I am happy to admit, I do not know a lot about commercial fishing. One argument I have read from commercial fishers is that us laymen should keep out of business we do not understand.
They (the commercial fishers) say they are not and will not do anything wrong. They say they want and work for a sustainable fishery.
OK. So that raises a question. If they are fishing in a sustainable manner, then why are they coming into shallow water? If they fish their normal deep water grounds in a sustainable manner there should be no reason to come into shallow water.
I read one valid reason for fishing shallow water. Apparently there is a boat that fishes for salmon and pilchard. The salmon are used for cat food and the pilchard for bait. The thing is, salmon apparently are only found in shallow waters...OK, fair enough, but of course there are questions...like
Why are we feeding salmon to cats when we have a very serious carp problem?
I do know the name of the boat, but I am not going to name it here. They are not doing anything wrong. They operate fully within the Law. It is the Law makers that need to be bought to task. So let's take a look at this boat...
Apparently, it catches 1000 tonnes per year of salmon and pilchard. 30% to 40% is salmon. I have no idea what the retail price of salmon is because it is not often sold at retail. Pilchard as bait is about $12 per kilo. So at $12 retail, the boat will be getting $4 to $6. OK, 1000 tonnes is one MILLION kilo's. Just looking at the boat I could see it easy cost $1 million a year to run all up with wages, fuel, tax etc. So about 4 to 5 MILLION dollars a year PROFIT. However, salmon and pilchard is not the only catch for this boat. They only target salmon when the stock levels have recovered from their last fish !! Most of the time they are after more profitable catches.
Why does a fishing boat need to make 10's of millions of dollars profit? I don't begrudge anyone making a living and making a profit. But there is a limit between making a profit, having a sustainable fishery and just plain greed.
Of course, this boat is not the above boat in the pic. But it is reasonable to assume the pictured boat has simply out fished it's normal grounds. So the boat has already made a profit and probably a good profit.
How much money is involved...I don't know !! Apparently the local council here makes about 65 million per year from the fishery. That looks like this $65,000,000. That is just the local council, state and federal taxes and charges are extra.
I wonder how much profit Whiskas, Snappy Tom, Purina et al make from OUR fish stocks...I bet they make enough to clear the rivers of carp and start their own carp farms !!!
It is almost fraud...The boat catches a pilchard which it sells to me as bait. I use the pilchard as intended and as it was sold to me...bait. However, the boat that sold me the pilchard has already taken the salmon which I expect to catch with the pilchard....
itsaboat mate...Life is just a boat and then ya marry one !