in the mid 70's coming up to there on a tanker. I went on watch at 2000 only to find that the Mate had put us on collision course with a huge Russian fishing fleet and I spent the next 4 hours dodging large stern trawlers and huge factory ships. They must have been decimating any fish stocks that were there, catching any and all types of fish.
If the Chinese are there now then somehow those fish stocks must have revived. I hold no truck with these foreign fleets decimating fish stocks in seas many miles from their own country, leaving nothing for the local fishermen.
rgds
JA

[John Pruden]

its all down to greed when is the food chain going to snap? our fishermen through some stupid rule by Europe have got to throw fish back even though they are dead. and yet outside the eu fishermen are stripping the seas of everything on mass there is only so many fish in the pond to start with yet some don't care? my son had a private viewing of the film captain Philips with his wife and interesting his wife felt sorry for the Somali people ? maybe she was looking at the pirates from a different angle than we do.jp

[Captain Kong]

The film about the Chinese Fishing West Africa was on again last night on RT.
It showed the nets dragging on the sea bed. They fish like our european masters. They drag the sea bed leaving it like a desert, they scrape everything off. nothing left. The feeding ground and breeding ground destroyed.So the fish cannot feed or breed.
They make over one Billion Dollars a year. , that is why the Africans are starving and as they said, If you take our fish to europe you can take our people So China is responsible for a lot of Immigration here.
.
I remember the Russian Fishing fleets off West Africa. Hundreds of them, Big Suction trawlers taking millions of tons a year turning it into fertilizer and cattle food. What a terrible waste.
It was like sailing down Broadway in the night, the whole sea lit up with hundreds of vessels. Tight squeese for a VLCC.
A sad old world.
Brian

[Louis the Amigo]

Hi Shipmates, The fisherman done the same to the herring stock in the U.K, it was said before the 1st world war, you could put an oar into any seawater around the coast, and catch a herring? but due to human greed what happen? the Chinese will find the same thing in west Africa none in the sea ....

[Captain Kong]

Hi Louis That is the european style of fishing, drag it along the ground. destroying it for future generations of fish.
The British way is to fish about six feet above the ground leaving the feeding and breeding ground intact. Then the EVIL europeans have banned us from fishing. Fleetwood, one of Britains Biggest fishing ports is now closed down. No Fishing by order of brussels.
Morecambe Bay and the Irish Sea is full of Belgian, Spanish and French Trawlers , taking all our stocks while making us scrap our fishing boats.
It is time we sent the RAF to bomb brussels, If we had an RAF.
Brian.

[Ivan Cloherty]

From what I remember of my deep sea trawling days (1950's) the last thing you drag along the seabed is your net, as even the otterboards would not clear all the obstructions and snagging your net on the bottom had one of two results (a) you lose your very expensive net (b) you lose your very expensive trawler by coming to a very sudden stop and heeling over with no chance of righting and probably losing all those on board; especially where we fished, Iceland, Bear Island and White sea. No survival suits then and even the summer months would see you gone in minutes. In those days the advice was try to swim and keep moving which in modern times science has proved this is contrary to what you should do as accelerates your demise by losing your internal warmth too quickly. My only observation on that is that anybody working on the deck of a trawler in the Arctic and near Arctic, has no body warmth.

As for trawling on the bottom, are the nets made of wire, if not could be a very expensive business even when hides are employed as diffusers outside the nets.

[robpage]

The current UK methods can be found here

http://www.seafoodscotland.org/Catch...-trawling.html

The Scallop dredge really does drag across the sea bed , causing massive damage

[happy daze john in oz]

Scallop dredging here in Port Philip bay was banned for a few years due to low stock levels. Now a small number of licenced vessels are back, but they have a problem, when the unload the catch there are not enough local people willing to work as shuckers. So now most of the catch is shipped to Thailand, shucked there and flown back to Oz.

As for calling a spade a spade, I think you will now find yopu may only refer to them as an ethnic group.