The bass, struggling gamely to survive, brings into play its second set of weapons, razor sharp plates on the side of the head and the gill covers. Trying, as best it can, it shakes its head from side to side, pushing these lethal surfaces as far out as it can stretch. The results must be intensely painful, which is probably why cormorants fishing in estuaries tend to target species other than bass, like trout, eels and flounders.
Of course, for the bass, the best thing to do in these situations is not to get into them in the first place, which is why its body is slightly darker on the back. When viewed from above this makes them slightly harder to spot while its silver underbody makes them harder to see from underneath, especially when crossing deeper, open water.
Assuming that the small bass survive their first, hazardous years, they will migrate to the open sea and begin to grow, fairly slowly by fish standards, towards their adult state. Unfortunately for them they will then encounter the full weight of the commercial fishing industry with lots of people wanting to catch and sell this particularly tasty fish. What makes this worse is the market value of the species, which places a considerable bounty upon their heads. Add in the awful methods used to catch them, like pair trawling, which is also killing so many of our beautiful dolphins, and you will soon see that the bass is in a very scary place to be.
MAFF - The Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Fisheries - decided in 1990 that bass needed some protection so they introduced 34 nursery areas which were designed to give the bass a chance to grow to maturity. This was a welcome step but all the good achieved by this measure is now threatened by pair trawlers, most notably from France and Scotland, which are targetting bass in the very act of breeding. Hopefully the government will realise the danger that the bass are in - it is not much use having nursery areas when your parents are slaughtered before you are even born or, in the case of bass, laid - and decide to do something about it. It is also to be hoped that they reach this decision sooner rather than later.
The bass may be a fierce and efficient hunter but, when confronted with 'progress' in the form of our technology, it may be facing a challenge that it cannot defeat. It needs our help, and decisive action on the part of our politicians, if it is going to survive. Let us hope that it gets both.
