Sandown Bay Netting Concerns

[TF_geepsterParticipant]

OUR CONCERNS – CURRENT NETTING PRACTICES IN SANDOWN BAY

Dear All,
This letter is sent to bring your personal awareness of ongoing concern over current netting practices in Sandown Bay. Aim is to ban the use of ‘Set Nets'(huge nets left unattended with an anchor at each end) in the Sandown Bay area. We think they are dangerous and are decimating the juvenile fish population which bodes ill for future generations of Bass, Bream, flatfish and Rays and consequently Islanders childrens inalienable right to see local fish species and stocks conserved for their generational benefit.
Please support Sandown Bay Protection Forum by signing the website petition at http://www.sbpf.co.uk
The SBPF are a group of disenchanted local anglers, who, in one way or another are involved in organising or fishing angling events on the Island. The group preparing to spoke to the Council on the 10th of March as a group regarding the commercial netting of Sandown Bay. The group are currently continuing to raise awareness of this issue so have decided to send a synopsis of our concerns to you to explain their position.

‘Three years ago in an effort to address these same worries, we collected approx.3000 signatories to a petition to Andrew Turner our MP. The feedback from him was that it was purely a local problem that he could not help with! We have the petition for Sandown Town Council to view, should they wish to.
The commercial netting in Sandown Bay has intensified to such an extent that they are depleting the stocks of breeding fish so successfully that hardly any are reaching the shoreline. They are doing this with a barrage of (unidentified, inadequately marked nets) an estimated 10 miles of Tangle netting¹, sometimes stretching from one side of the bay to the other. Some of the nets are so close to the beach that anglers cast into the nets and they are a danger to swimmers. The local Inshore Lifeboat, Pleasure boat owners, Wind and Kite surfers and jet skiers have also experienced problems. We think they are a hazard for visiting Yachts looking for a safe anchorage.
Although we have no firm evidence, we know from experience that Dolphins and diving birds have been caught in the nets. Whilst obeying the law with the fish sizes, hundreds of small nursery fish are thrown back into the bay dead, when the nets are pulled and reset.
We have tried to talk to the people involved in the commercial netting but to no avail. This has been met with arrogance and aggression. They are more interested in making a fast profit at the expense of outdoor leisure activities vital to tourism and the local economy than the impact it has on the many native fish that breed in this area.
Local commercial fishermen who beach launch with small boats in Sandown bay have seen a down turn in catches in the last 3 years. Some of these people have fished the bay all their life, their way of fishing has always cared for and maintained the fish stocks
If the commercial exploitation of Sandown bay by large boats from Portsmouth, Bembridge and Ventnor continues the stock of fish like Bass, Bream, flatfish and Rays which all breed in the bay, will decline dramatically within a very short time. Already the population of flounders (a small flatfish), which have survived in Bembridge Harbor and the River Medina for 100’s of years, have been destroyed in just two seasons by a small group of commercial pirates selling them for 10p each as pot bait for lobsters and crab. Although not illegal, the commercial greed is unethical. Every single major fish species caught in the Bay is on the current watch list as a future endangered species.
Most of the Island coastal Towns have a Harbour authority charged with protecting and managing their own marine environment. The Solent also has a multitude of organizations dedicated to ecological management. They have their own set of rules which enable them to do this. Sandown bay seems to be under the authority of the “Southern Sea Fisheriesâ€

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