Our Friend, the Wrasse.

Sunday 8th of April 2018. The sun is shining, wind absent and Falmouth is experiencing a neap tide. 2 weeks earlier to the day, lured by a false promise of small surf, I'd ventured the first kayak fishing trip of 2018 only to be sent back frustrated at time lost to sketchy strong winds and currents, resulting in large standing waves, anchoring dangerous and fishing impossible. But today there's a buzz in the air. Riding on this seasonal shift seemed to be the whole of Falmouth's inhabitants, with surfboard laden cars queuing towards every beach, the smell of barbequed meat hazily spreading and warmth reflected in many smiles. And I was with them, taking the kayak for a walk through town to launch from Gylly, my nearest beach. 

Last time I launched with apprehension, seeing the waves bigger than anticipated, telling of the futility to come. This time the gentle surf just kissed the sides of the kayak, sending me off into the calm blue with a gentle glide (though admittedly I still haven't quite mastered the art of graceful entry with a tackle-laden kayak). I headed for an old favourite reef of mine, past the nudist beach (equally busy as everywhere else today), to a spot that has consistently delivered wrasse, pollock and even a good number of bass. After trying with metal jigs and feathers over the length of this ground it seemed that the pollock weren't home today, so to wrasse my attention turned. Ballan wrasse have a special place in my heart, skulking territorially in underwater labyrinths of rock and kelp, venturing out only a little way to pugnaciously see your lure away. I vertically jigged a weedless soft-plastic lure beneath with the slow drift of the kayak, making sure to feel regular snatches of rock and kelp to know that the lure was in the bite zone. 

Pretty soon I was greeted by a snag that snatched some line from my spool with a thump before leaving the lure free. It seemed odd, so I lowered the lure straight back down. This time I had a much more solid connection with this thumping snag, it could only be the characteristic take of a wrasse. After curbing the first dive of my quarry to its tackle-snatching snags, I gained a little line towards the surface. This wrasse must have now realized all was not well, and it reacted the way that wrasse always seem to. My rod tip plunged beneath the surface and my reel was screaming with glee as the fish tore line back, leaving me palming the spool and hoping the backbone of my spro would be enough to win over this aggressive fight. After a couple more dives I found myself unhooking a large, brilliantly bronze coloured ballan wrasse.

Fighting till the end, this wrasse was nicely sticking up its fins in defiance. Fiiish black minnow lure used to catch this individual can be seen folded over on the upper lip.

 

Other great things to love about wrasse: They come in such a suite of colours to camouflage themselves against their domain of choice, from this burnished bronze to strawberry-like red with pale spots. They also have a crazy life cycle, starting off as female and then transitioning to male when dominant males die, with large males territorially defending their harem of females. Thirdly, they have a formidable set of jaws if you're a marine invertebrate, with their broad teeth making light work of any unfortunate crab's exoskeleton. 

Nice red-brown ballan caught on previous trip, quite typical of the kelp bed that it was caught from. 

After a couple of pictures and admiration my wrasse was quickly slipped back to its home below. But I can't talk about this brilliant species without a word of anxiety. You see, while this species has largely avoided commercial exploitation due to its bony meat (so I hear, never tried but will happily tell others that such is the case if it keeps the wrasse safe!) a new threat faces these fish. Salmon farms in Scotland, amongst a plethora of other environmental crimes, have begun importing live wrasse from the coasts of South West England. Such action is to control salmon lice infections that plague farms due to chronically high stocking density allowing easy transmission, with wrasse happily performing cleaner function in eating these lice. However, this wholesale theft of wrasse populations is fundamentally unsustainable, as a farm manager conceded 6 years ago even before the practice became widespread [1]. 

Now I know that wrasse probably aren't on the top of everyone's radar, perhaps not even on those of people disposed to reading to this blog, but bear with me on this one. Recent predictions stand that a million wrasse are taken every year from Special Areas of Conservation in Southern British waters every year [2]. This entirely unregulated depletion of natural populations has raised alarm bells from a number of marine conservation groups, as there is no real knowing what effect loss of this unique predator from marine ecosystems might have. We've already seen the collapse of many marine ecosystems, from the great banks fisheries collapse to our pitifully low bass breeding populations, and the fact remains that there is little else that can replace the top-down predation function that the ballan wrasse performs in their ecosystem. Further, as my 3^rd year research project taught me, exploitation of sequential hermaphroditic species such as wrasse is likely to have a disproportionate affect in disrupting their population structure, and wrasse are slow growing to recover from this exploitation- meaning massive, long-lasting negative impact.

So next time you're in the fishmongers, or realistically for most of us, the supermarket, take a moment to think. Is the damage that our obsession with unnaturally pink salmon worth debt that it takes from our beautiful coastal ecosystems? Can that middle-class seafood brunch really compare to the breathtaking connection of coming face-to-face with the bold and pugnacious native character of our coastlines for millions of snorklers, divers and anglers around the UK? I beg of you to put positive environmental change before petit comforts. Consider our friend, the wrasse. 

Dan

Consider our friend, the wrasse. 

[1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-19878554

[2] https://www.undercurrentnews.com/2018/03/12/anglers-could-sue-uk-govt-over-wrasse-catches-for-salmon-farming/