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Ladies and Gentlemen,
It is with very mixed feelings that I give this, my last, public presentation on behalf of the Committee.
The Marine and Coastal Access Act (2009) is a piece of legislation that professionals have sought for many a year. Decades even. So much of fisheries legislation dates back to the 1970s and the powers of management were insufficient to manage modern fisheries in modern times. The new Act does all of this. But whilst in England Sea Fisheries Committees are to be modernised as IFCAs (Inshore Fisheries and Conservation Authorities), in Wales they are to be subsumed into the Welsh Assembly from the 1 April 2010.
I can confidently predict that the new world will be a challenge to both organisations in their own ways, but that the members of staff will be up to the challenge, as they have always been.
The Welsh Assembly inherits these new powers. It also inherits the assets and funding of the current Sea Fisheries Committees which are arguably in their best ever position. Both should greatly aid their task.
It falls to me perhaps, to provide some context as to how we come to celebrate the history of the South Wales Sea Fisheries Committee here tonight.
Recall that Sea Fisheries Committees were born out of legislation made in 1888, over a century ago.
Part of the Victorian era.
Henry Ford produced his first car in 1896. The first mass market car – the Ford Model T started production in 1908.
It was a time when the seas were full of fish and shellfish and whose abundance appeared unlimited.
The power of the day was of oar and sail, but the steam railway had been invented in 1829 and track was being laid out rapidly. 1000 miles (by 1840), 7000 miles (by 1850). In 1863 it reached Penclawdd and Tenby. This opened up markets beyond the local towns and villages and, with it, the demand for fish.
Fish needed to be kept in good condition so ice was required. Up to 1885 this was imported in quantities from Norway - an expensive and time consuming task. By 1906 it became possible to construct ice upon demand and to so locally.
By these simple means – better transport and food preservation; markets for fish were opened to all UK towns and cities, Europe even.
The fishing industry responded:
- At Conwy, mussel fishermen no longer relied upon pearl production and now sold all the meats they could.
- Cockle collection at Penclawdd involved 500 families and 150 more in the 3
Rivers and all by hand rake to donkey and later, cart.
- Swansea Bay supported, at its peak in 1873, 188 forty foot oyster sailing skiffs landing 9 million oysters in that year.
- Milford Haven, Tenby, Swansea, Aberystwyth and all the small ports in-between supported thousands of sail or oar powered boats that set drift nets to catch herring, “the silver darlings”.
It was a labour intensive world. Each boat required up to 8 persons to sail.
Each had to be hand made and maintained; sails had to be mended. Fish had to be manhandled and processed and then transported.
The fishing industry supported more jobs than just about any other industry, although the second Industrial Revolution was gaining strength.
It was into this world that Sea Fishery Committees were born. But trouble was brewing.
Royal Commission Inquiries in 1863 and 1883 investigated the claims that sail powered trawlers towing beam trawls (for the more technically minded amongst you) were destroying the seabed and taking undersized fish.
And the waste of the industrialised towns was clogging the air and seeping into rivers that tainted the sea.
The zoologist Thomas Henry Huxley sat on both Royal Commissions. He was well known for his robust defence of Charles Darwin’s evolution theories. At the opening of the London Fisheries Exhibition in 1883, Thomas Huxley proclaimed that species like salmon and oyster, being either local in nature or reliant on habitat, required management. However the seas were so vast and rich (when compared to the land) that such fisheries for marine finfish they supported were “inexhaustible”. That nothing that we do seriously affects the numbers of the fish, and any attempts to regulate these fisheries would be useless compared to the “vagaries of nature”
{If I may digress a little. Some say that Thomas Huxley got it badly wrong. But actually I think he was a visionary. He said “nothing we do” (meaning currently do). Whilst he might be visionary, he had no powers of foresight so as to predict the exploitative powers of Man with modern technology of the 21st century that has hunted some fish to near extinction. That is the beauty of hindsight!}
Recognising the need to manage inshore fisheries (I stress inshore), and the impact of pollution on them, Parliament established the first Sea Fisheries Regulation Act in 1888 which enabled the establishment of the Sea Fisheries Committees in largely the same form as they are now.
The South Wales Sea Fisheries Committee was created in 1912 as an amalgamation of the Glamorgan SFC (1890) and the Milford Haven SFC (1892).
The Inspectors’ report on this amalgamation is fascinating, and might strike a chord with some of the current audience who were involved in our modern times. You may recall when, in 1999 the County Councils were abolished and Unitary Authorities were set up the SWSFC had to resort to Judicial Review in order to protect its budget as local authorities could not agree a funding base.
At the 1912 Inquiry questions arose as to whether the burden of the costs of management should fall upon the rural constituencies (who had the fish) or the towns (who held the people). The Inspector ruled that the benefits of fishery management went far and wide and that the ratepayers of Cardiff ought to pay their fair share!
Fisheries developments continued, of course. The ever advancing use of new technologies that enable Man to do more, quicker for less exertion:
- Steam replaced sail power.
- The Otter trawl replaced the beam trawl.
- Trawls became larger and herded fish better.
Hake replaced herring as the vessels went further afield.
In 1913 there were 100 Brixham smacks at Milford, UK’s number 4 port. Cardiff had 13 large steam trawlers. The French and Spanish fished our shores, including for scallop.
Only in the 1920’s did intensive Lobster fishing began to develop.
Perhaps inevitably, fish stocks started to decline. Numbers employed declined as a result of both industrialisation and because of declining landings.
WW1 provided something of a respite, but the effort resumed afterwards.
And the rest is, as they say, is history.
Swansea Bay oysters - 1873 (188 boats) 1894 (30) 1925 (nil)
Herring – nil by 1925 (although there was a brief comeback in the 1960’s and 70’s)
But cockle and mussel and mixed inshore fisheries continued. Albeit that species mix changed as fish stocks became depleted and markets developed for something new.
The changes to SFCs have been relatively small since 1888 until now.
In 1993 their area was extended from 3 to 6 miles offshore.
In 1992 they were required to have a regard to wildlife conservation and balance fishery development decisions with conservation needs (a sign of things to come).
But here is a little known fact. When established in 1888 SFCs were given powers to make byelaws. “For the prohibition of or regulation of the deposit or discharge of any solid or liquid substance detrimental to sea fish or sea fishing”. That power was only rescinded in1989 when the National Rivers Authority, now Environment Agency, took over as the environmental watchdog. So SFCs were arguably the first marine environmental watchdog in England and Wales!
As to the Committee management. Many byelaws were established – the SWSFC had a reputation for being “proactive”.
Its Chief Officers include many esteemed persons in their day:
Lieutenant Commander E. Kirkpatrick
Commander Gibson (MBE)
Captain J Rhydderch, who many of you will know before his untimely death in 1993, and my predecessor and mentor.
As a mere marine biologist I feel privileged to have inherited the organisation from such visionaries.
Throughout its term, as far as we can tell, the SWSFC has always been based in Swansea - at Cockett or Sketty or Kingsway or at Queens Buildings until recently.
Staff numbers have ebbed and flowed with the fisheries. The first patrol boat was purchased in 1922 - a steam trawler called the “Feather” which was ostensibly a research vessel. Then there was a gap until the “Quintail” was purchased in 1980 and then replaced by the current vessel, the “Cranogwen” which is still going (despite the best attempts of a Milford tug last month!).
It was in the 1970s that John Rhydderch built up the organisation from around 5 persons and added a protection vessel and crew to make 10 persons. I joined at a second stage of development in 1989 as his Deputy, and today we try and meet modern demands with 14 persons – about average for SFC terms.
SFCs are something of a tradition, and I am reminded of one other.
Not long after I started as Chief Officer, a Councillor member came up to me and had a quiet word…. “You always sign off the agendas and papers he said with ‘Your Obedient Servant’.”
“I do” I said “it’s a long running tradition”. “Well “ he said, “in this day and age I find it slightly embarrassing”.
With that quiet word, the tradition of probably a century ended.
And the end of Sea Fisheries in Wales feels to me just like that. The quiet ending of a tradition. Around the corner are new challenges and opportunities.
It behoves me to pay tribute to the people that have made SWSFC all that it was.
P J Coates
Director (1989 – 2010)
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