We rod and line anglers catch somewhere between 380 & 690 tonnes of Bass a year - And that's just non commercial fishermen

The Government department in charge of regulating our Sea Fisheries is DEFRA. And they have recently released the results of their Sea Angling 2012 Survey. You probably missed its release. I certainly don't recall Fiona Bruce mentioning it on the evening news - nope it passed me by to, well it very nearly did. If it wasn't for the boys at Sea Angler giving me the heads up then it would have escaped me entirely.

There is some amazing stuff within the report. For example just take my headline; apparently we rod and line sea anglers catch and take (kill) somewhere between 380 and 690 Tonnes of bass a year. This surprises me greatly; firstly because the margin of error is 310 Tonnes of bass which is vast and secondly because I don't believe even the lower end of the scale: Do you? It seems to me to suit the powers that be to big up the recreational bass kill so that they can better defend the commercial kill.

Apparently there are 884,000 sea anglers in England (yes just England). This merry band of brothers spent £1.23 Billion on the sport (I'm going to need a bigger boat). And this supported 10,400 full time equivalent jobs. And if you factor in something called 'indirect and induced effects'  (and yes of course DEFRA did factor it in) then sea angling supported £2.1 Billion and 23,600 jobs - b*gger it, I'll get two bigger boats!

Some of this stuff is simply astounding. I know that the sums are done with England in mind but let me draw a quick parallel. Here in west Wales, in the harbour towns of Cardigan, New Quay, Aberaeron and Aberystwyth there is precisely 1 person gaining full time employment out of recreational sea angling and that is me. And let me tell you this; I ain't earning much! Certainly my contribution to the £2.1 billion is less than 0.001% (Health warning follows - my math is poor. I got an e at o'level and I've done very little since so don't critic me if that is a poor stat)!

Next time you bump into a senior politician take the opportunity to remind him or her of how important recreation sea angling is to the UK's economy and how we should protect our fish stocks so that sea anglers keep going sea angling in to the future and so that Tim has a job.