Seaham Angling Club

Background
Aims and Objectives
Results
Perceived trends in catches of different fish species by Seaham Sea Angling Club
The Future
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Background

The Seaham Angling Club was founded in 1912 and is one of the oldest and largest sea angling clubs in the UK. The club's members mostly fish from the shore, principally from Ryhope Dene to Hawthorn Hive. Over the last 20 years the club's membership has ranged between 321 and 577.

The members were acutely aware of the changes occuring along the Durham coastline, and a number of their observations suggest that these changes have influenced the distribution and abundance of a variety of fish species close to the shore. The club were keen to try and monitor how the current and future changes to the Durham coast would influence their catches, and also demonstrated much interest in how wider environmental factors influence the distribution and behaviour of marine fish.
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Aims & Objectives

1) To appraise the data held by the Sea Angling Club, on its club records and match fishing events.
2) To discuss ways of improving the environmental monitoring potential of the angling club fish records.
3) To produce materials to assist with this aim.
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Results

The club's members have anecdotally recorded a large number of changes in the nature of their catches, reflecting local and more widespread changes in fish distribution and abundance (See table below). For example, the club reports that until the 1970s its members caught "good numbers of spurdog, haddock and black bream", as well as regular catches of thornback ray. These species are now rarely caught. Absence of several of these species, spurdog and thornback ray in particular, is associated with a widespread reduction in the abundance of these species throughout the North Sea, at a time of rapidly increasing commercial exploitation. Black bream are typically a southerly species, and their occurence in catches in the 1960's is also of interest. The increase in bass catches reflects the trend of a recent northerly expansion in their distribution, while recent catches of wrasse may be linked to improved habitat availability.
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Trends in Catch

Perceived trends in catches of different fish species by Seaham Sea Angling Club

Stable over last 20 years	Decline over last 30+years	Decline over last 5 years	Increase over last 5 years
Cod (Gadus morhua)	Spurdog¹ (squalus acanthias)	Common eel² (Anguilla anguilla)	Bass (Dicentrarchus labrax)
Whiting (Merlangius merlangus)	Thornback ray¹ (Raja clavata)		Wrasse² (Labrus bergylta)
Coalfish (Pollachius virens)	Lesser spotted dogfish (Scyliorhinus caniculus)
Flounder (Platichthyes flesus)	Haddock¹ (Melanogrammus aeglefinus)		Herring³ (Clupea harengus)
Dab (Limanda limanda)	Black bream¹ (Spondyliosoma cantharus)		Lemon sole³ (Microstomus kitt)
Plaice (Platessa platessa)
Mackerel (Scomber scombrus)

¹<2 reported capture by club members in last 15 years.
² especially over last 3 years.
³ probable increase.
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The Future

Where most of the verbal reports described above probably reflect genuine changes in the abundance of these species in the locality, other factors can also influence catches. Although the club also keeps detailed records of competions the usefulness of such information for environmental monitoring and for seeking to provide answers to the club's enthusiastic inquiries as to the causes of catch variability is limited. The club has recognised this and is keen to introduce a system, which would provide more information, although they explained the impracticability of weighing every fish caught. To this end the DCCEP agrred to design a system of recording which would produce more detailed information, whilst limiting the increase in recording required.

New monitoring forms have now been designed by Durham University, one of the project partners, to enable more monitoring information to be collected from the club's catch data.
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