ghound wrote:Cuddles
You can't honestly expect us to take you "maths equations" as anything other than an uneducated guess can you????
I dont know about your uneducated guesses but I would asses mine to reasonable educated considering I have seen it day in day out for nearly 10 years at that grounds and how much affect it has had to the area. I also have contacts in the fisheries that give inside info to the industry and what is going on around the place and what the fish habits are and what the stocks are doing.
To go with this it is a subject that I am passionate on as I would love to be able to go fishing every time and be able to catch my bag limit instead of going out and not catching a fish and having a higher bag limit! This is why I do a lot of reading of the research and such to gain a better understanding. This might not add up to a marine biology degree or a piece of paper gained by somebody that sits inside and looks at statistics all day and comes to the conclusion what he is being told is true or right but there info combined with experiance and experiance of living here from berth helps to give a reasonable idea of what is going on around the place.
Have a little think about things and look at photos of fish that used to get pulled from those grounds and judge for yourself what gets caught out there now.
I know it might seem harsh on amatures but the realism is that fish stocks are falling badly and repairing the damage will need a major shake up on all fronts to repair some of it. Sure you could leave it and see what happens and hope for massive changes but when the damage is done its nearly irrepairable. Better to be proactive and make as many small changes that all add up untill the bigger ones can come in.
As for talk to people in the commercial trade well I do and have for a long time all be it not as much recently because I got out of commercial fishing and charters.
I agree with every one to some extent that in an ideal world we could simple push the pros out further and push the charters out wider and gain greater access to better fishing grounds for ourselves by installing ramps and so on but
All in all this doesnt change the amount of produce comming out of the sea. It mearly changes the pressure points a little but doesnt put more fish in the sea or give them a chance to sporn or help there life cycle in any way. Instead it destroys more ground further and further affield and makes it even harder in the future.
The other question is how do you get more area to fish with native title. Good luck on that one!
As for up grading I know that some people do it but as a rule most people do the right things and the attitude can be changed by everyone else frowning on the practice and changing the attitude that amatures dont do damage when really we do as much as any one through the sheer number of vessils on the water on any given day. Heres one for you. Put a registration number on your boat so that you can be identified if you did the wrong thing and upgraded! Rego on boats is not what I or anyone wants for that matter but complain two loudly and thats what will happen!