FALL AND RISE OF THE RAJA
Thornback ray numbers around Wales went into freefall back in the 1990s. Seemingly, now that pressure on these remarkable fish is easing, they are becoming more widespread
Charting the fortunes of thornback ray.
The first sizeable sea fish I ever caught was a thornback ray. This encounter with Raja clavata was on my first charter trip out of Swansea some time in the early 1970s, aboard the original Lady Helen with skipper Paul Radford. That fish weighed somewhere around 10lb, and I could not have been more pleased had I caught a double-figure bass. The same could not be said for my mother, when hours later I emptied the plastic bag containing the now congealed mass of stinking snot and slime out on to the kitchen worktop, and demanded she cook it for tea.
I have since caught a great many thornback rays from around the coast of Wales, notably from my home turf down south in the Bristol Channel. During my formative days of dinghy fishing, we would boat upwards of a dozen or more every tide without actually fishing for them, and mostly they weighed comfortably into double figures.
Prime time for thornback rays was always spring through early autumn, although on many occasions I have been surprised during a midwinter cod trip when a thornback rather than a plump cod has emerged from the murky upper channel water and glided over the rim of the landing net. That was how the fishing used to be, but in recent years it’s been a different story.
GETTING SMALLER
Certainly thornbacks are still a relatively common catch here in the Bristol Channel, and if you set out to catch them, you’ll most likely enjoy some success.
Many of the old marks where they used to be especially abundant – Sully Bay, Aberthaw, the deeper gullies off Stout Point and similar marks around Swansea Bay – still produce fish, but in recent years their average size has dropped from over 10lb to around 6-8lb, and fish over 12lb, which once were common, are now rare. For the record, my personal best for the species is 17lb 8oz, a fish caught over a patch of broken ground at Port Eynon Bay on the Gower.
Another noticeable change locally has been in the distribution of thornback rays. Back in the day, it was unusual, though not unheard of, to pick one up to the east of Cardiff. Boat anglers would find a few around the Cardiff North Buoy and an area called The Middle Pool and further east at Newport Deeps. Shore anglers fishing the various mud and peat ledge marks upstream from the mouth of the River Usk would also bag a fish or two in summer and early autumn.
RAY REDISTRIBUTION
Today, thornback rays are caught all the way up the channel as far as the Severn Bridges, and more and more anglers specifically target them from the shore.
I used to regularly shore fish at St Brides, near Newport. Often we would fish the frequent and especially well-attended matches held here, yet never can I remember either catching or seeing a thornback, whereas today they are taken all along this still popular seawall venue.
Cardigan Bay, on the west coast of Wales, used to be one of the most productive places anywhere in the British Isles for catching thornback rays. Fishing with Vic Haigh aboard his Endeavour boats out from Aberystwyth, we would boat dozens a day, and at times we saw them almost as a nuisance species. These days, things have changed, and not for the better.
“During the 1980s the number of thornback rays we could catch out in Cardigan Bay was limitless,” said Charlie Bartlett, skipper of Aberdovey-based charter boat Mikatcha. “I remember stopping for an hour’s bottom fishing during a mackerel trip, and the group of holidaymakers I had on board caught between 80 and 90 rays. Another day we boated 120 fish in a four-hour session off Borth – 97 per cent of these were released.”
He continued: “The big decline began in 2000, when my catch records showed we caught ‘only’ 756 thornbacks. The following year the number was down to 54...then in 2002 we caught just four. Since then we have not caught more than four thornback rays during any one year. Last year I didn’t see one aboard my boat, and only know of one fish that was caught in the area.
“A marine biologist has told me that thornback rays are a territorial species, often returning to the same areas year on year to feed and spawn during the summer. Commercial fishermen working Cardigan Bay started targeting rays during the summer months, and the result of their indiscriminate fishing methods are now plain for all to see.
“They blame the large number of spider crabs for the decline in ray and lobster numbers, saying they eat the rays’ egg cases. The irony of the situation is that the thornbacks used to feed on the spider crabs, keeping their numbers at sensible levels.”
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The story north of the Lleyn Peninsula in Caernarfon Bay is positive. In fact there are some good tidings from Andy Owen, who used to be the owner/skipper of Caernarfon-based charter boat Morgan James II: “Towards the end of the 1990s and for the first couple of years of the new millennium we saw a dramatic decline in numbers of thornback rays we were catching.
“In recent years these fish have shown encouraging signs of a recovery, so much so that these days, if thornbacks are what anglers want to catch, I know a few areas where they can expect to find them.
“Certainly, it’s no coincidence that this increase in thornback ray numbers has started now that we have no trawlers working in the area. I would say the average size of ray we see today is 6-8lb, whereas years ago many were 10-12lb. Hopefully, the recovery will continue and the catching of double-figure rays will again be a daily occurrence.”
Returning south to the Bristol Channel, what I do find very interesting is that while we have seen changes in thornback ray numbers, average size and distribution, over the same period of time other species of ray appear to have done very well, especially blonde rays, which I have documented on several occasions. ■