What went Wrong ?, where do we go from here?

[murf]

only one word comes to mind POLITICS

it has nothing to do with reality just politics

as a fresh water Aquaculturalist I tried everything to get a licence to sell by-catch eels, there was no way I was getting one and had to destroy all eels harvested the only reason I could come up with was that I could go and do something illegal and catch wild harvest eels

cheers Murf

[samson]

Okay i'll bite, if rec's are so hard done by how come they can catch at present probably more fish than you're average L1 operater without any RQ or SM and soon to be RRQ without any fee's or massive insurance costs shit L1 boys can't even take tuna, fisheries is making your average L1 pro a glorified rec with all the trimmings but with fee's attached, soon to be extinct the only way to stay in the fishery is to expand or die at present as most of the L1 boys have already just like what happenned to the L3 fishery, but i can't figure out why guy's like yourself want to beat them down some more or were you picked on at school or something.

[brisbane_boy]

Whats the snapa and perly quota samson on an L1 for the average guy, just to compare it to rec's.

[smashed crabs]

Okay i'll bite, if rec's are so hard done by how come they can catch at present probably more fish than you're average L1 operater without any RQ or SM and soon to be RRQ without any fee's or massive insurance costs shit L1 boys can't even take tuna, fisheries is making your average L1 pro a glorified rec with all the trimmings but with fee's attached, soon to be extinct the only way to stay in the fishery is to expand or die at present as most of the L1 boys have already just like what happenned to the L3 fishery, but i can't figure out why guy's like yourself want to beat them down some more or were you picked on at school or something.

Samson

You hit the nail right on the head with that one ' exspand or die " , these were the nearly excact words our Queenland Line chairman said back in the day just before Quota came to play .

Line fisherman and anyone that held a line licence was told quotas are coming in .
Fisherman were told if they didn't meet the effort criteria that would not get quota attached to their licence and if they did it was either a dismal amount or non at all , an it was the line only fisherman that won in more ways than one .

Lets put this into perspective here and break it down a bit .........
Group A
At the time you had you small time operators , they were the ones that did a little of everthing , net , line and crab ect. most of these were very small happy go lucky hard working Pro's that went about their work on a very small scale , they just made enough cash to live off and were very happy with what they had , these where fisherman could be concidered to have the least amount of ambition, they just loved what they where doing , most of these fisherman could chop and change and move from one fisherie to another , fishing as you know can be very seasonal well they had the ability to do a bit of crabbing when the weather was crap and even maybe do some netting , weather comes good and they could do a run to the reef and put on some fish . Again small operators will the ability to not hound one specific fisherie and because they could go from one fisherie to the next they were leaving other fisheries alone , no real concentrated effort at all , this was the closest you could get to a better managed method of fishing, most of the fisherman that were in this group were the old Pro's , Local fisherman that only supplied to local markets.Some of these fisherman also had second jobs such as farming , cattle ect . What chance did they have there was no way in hell these fisherman were ever going to get a mass of quota , put simply they were just not serious enough to fish all the time , they had no want to do this , they where happy with what they had , simple non ambitous fisherman.

Group B
Straight out line fisherman , a line licence was all they had , you could go further with this and break it down in two types .
You had your small operators that only lined fished from small boats , they went out when the weather was good and they did what they could and were happy with what they caught ( refer to my post in bragging - giving away secrets )i was one of these.
Then you had your fisherman with thier 15tonne plus catches per year and it was these fisherman that were the only ones to make a gain from the quota system.

Group B
Dont really need this one but i will add it anyway .
These were some trawler fisherman that liked to give the paddocks a break and go do a bit of line fishing and usually over the moon when prawns are found to be soft or have gone to ground. These fisherman were concidered to be not so serious by other trawlers operators because they were not hard at it all the time.
These fisherman would catch prawns for the local market and only work with what they had , when prawns were lean or small or soft they could go line fishing,most of these were ice box trawlers , i could go on further with this but i wont.

Now these are some pretty simple words to write down and it can't all be said so im just using these groups because they faired the worse with some gaining the most from the introduction of quota , it will give you an idea who some of the stakeholder were at the time .

Okay the stage is set , time to roll in Quotas for the QLD line fisherie.....

QLD line chairman on the board of the QSIA gave us all the news , quotas are coming , if you have meet the effort criteria you will get quota on your licence .
If you have big catches then you will get big quota attached to your licence .
If you have just enough effort then you will get a little tiny set min amount of Quota .
If you can't meet the effort requirement then you will have nothing but there is still hope for you because you can buy quota of fisherman.

Well that was the start , GULP ! WHAT SHALL WE DO ???

What happend next was one of the biggest cock ups ever seen in QLD line fisherie

Group A ,knew that they where screwed and tried to fight it
Group B ,well over half of them were rubbing their fingers together, the other facing doom and tried hard to fight it .
Group C ,screwed and more or less gave up on the spot.

The money grubbers in Group B piled up and alot falsified log book entries , this was seen as one of the biggest money grabbing excercise in history of the line fisherie. After all who was going to go against them , they had the big catches , the big boats ect , no worries at all for them to walk it through even if there catches were investigated , I would like to say somthing about the line chairman here but i won't. but let me just say that just after the battle he left to go play with cows on a gigillion dollar block. Wink wink bloody wink .
Any way back to the grubs , not only could they still keep catching what they were catching they had extra quota to play with which they sold or leased out to the fisherman that had bugger all.

Some of those in Group B had a choice to make... diddle the books or move on , those who didn't diddle the books where gone , those who did diddle book could only do it so much without making it obvious so the majority only ever got the min quota.

Group A ,was left with a licence as to what you would call a glorified REC , so now you know how this licence came to be.

Group B ,most of them made out like bandits

Group C ,gave up

Okay so now we have Quota which alot was ill gained , total allowable catched are set for each in the line industry in QLD .
First year of fishing under the new sytem and you wouldn't fkn beleive it Line fisherman didn't even come close to the total allowable catch , they were of the mark and well under by hundreds of tonnes, mmm somthing fishy going on here ay!?

Okay so it now appears that there was a few porky's told measured by hundreds of tonnes , how many blokes do you think bought some of that only to get shafted again and again ?

A mate of mine bought 100grands worth at $10per kg , he was one of the blokes that only got a min amount of quota on his licence , he put his house on a mortage to stay doing what he loved to do. I would have to say i warned him about buying quota and i told him why he shouldn't , he just said to me that Pro's wouldn't shafted Pro's and even though he would never ever catch that much fish he thought he was buying in as a good investment , after all he thought that this was the only answer to it all buy or die before the price rockets , even our own line chairman told him not buy any Quota ( my mate started of as a decky with him)

Then came even more bad news if you can't catch what you got in Quota then we just might have to take it of you , not good at all for my mate .
Because he didn't have a hope in hell of catching that much fish he had to lease out his most of his quota but there was a problem there because it was every where , a mad rush leed to fisherman trying to get their quota used , prices as low as $1per kg it had to be used or face losing it .
Sadly my mate stepped out and sold his quota for pittence of what he paid for it 25grand.

He is now done and dusted because of lies and manipulation set by commercial fisherman that single handily took out most of the best fisherman , fisherman that were penalized for the least amount of effort on fisheries resources , fisherman that were small time , fisherman that were seen as a joke by big players,fisherman that had more ability to manage what they were doing, fisherman that had morals and fisherman that beleived what they were doing was the closest form of substainable fishing practices when compared to big players and every other fisherman that could not lie on the books.
Yes there was genuine big catchers that didn't lie but you will find they where pretty rare.


Moving right along and we have our QSIA at the time ................
I was one of those that refused to pay the QSIA another dollar in compulsory membership fees after the part they played ,i was part of Group B standing with A and C, i couldn't lie on the books , i was small time , i had a love for the life of fishing and happy with what i had , do you know how many of us were threatend to pay up or face legal action ?.
QSIA lost many members from Trawler fisherman , crab , line and net turned their backs on them for ever after they played a part in killing off most of the best fisherman Industry ever had and they were the one's that did bugger all.

Politics come to play and it is shown to the public reduced numbers of players were reduced , they wiped out alot of fisherman so everthing is cool , here is my back now pat me , what a pile of horse crap .
What they failed to mention was who they took out of the game , what they failed to mention was the fisherman that were taken out where small time players that had min impact on resources and yet the whole time played it up to say effort has be reduced " horse shit".

The only true redutions in catch were layed on recreational fisherman to bare.

And it came about as a trade off ,ie Industry will sacrafice there own so in turn rec's can have bag limits (just so it looks good on paper to the public)and all the time there was no sacrafice to commercial catches, it was just taken from small operators and given to another , the only thing the fishing industry gave up was commercial fisherman, if anyone beleives fishing effort and catches were by knocking out Pro's don't kid your self , slide of hand here folks !!!

Samson the question you should of asked was What Went Wrong ?

Every answer you seek mate has a Question , the answers to everything are out there , the answers have already been played out in the past and in that lays whats ahead, you just have to look back a bit first, it doesn't take Einstein to figure that one out . You can cry all you want but in the end no one cares , i do feel for you brother but the stage has been set , more bad news to come im afraid.

As for you comment was i picked on at school , ha very funny , i left school at 13teen mate , i could hardly read or write and im still struggling , so i guess i really didn't get much of a chance to be picked on, i went fishing, farming, cattle and sheep and anything else i could do , but thanks for asking.

I guess the only people that i can say picked on me came much later in life , like commercial fisherman. I did get to the stage where i stepped out because of it.
I went of doing mineral sands exploration for 5years and i can say i copped a bit of shit from Geologist , yeah they picked on me big time ( bastards) but only because i showed them up all the time , here is this uneducated bumed out fisherman showing them how it is done , they didn't like this at all and hated me with a passion and more so when i was put in charge of exploration.
Can you imagine me of all people going on to find a world class mineral sands deposit an im conciderd by some with PHD'S to have one of the greatest minds in mineral sands exploration and mostly because i think outside the box , just imagine what i could have done if i had the chance to go to school then uni .I could have been one of them do gooders that do more harm than good , uno the one's that know everthing but lack life skills and common sense .

So yeah okay i was picked on but much later in life but you know what a least the Geo's picked on me face to face , not like commercial fisherman who did nasty crap behind my back and to others just for their own self worth.

Enough for now , im of fishing while there is still some left to catch .

Kind Regards
SC

Ps please dont feel hard done by Samson clearly it wasn't your fault

[smashed crabs]

only one word comes to mind POLITICS

it has nothing to do with reality just politics

as a fresh water Aquaculturalist I tried everything to get a licence to sell by-catch eels, there was no way I was getting one and had to destroy all eels harvested the only reason I could come up with was that I could go and do something illegal and catch wild harvest eels

cheers Murf

Good one Murf , reality is warped to the point where no one knows what to beleive any more , then you get feed with words liken to a Placebo, here swallow this you will feel better and uno what people do feel better and beleive bullshit .Amazing stuff hey !

Politics i wish i had time for this one but i would be dead by the time i finished.One thing we can always be sure of is they know how to stuff thing up big time .Thats a given !!


Cheers
SC

[T-REX]

Smashed Crabs,
This is happening in all industries and the answer to your question " where do we go from here?" You take a look in the mirror and look for the dumbest species on the planet that thinks it can eat dollar bills and doesn't care what it does to the enviroment or food chain as long as it can keep making even more money and boast what huge profits it has made. I AM NOT A GREENIE just a bloke that can see what sort of world the future MIGHT hold for our throw away society. Our kids won't thank us and will probably follow our footsteps. I try to show my daughter where we are going but it falls on deaf ears.
Oh well.
Catch and release what you can, take only what you need and enjoy life as you are only here for the blink of an eye in the scheme of things.
Cheers its RUM O'clock.

[samson]

For a bloke that left school early you seem to be very literate, but you seem to be seeing things a bit one eyed maybe a bit bitter for one reason or a another i can see from your response that you've been through this process just like i have but there is the other side of the coin i know guy's along with myself that went the opposite way and didn't fill out logbooks correctly and payed for it in the end by not having enough history.
But just because some money grubbers lied on logs doesn't mean catches have increased it just means fisheries and qsia made a cock up of the hole process thus taking their time with the rockey reef and reducing tac's by a massive amount along with licences so latent effort can't be increased.
But hey i've got my quota i've got my boat and business and crew and the only thing that can stop me is fisheries or garret at present, righto i'm off to lap up some of the last of my quota off fraser for a few days and try to avoid getting killed in the process just to make this business viable thats if fisheries or garret doesn't come up with some other way to screw me while i'm away.
Cheers samson

[tunaticer]

Unfortunately this scene is predominant in all avenues of life and fishing.
I regularly fish from my kayak at well known grounds and I keep to myself by not encroaching on others nearby. I respect their rights and chances of catching a fish just like I do.
The past two years has seen the remarkable adoption of Bass-boat style comp fishermen with sometimes dozens of these 20 odd foot glass needles with 300 or so nedds on the back come thundering through the fishing grounds within at times 20 feet of a person fishing just to get to the other side. Money buys these big toys but it sure does not buy common sense, courtesy or respect for anybody else on the water that is not in their little competition.
A few months ago i spent 4 mornings in a row fishing the same patch of rubble grounds when these boats would roar through dangerously close to my yak and others just so they can fish a patch of rocky reef some 4km south of me. These 4 days were all "prefish" days and on the comp day I was at work and probably luckily so.

I wonder though, If I was there fishing from a boat similar to theirs, would there have been any courtesy or respect shown??

So my point is it is not necessarily the Pro-fisherman that is screwing us, it is also the large organised televised events that are damaging things as well.

[smashed crabs]

I would like to point out that everyone has a view towards what went wrong .

I will also add to this that just because i have made a few comments that i feel strongly about does no necessarily make me right in the eyes of others and versa.

My story is that of a journey , a reflection of a the past as seen by me and others but i will stress that all of us have arrived at the same point regardless of how we got here.

I was talking to my father in law tonight over a cup of tea , we talked for hours over fishing , boats , outboards and all sorts of thing fish and boat.(and i tried once again to get his grunter spots and he again told me to knick off)

One of the last things i asked him was ' who is smarter your generation or ours' to which he replied mine of course! I knew he would say that and then i said why?

He said you young people these days think you so much better , so much better to the point that everything is so complex you need a blimen degree to work out how to wipe your own blecky bum !

Such simple words said in the only way this old bloke could.
Notice the words 'blecky" and ' blimen" can someone please translate?

I don't have a fkn clue what the fk he was on about his lingo is just to old

I would like to thank everyone so far thats had a crack at this thread and have taken the time to read my very looooonnnngggg posts , i doing my best to try and explain a veiw in not so many words and will move the thread away from one of pushing and shoving into one of destruction of grounds , one of these true storys can be read in ' Bragging - giving away secrets of how four boats wiped out a ground before the start of the third year.

My next true tale will be that of driftnetters so stayed tuned for that one .

Cheers
SC

[samson]

Brisbane boy the average at present is no quota but the average in a couple of months will be rec limit apart fom 70 guys retricted to small quota the other 1500 lost their licences and the other 200 get a rec limit and can't sell, but when you look at the old rec limit of 30 for snaps and unlimited for pearlies you can't tell me rec's did no damage at present snapper is selling on raptis floor for $5 kg and i wouldn't kill for less than $9 and thats out of season prices wait till it gets in season.
But when you average out the no take species for L1 commercials like billfish and tuna's and strict quota's on everything else most pro's just get a rec limit these days and combine that with rec's black market trade like with the mackeral this season it wouldn't matter if you got quota anyway the shops were flooded with rec fish and you couldn't sell your catch anyway.

[REEF KINGS]

What are you suggesting with the mackerel black market trade this year? and how do you know this if it were behind the doors they wouldnt say.

[Jarrah Jack]

Enlghtening reading there SG, you must like typeing.

I recently finished reading a book about the history of the fishing industry in Eden, NSW. Apparently the blue fin tuna school that used to run up the coast every season was huge and thought to be inexhaustable by the fishermen. The school was so large that it was measured in how many days it took to run past. Something like three to four days.

Now there ain't any left at all not one single fish. That whole fishery gone forever. So very sad. The school reached a tipping point where no regulation could bring it back. There was too much money to be made and too much invested and so they went ; the fishermen onto orange roughy end the like and the fish to history books.

Cheers

[smashed crabs]

Enlghtening reading there SG, you must like typeing.

I recently finished reading a book about the history of the fishing industry in Eden, NSW. Apparently the blue fin tuna school that used to run up the coast every season was huge and thought to be inexhaustable by the fishermen. The school was so large that it was measured in how many days it took to run past. Something like three to four days.

Now there ain't any left at all not one single fish. That whole fishery gone forever. So very sad. The school reached a tipping point where no regulation could bring it back. There was too much money to be made and too much invested and so they went ; the fishermen onto orange roughy end the like and the fish to history books.

Cheers

Jarrah Jack , no i hate typing mate, it take's me up to 5hrs to write a long post but it's a good chance to keep learning , i wouldn't attempt to write a long post if it was not somthing i don't have a passion for . In my brain i know what i want to say it just takes me a long time to write it ,lol

Blue fin tuna well there is another story i could write about , when i get time i will write about driftnetting , in more ways than one it's a similar senario than that of the tuna .

Isn't it funny how we know what is going to happen before it does ? and they say history never repeats , do you get that gut feeling that we seem to be just prolonging the agony, right now most of us know what went wrong , we only have to look back to see that .

Even funnier again it all still continues down the same path , it is nothing more than the same path just radically metamorphosed which always ends with the same conclusion.

cheers
SC

[Rumbles]

"take a look in the mirror"

in my humble opinion the most insightful comment thus far.

The pro V pro V rec debat will go on eternally until long after there is no fish left to catch. The exact same arguement has been going on for the 4 generations of my fishing family. When the last fish is caught it will have been the "others" that caught it.

We collectively have to be the solution as we collectively will be the losers.

Technology and Politics are the the problem. We all take up new technology rec or pro, cotton gill nets, monofilament gill nets, bigger boats longer ranges, eco sounders, sonar, sat SST maps,Gps, chemical lights, flourocarbon leaders, braided lines, soft plastics. It all allows us to catch fish that werent necessarily being caught before.

If GPS and sounders were illegal it would have far greater effect on fish stocks than any catch limit or green zone.

We collectively spend more fuel and travel further ( be it 1-10-100-1000 miles) to catch the same or fewer fish than we did 5 years ago just like every generation before us. As the cost of fish at market goes up accordingly it makes it easier to justify spending the money we do on our recreation.

We all argue that our current quota is our right when it is to be diminished. Research is as political as it is sciencntific, perhaps not so much in the measuring but definately in the presentation.

Not a popular opinion I am sure but an opinion non the less.

[smashed crabs]

"take a look in the mirror"

in my humble opinion the most insightful comment thus far.

The pro V pro V rec debat will go on eternally until long after there is no fish left to catch. The exact same arguement has been going on for the 4 generations of my fishing family. When the last fish is caught it will have been the "others" that caught it.

We collectively have to be the solution as we collectively will be the losers.

Technology and Politics are the the problem. We all take up new technology rec or pro, cotton gill nets, monofilament gill nets, bigger boats longer ranges, eco sounders, sonar, sat SST maps,Gps, chemical lights, flourocarbon leaders, braided lines, soft plastics. It all allows us to catch fish that werent necessarily being caught before.

If GPS and sounders were illegal it would have far greater effect on fish stocks than any catch limit or green zone.

We collectively spend more fuel and travel further ( be it 1-10-100-1000 miles) to catch the same or fewer fish than we did 5 years ago just like every generation before us. As the cost of fish at market goes up accordingly it makes it easier to justify spending the money we do on our recreation.

We all argue that our current quota is our right when it is to be diminished. Research is as political as it is sciencntific, perhaps not so much in the measuring but definately in the presentation.

Not a popular opinion I am sure but an opinion non the less.

I don't think anyone could argue with this one.

Imagine no gps's or sounders and then to top it of a ban on frezzers


We have all the wizz bang coming out the ying yang and yet a fish has always been a fish

cheers
SC