Category: Article (Page 2 of 11)

Southsea Marina Angling Club were delighted to host a talk from the International Seakeepers Society and Dr Christina Hunt at our monthly meeting at Southsea Marina in September.

Gill Rodrigues, Director of International Partnerships introduced Seakeepers which is a non-profit organisation promoting and enabling oceanographic research and education through the yachting and boating community. Seakeepers connect boat owners with researchers so that research projects can be undertaken without the major expense of boat charter, and boat owners can have an active part in supporting marine research and conservation. In addition, Seakeepers have a fleet of yachts which are used as research and education platforms.

Seakeepers are based mainly in the USA, but have UK and Asia-Pacific teams locally. They have an interesting form of funding: when super-yacht owners decide to replace their vessel they gift it to Seakeepers, which in some countries is a tax-deductible transaction. Seakeepers maintain the vessel in their fleet for three years and then sell it on. Unfortunately for SMAC members, supporting this presents us with a bit of a challenge because in the UK the tax concessions are not so generous, nor do any of us have a super yacht to give away.

Even if you don’t have a superyacht to gift or loan for scientist-led expeditions, anyone can be involved in other parts of the Discovery Yacht Program. These include Citizen Science Initiatives such as the one below; Educational Outreach and Community Engagement.

Gill then introduced Dr. Christina Hunt who is leading the Competitive Angling as a Scientific Tool (CAST) project for the University of Portsmouth.   Dr. Hunt explained that the project is to map seabed habitats of five species groups in the eastern Solent area: Bass, Bream, Skates & Rays, Tope and Smoothhound. It is no coincidence that these are the species in the Sea Angling Classic competition because the catch size and location data for all the SAC competitions will be used to analyse the habitats and better understand the connection between the underwater topography and species movements.  

Dr. Hunt is looking for volunteers to map the seabed in a number of specific locations using Lowrance or Simrad sonar. This hardware restriction is because the data analytics software is based on data formats from these manufacturers. For more details of the project and to get involved please see here

There is another project under way at the University of Portsmouth which is to develop an AI model to calculate fish length from a photographic image. To help the robot “learn”, it needs to look at a lot of fish photographs with a length ruler so if anyone has any such photographs from past catches please forward them to Dr. Christina Hunt.

SMAC would like to thank Gill Rodrigues and Megan Hickling from Seakeepers and Dr. Christina Hunt from the University of Portsmouth for a very interesting talk. We hope to keep in touch with both Seakeepers and the University of Portsmouth researchers so that we can help in these and future projects. Marine conservation needs to be based on knowledge, and sea anglers have a great interest in supporting both the research processes and conservation outcomes.

Useful links:

www.seakeepers.org

https://castproject.co.uk

https://www.seakeepers.org/program-opportunities/competitive-angling

SMAC September 2024 see the full Monthly Meeting Report here.

Southsea Marina is hosting the SAC Let’s Meet & Fish fun day on Saturday 11th May from 9am. The event is free and you can pre-register for fishing here. Prizes will be awarded for the longest specimen in each of five species categories: Bass, Bream, Tope, Smoothhound; Ray; plus a bonus for top placed Junior. It is part of a series of fun SAC Meet & Fish days around the Solent, the next one will be from Gosport Marina on 1st June. There are also separate SAC Qualifiers, running up the the 2024 Sea Angling Classic from Port Solent Marina from 20th-23rd June.

Premier Southsea Marina will be organising a host of other attractions on the 11th May. These are open to all:

Beach Clean – 10am to 12pm helping to keep the local area tidy and free from plastic with a community beach clean. Meeting at the marina reception for 10am, the litter pick will begin at the foreshore, with the intention of walking along the shingle ridge and up to Milton Common and back.

Safety Day and Spring Social – 12pm to 6pm

• RNLI will be offering ‘safety advice onboard’ for your boat and a life jacket clinic at their marquee, alongside running a raffle in aid of Portsmouth Lifeboat Station with some great prizes to be won
• Portsmouth Marine Training will be promoting their RYA courses and training
• British Divers Marine Life Rescue will be offering advice and information about protecting marine wildlife
• Sing and dance along to live music from The Portsmouth Sea Shantymen
• Explore the taste of locally sourced gin from Portsmouth Distillery
• Meet club members and find out more about what’s on offer with Southsea Marina Angling Club

Food is available from local food vendors or at the onsite marina restaurants, The Marina Bar and Bombay Bay.

A date for your diaries: Our next SMAC Open Competition will be the hugely popular Bream Competition for the heaviest single bream caught from a boat.  The competition will be held from Southsea Marina on Sunday 5th May with reserve dates the following Sundays in the event of unsuitable weather. £10 per angler cash entry on the day or on-line booking will be available for boats not starting from Southsea Marina. For more details and on-line booking please click here.  Details of the prize table to follow.

I’m sure you will all be familiar with the sets of huge beacons that are outside and inside Portsmouth Harbour. You also probably know that these are to help the Navy’s new aircraft carriers HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales squeeze through the harbour entrance. However, have you wondered why in an age of technology that can pinpoint a letterbox from space you need visual leading marks? I have too, and you might find this video interesting. It is presented by David Goddard MBE FRIN (yes, the Goddard of the Goddard Beacons) and although it is rather slow and detailed, it does explain why they are needed and how they are used very well. Enjoy.

Help please! This survey is being conducted by the University of Portsmouth as a part of a Marine Biology undergraduate project about seals, their threats, conservation, and the public’s attitudes towards them in the Solent. The project is being run by Isabelle Barnsley, BSc Marine Biology student at the University of Portsmouth and she is hoping to include local club members and local berth holders in her research into the interaction between the resident seal population and leisure use of the Harbours.

If you would like to take part, please follow this link: Seal Survey

If you have any questions of comments you can contact Isabelle on the email address in the flyer below.

On 2^nd October we were treated to an excellent workshop presentation by Dr Peter Davies from the University of Plymouth, hosted by ECA. The purpose of the tagging project is to gather data on fish behaviour and movement in our local waters. Species included in the project are bream, tope, smoothhound and undulate rays, although data is also being gathered from other species such as bass and shad that have tagged by neighbouring projects and wandered into our patch.

Earlier tagging exercises relied on visible tags being recovered and this only showed where a fish’s journey started and ended. Advances in technology have now made it possible to gather much more information and at a more granular level. It even shows individual fish movements during a 24-hour cycle as well as much longer journeys such as to the Netherlands and the Channel Islands.

Fish are first caught by line and a transmitter is surgically embedded in their bodies. A visible tag is added so that if a fish is caught later on it can be released, or at least the transmitter can be recovered. The transmitter has a battery life of 10 years. The fish movement data is recorded by a network of devices laid on the seabed in key areas which are periodically raised to collect the data files for analysis.

The project is already gathering valuable information which can be used to make fact-based decisions on how to best protect fish stocks. This is surely better than the near guesswork which seems to have driven some of the decisions made previously.  The data will give a better understanding of the use of breeding locations, how long fish stay in specific areas, how far to they range and how well they survive catch and release handling.

As part of this programme to communicate with local angling groups, Peter explained how to spot a tagged fish and what to do with it. Basically, this to keep a record of the tag details and then quickly put it back in the sea because it has a rather special mission. There is a copy of the information leaflet below for sharks and rays. Tagged bream are more difficult to spot because they have a small yellow stamp on their dorsal fin (pictured).

The workshop concluded with an extensive Q&A session which demonstrated the keen interest in this project. However one question which had been on everyone’s mind was finally raised. Where did Peter get that brilliant t-shirt? We all wanted one.

Program Partners include the Professional Boatman’s Association with our own Stuart Newall (Harvest Moon); Natural England; Angling Trust and Southern IFCA.

For further information or to report tagged fish, please contact fishtracking@plymouth.ac.uk