Poor porbeagles.

[Finless]

Following the earlier post on Porbeagles and the greedy Mr Ellis I decided to see if I could find any information on the annual Porbeagle catch in the UK.

A very kind gentleman (Iain) from DEFRA sent me an extract from their database - from which I have shown a truncated version below. The following disclaimer is as requested by Iain when I asked his permission to show the info.

Bryan, No problem as long as you are clear about what it is - landings into English ports by UK vessels (ie Foreign vessels excluded, landings in Wales, NI & Scotland excluded)


Sum of Liveweight (MT)
Port of Landing      Grand Total MT
APPLEDORE                       2.2
HELFORD RIVER                  0.3
MEVAGISSEY                      0.3
NEWLYN                          13.2
PADSTOW                        2.6
RIVER FAL - FALMOUTH      0.1
WHITBY                            0.1
                                  ----------
Grand Total             18.6

The above data is from 01/01/03-08/12/03. Also, I do not know if any of the above fishing was targetted at Porbeagles or whether they were a "bye catch"?

I have not found any information on the total weight of Mr Ellis' catch, however, the heaviest individual caught was reported as being 60 kgs and he caught a total of 128 Porbeagles.

Of course, to get a proper perspective, figures for the rest of the UK and world wide would be useful - not to mention knowing how many are in the sea etc.

Seems like a lot of effort to prove so little.   Oh well.  

[Adrian Kelland]

MT - Metric Tonnes I assume.

It was probably a couple of tonnes, unless they were dog fish sized. A fair %age of the Newlyn catch.

Adrian

[John Gulliver]

Just as an example, if the average weight of Ellis' sharks was 30 kilos (i.e half the weight of the biggest fish), the total weight would be almost 4 tonnes.

[Finless]

Originally Posted by [b

Quote[/b] (John Gulliver @ Dec. 11 2003,11:28)]Just as an example, if the average weight of Ellis' sharks was 30 kilos (i.e half the weight of the biggest fish), the total weight would be almost 4 tonnes.

Using your guesstimate - that would mean Mr Ellis caught about 21.5% of the annual UK catch in 2 days.

Of course, the figures are not worth too much consideration as they compare a targeted catch against the annual by-catch from other fishing practices.

A better comparison would be the catch against actual stocks but I guess we will never know that figure - at least until it becomes nil   .

I think I will contact DEFRA again to find out what information I (we the public) am entitled to have access to. I was a little shocked when I phoned DEFRA first time - the switchboard put me straight through to someone who listened to my question and then started talking about database extracts and reports.

We will soon need quotas on every type of sea creature there is in order to protect them from over exploitation.

Maybe cannibalism should be allowed - that would solve an awful lot of the planets problems.

[Jaques Custard]

I believe that inpapua new guinee long pig is something of a delicacy

[oystercatcher]

Martin Ellis is a kind & well respected fisherman down here. The Porbeagle shark is a non-pressure stock species for which we can operate a sustainable long-line fishery. The amount that we land in comparison to the French boats that operate around British shores looking for porbeagle is a drop in the ocean. Martins earning his living honestly & providing supply for demand.

[Loneshark]

Martins earning his living honestly & providing supply for demand.[/size][/font][/quote]

Surely the supply and demand argument is a little like the chicken and egg argument?
Stopping one imapcts on the other. Perhaps there should be restrictions on selling shark products from the UK. To say that this species is not under threat begs the question "how do we know"?