Salt of the Sea | Media
Salt of the Sea
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24.01.2022 Something for Dad’s Day
20.01.2022 CHRISTMAS SHOPPING THE EASY WAY Salt of The Sea - Tales from Commercial Fishermen A very high quality, beautiful coffee table book with a hand made hard cover, heavy gloss pages, incredible full colour photos, and entertaining true stories concerning the most dangerous job in the world. This is a book that every true salt will cherish. Order by email to [email protected] or by Facebook message. $50 per copy, plus $15 express post Australia wide. Great reading, great value !
20.01.2022 Here are 4 photos straight from the book, supplied by a young lady named Elspeth Wildchild Davey who turns 20 years of age in a week or so. She's done so much i...n a such a short space of time - leaving school at 15 to unload Gulf Boats in Karumba she has become a masterful mackerel fisher-woman, and recently completed a banana prawn season in the Gulf. She's been on TV, radio and in her Dad's fantastic documentary Drawing The Line plus much more. Inspirational stuff Elspeth and it's a pleasure having you contribute to Salt of the Sea - Tales from Commercial Fishermen. If you haven't read it or don't own a copy visit www.saltofthesea.com.au where you can check out all the great reader's reviews and complete your purchase.
19.01.2022 The book launch 6 years ago, how time flies
18.01.2022 Xmas sorted for some clever peeps
17.01.2022 Christmas shopping made easy. This is an iconic, coffee table book with a hand made hard cover, full colour amazing photos and exciting true life tales of life ...at sea in the world’s most dangerous profession. $50 plus $15 postage within Australia. Don’t miss out, it’s a ripper yarn. Order by messenger or email [email protected] See more
13.01.2022 Captain Mick O’Hara at sea in the storm just off the sunny coast tonight. Salt of the Sea
13.01.2022 As promised, here's the next chapter of my book. Hope you enjoy while you stay isolated. Internet very slow so not loading every pic in this chapter. Introduction I’ve been privileged to hear many fantastic tales from fishermen operating in all types of fisheries, both within and outside of Australia. Some tales are funny, some tragic, some inspiring and some frightening. Deeply compelled to share their stories, I conducted a series of interviews with a few interesting indivi...Continue reading
11.01.2022 Good memories from the book launch 6 years ago. Thanks to my editor, Alex Fullerton, my typesetter, Jeanne Cotter and the all the fishing legends that bought the book to life.
07.01.2022 ' FREE TO THE PUBLIC" Something I might be able to do that's helpful for someone else. I'll try and post up a chapter each day, with accompanying photos. It wo...n't be quite the same as having the original hard cover coffee table book with gloss pages and full colour pics but I hope you enjoy anyway. Feel free to share. Stay safe, keep well. Salt of the Sea Author Dave Dawson Dave Dawson 2014 www.CommercialFishingSupplies.com.au [email protected] The views and opinions expressed in this book are those of the individual contributors alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of the author or any company or organisation. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or part, stored, posted on the internet, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or other, without permission from the author of this book. The author does not accept any form of liability for the contents of this book. Editing by: Alex Mitchell www.AuthorSupportServices.com Design by: Jeanne Treloar www.SassyBranding.com Printed and Bound in Australia National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication Author: Dave Dawson Title: Salt of the Sea Edition: 1st ed. I dedicate this book to commercial fishermen and their families, past present and future. FOREWORD Walter Starck grew up on an island in the Florida Keys, in a family of fishermen. He began catching and selling fish from the family dock at the age of five. At six he got his first boat and by high school was earning a good part-time income diving for crayfish. After graduating from the University of Miami, Walter went on to the Institute of Marine Science, which is among the top marine science research institutions in the world. Since then, Walter has worked on research projects in over two dozen countries for the National Science Foundation, Office of Naval Research and National Geographic Society. He has been Research Associate of the Institute of Marine Science, The Bernice P. Bishop Museum in Honolulu, The Australian Museum in Sydney and the Western Australia Museum. Walter has produced numerous articles, books, scientific reports and documentary films, and has been instrumental in the discovery of over 100 species of fishes and invertebrates and donated over 100,000 specimens for major museums. He has also been heavily involved in the design and development of boats, amphibious aircraft, underwater photographic and lighting equipment and the first successful closed circuit, mixed gas, electronically regulated breathing apparatus. Over the years, Walter has frequently been a consultant on matters relating to marine research and technology, so I was thrilled when he agreed to add his professional opinion to this book. "Fishermen are the last of the hunter gatherers. Their work is hard, dangerous, uncomfortable and fraught with uncertainty. Until recently, theirs was also one of the freest and most independent of all lifestyles. It was open to anyone who wished and attracted what others would call characters or oddballs. Sadly, this is fast disappearing. Misguided environmentalism, plus a malignant proliferation of bureaucracy, have already driven most fishermen from the industry and the bar to entry has become so high that few newcomers are replacing them. The remaining fishermen are truly an endangered species. Australia has the third largest fishing zone in the world and by far the largest on a per capita basis, yet we rank 51st in total production and import over two-thirds of the seafood we consume. Our production rate per square kilometre is about 1/30 of the global average. Fishery managers state that the reason for this is the low productivity of our waters. According to them, Australia exists in a ‘fish desert’. Strangely, this remarkable black hole in oceanic productivity has never been detected by the world’s oceanographers and our catch rates indicate abundant stocks. If we are to believe these office based ‘experts’ and the computer games they call models, our fish must converge on fishermen from miles around to get caught. Fig 1 Among our Asian neighbours, Australia has the largest fisheries area yet the smallest catch rate. Thailand, Australia’s largest source of seafood imports, produces in excess of ten times the total catch from an area less than five per cent of Australia’s EEZ. The most recent and authoritative global survey of coral reefs compiled by the World Resource Institute in 2010, states that well managed reef fisheries can produce an annual harvest of 15,000 kg per km2 of reef and lagoon area. This is not a ridiculous amount. It equates to 150 kg per ha, similar to a modest amount of cattle or sheep on moderately good grazing land. The catch on the Great Barrier Reef is restricted to 3041t. This amounts to a harvest rate of 9 kg/km2 or 90 gm/ha. In resource management terms this is a pathetic joke. What we do not take from the sea we must get from the land, with much greater impact on nature. Fisheries have the perceptual disadvantage of being out there, over the horizon and under the sea. The condition of fisheries is not apparent, nor is it easily determined. Anything can be claimed and who’s to know? As a result, fishing has suffered greatly from phoney claims and absurd levels of regulation. Fishermen are now restricted by complex and demanding rules as to who, where, when and how they can fish, what they can catch, the size it can be, how much they can catch, how it must be handled and who they can sell it to. Written reports with the details of everything caught are demanded, with heavy fines for any discrepancies. In many fisheries, fishers must carry an electronic tracking device, like a felon on parole. There are many claims that those who fall out of favour with the regulators receive unnecessary notices that their tracking device is not working properly. They must have it checked by a certified technician before they can continue to fish. This costs over a thousand dollars each time and can involve demands for repeated inspections even though no malfunction can be found. On larger vessels, some fishermen must even carry a government observer, furnish them with an air-conditioned cabin and pay them exorbitant overtime wages, just to ensure they don’t break any rules. Fig 2 Australia’s fishery production level is less than half that of New Zealand and less than one tenth of Thailand’s despite Australia’s much larger fisheries area. Licences and quotas are limited and hugely expensive. Increasingly, quotas permitting a specified level of catch are being bought up by investors and companies. In this way, the most valuable fisheries are fast becoming the property of absentee owners who lease their rights to the fishermen. The owners receive lucrative, upfront payments regardless of what is actually caught and the fishermen must bear all the expense, effort and risk of fishing. This situation has come about through generous issue of quotas when they were introduced and then later reductions in catch per unit of quota, forcing fishermen to obtain more quota to allow them to maintain an economically viable level of catch. Non-fishing ownership and quota cutbacks created a shortage of quota, forcing fishermen to lease or buy quota at inflated prices. Effectively, many fishermen have been reduced to sharecroppers. A key element in the resource management problems in fisheries has been a shift to reliance on computer modelling of stocks. In the past, fisheries management was largely based on empirical data from the performance of the fishery itself. You can’t catch fish that don’t exist and catch data can be a pretty good sample of the stock if one knows how to interpret it. This requires familiarity with the fishery and therefore usually a fair bit of time at sea. Then came computer modelling and management became an office job conducted hundreds or thousands of kilometres away from the actual fishery. These models are, in reality, only highly simplified guesses at what might be happening. They are based on very limited understanding of complex interactions and incorporate numerous estimates and assumptions. Often the inputs amount to self-fulfilling prophesies, as they are calculated from other inputs to yield an assumed result. Verification is fundamental to good modelling practice but seems to be rarely applied in fishery modelling. On the contrary, the models are claimed to be intellectual property, which for reasons of confidentiality cannot be made available for independent examination. They are also not a construct of expert computer programmers, but in the few instances where independent examination has been successfully insisted upon, the programming has proved to be largely borrowed, poorly documented and decidedly unprofessional. Fig 3 Australia’s fisheries harvest rate per kilogram per square kilometre can be seen just above the border of the above table almost negligible! It would be bad enough if the damage done to the fishing industry was restricted to the industry alone, but there are even much greater costs to the wider society. The bottom line of all this for consumers is limited supply, prohibitively high prices and reduced consumption. This is all at a time when recent large-scale clinical and epidemiological studies have reported a broad range of health benefits of seafood. In particular, omega-3 fatty acids, which are deficient in most foods from the land but are abundant in seafood. Consumption of seafood three times per week has been found to provide significant benefits in immune system related disorders, cardio-vascular and neurological functioning and development. The difference in incidence of these disorders between countries with high levels of seafood consumption and our own population shows us that we could save billions of dollars and relieve much of the financial strain of our health care system. Although government and health care professionals are aware of the desirability of greater seafood consumption and some efforts are being made to promote this, no formal cost/benefit assessment has been conducted and there is little appreciation of the magnitude of potential benefits, either financial or societal. Worse still, any real increase in consumption is being thwarted by limited supply and prohibitive prices resulting from the gross mismanagement of our marine resources by bureaucracy. Fig 4 Despite alarmist claims of worldwide overfishing, there are no signs of significant decline in fisheries harvest rates over five and a half decades. On top of the social and economic losses suffered through the changes to the fishing industry, we are also facing the loss of our freedom to live our lives as we see fit within the constraints of the rights of others to do the same. Whether for entertainment, history or inspiration to see that change is affected, this is a book worth reading.
06.01.2022 Any of my mates help this fella ? Seems keen
04.01.2022 An awesome Christmas gift . Fantastic photos and stories of life at sea as a commercial fisher. $50 plus $15 postage anywhere in Australia. Order by email to [email protected]
