wrasse arrgh

[gogs]

decided to take the day of and headed down to pease bay area,usually some nice codling down there,but i was plagued with wrasse i had 4 out all 1&1/2lbish and was pulled into snags by at least another 6.
now i dont mind catching the odd 1 but its getting to be beyond a joke how many there are now all up and down the east coast.
never used to be as many,whats the cause of the increase? global warming? the demise of the cod that maybe preyed on the young wrasse?i dont know.
i wouldnt mind so much its just that the buggers destroy hard earned crab baits lol.
also had a couple of small codling to 2lb and ended up with a braw tan.
roll on the winter the wrasse will be gone by then

[Davyred]

Better than no fish at all I suppose Gordon - just. Bring on the howling Northerlies eh

[RobAdair]

I was wondering about this myself Gordon. I was thinking that it might just be a case of the wrasse starting to recover after the disasterous winter of 1963 due to the warmer sea\'s of today. If that is the case should we also see a few more conger???
Just my opinion like

[gogs]

aye true Davy,but this place should have been lifting with decent sized codling.anything from s/w to north for me Davy
COME ON THE WIND lol.

[gogs]

funny you should mention conger Rob, had 2 in the last 2 winters,first i have had on the east coast but a few have shown up in matches up here in the winter.

[Stores]

Thinking about it........you\'ve got warmer weather and warmer seas (albeit only slightly) which would suggest MORE feed in the summer IF more crabs peel in shallow water....... think of it another way and 30 years ago when the water was colder (albeit etc) there should have been more crabs competing for the only bit of warm water - that in the rock pools between the tides. But let\'s stick with the first argument ... more bait and only two real summer feeders - codling and wrasse (I\'ve discarded coalies and pollock as they probably take so small an amount of crabs). Take away most of the codling, via netting, trawling etc and you end up with wrasse. Perhaps not surprising there are a few more, especially as the codling go out into the big bad world in the winter to feed.
In the past I\'ve had bad summer seasons on the east coast but I\'ve caught next to nothing, not years when the wrasse have replaced everything else. It would be interesting to find out the summer tolerance of codling to water temperature. I read recently how plaice had not moved north but had moved into deeper water whereas haddock had moved north in response to increases in water temperature. We need a university boffin in here methinks.

[Edited on 6/9/2005 by Stores]

[Charlie_Thompson]

We need Nigel (I think it\'s Nigel?) on the case.

NIGEL you out there M8?

I would guess that all levels of the ecosystem are affected in some way by the changes in water temp. Maybe some species further down the food chain are adversley affected and that then has a knock on effect higher up.

[Ian_D]

------------------------------------------------------
I would guess that all levels of the ecosystem are affected in some way by the changes in water temp. Maybe some species further down the food chain are adversley affected and that then has a knock on effect higher up.
-------------------------------------------------------

I can remember a discussion about this in another forum a couple of years ago, after one of the dailies had published extracts from a report about the changes in the types of plankton found in the North Sea.

One of the best place for info seems to be the Sir Alister Hardy Foundation for Ocean Science (SAHFOS) website.
http://192.171.163.165/

There are a few downloadable reports about the effect on N Sea cod stocks. I can just about get the gist of them, but they\'re mostly way over my head. Not sorry about that - I get the impression that if I could understand them I\'d be even more worried about prospects than I am now.

[TC]

Yes Ell.....It\'s Nigel.

I\'ve PM\'d him asking to take a look in here.

This topic looks like it developing into something far more than a \"catch report\" - I\'ll probably move the whole topic to the main Shore Fishing area.

I\'ll wait until Doc\'s seen it as I\'ve directed him to the Catch Reports.

[gogs]

oops i didnt mean to start a big debate on wrasse lol.
some good posts here and it would be good if Doc (Nigel)
did have a answer for this.

[marksworld]

there\'s even wrasee in this months sea angler lol,
they get everywhere

[TC]

Been a number of wrasse caught from Soth Shields pier this year........Richys\' mam even had one from the river at the walkway.

[Doc]

Hi Guys, apologies for the delay in responding, busy at sea an all that.

Well where to start, firstly I think some of the responses to the query indicate just how much anglers have become educated in marine science. This is because we have a real vested interest and its so encouraging so see it used in a sensible approach.

The big problem nowadays is that unless a species is of significant commercial or conservation interest it is unlikely to warrant much research, despite its ecological importance, so I guess there is no hard and fast answer to the query, all we can do is summise.

I\'m not totally convinced that sea temperature increase as a result of global warming is the answer to all the changes that are occuring in our northern waters, it has been suggested that due to sea temperature rise the cod are not able to spawn as successfully as before, despite the fact that in recent years the south west and Irish sea has seen a better recruitment of cod and have warmer water than the central North Sea (Influence of Gulf Stream).

Without going into the technological arena, the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) plays an important role in the weather fronts that drive sea temperatures in European waters. At the present moment we are in a positive phase, which means milder winter weather patterns, but possibly more stormier than would have been the case in negative phases (the last one in the late 70\'s and early 80\'s).

So what does this mean, in the positive phase we have a stronger subtropical high and a deeper Iceland low, which explains why we keep getting continuous low pressures coming from the northern Atlantic and high pressures dominating (frustratingly) below the UK in the Med.

But moving swiftly on, these persistant streams of warm water may dilute the effects of colder water rising from deeper water (up welling) further reducing the algal blooms vital to fish larvae (anyone noticed a significant reduction or late arrival of jellyfish in recent years), the jellyfish are dependant on algal and zooplankton blooms.

If algal blooms are not as abundant (lack of nutrients), zooplankton may be less viable (reduced fish larvae = less recruitment to the adult stock). If you take the case of the cod, overfishing has had a significant effect, stocks are dominated by sub-adult fish producing less viable eggs, include a shift in the distribution of the cod larvae\'s favoured food (copepods-Calanus finmarchicus) and very quickly the stocks are in trouble. If only a small minority are growing to juvenile size, and they are being hammered not only by the demersal trawlers, but also the industrial fishers are taking their toll, then its difficult to see where the stocks can recover. But its not all doom and gloom, the North Sea is not comprised of one big stock, there are many small individual stocks throughout the area, some of these may be doing better than others. There are indications that those fish further off the Yorkshire coast (an individual migratory stock) are in relatively good shape in comparrison to other stocks, but this doesn\'t mean that they are abundant.

So what does it mean and how does it tie into the potential increase in Wrasse, well in certain areas/regions there may be a lack of cod, as a result other species will fill the predatory niche, this may also produce an increase in prey item availability. Along the Yorkshire coast we\'ve seen over the last 5 years a massive explosion of velvet swimming crab, migrating south, the cod formerly fed on them and held their expansion in check, however, there is also an apparent decline in green shore crab, with those found inshore (beyond low water) of a large size that rarely if ever peel (maximum size).

It is therefore possible, that the velvet crabs are predating on green shore crab (given their high numbers), also likely brown crab and lobsters, to an extent where shore crabs are not the easily available food source they were. Many fish (especially a wrasse) would struggle to feed on a fully grown and armoured velvet crab, a soft crab is a different option, however, the velvet crab moulting period is not as extensive as that of shore crabs, brown crabs and lobsters.

So in a nutshell!!!!!!

By reducing the cod as a top level predator, the velvet crab has been able to increase its population dramatically.

The velvet crab needs to feed and it does so by feeding on other crustacea (shore crabs, brown crabs and lobsters), the density of velvets could very quickly reduce the viability of some species through predation (shore crab), therefore suppressing food availability to higher species in the food chain.

A consequence of this is that the velvets do become prey to higher trophic levels but because of their varocious nature, this is only during a short window when they are peeling. Once the peeling stage is complete, food availability becomes reduced, leaving only resident species like wrasse in the vicinity, whilst transient migratory species (cod) continue to forage out of area.

Therefore, whilst the venue may have produced cod this may have been during times aplenty, once the availability of food is gone, so have the fish, resident species like wrasse are the only realistic species left and they will not turn their noses up at a juicy crab after weeks of sucking on limpets.

So there it is.

Is that the definitive answer? who knows.

Is it viable? certainly.

Does it make sense? probably

If you\'ve managed to get through this then you\'ve done well, take a cold shower and have a beer and we\'ll make marine scientists out of anglers yet.

Cheers



Doc.

[gogs]

thanks for a very informative reply Doc and it all makes sense when you think about it,never really thought about the increase in velvets but that would explain a lot of the recent changes.
never been a great believer of the global warming thing being a main culprit in what is happening in the north sea (you may be able to give us the figures on any actual sea temp change Doc) that MAY have occured but i still lay the blame squarely on the commercial sector for the demise of stocks that have now put us in the cycle which we are now discussing here.
thanks again for your reply Doc.

Gogs.

[fishfinder]

cheers doc found it very informative mate ..right then beer