Fish And (Computer) Chips
‘GEORGE Bush may have been accused of lazy thinking when it comes to drawing comparisons between his situation and that which faced Winston Churchill, but it can’t be any lazier than this.
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| ”Don’t worry, be happy – my arse” |
In the River Towy in West Wales, regarded as the best sea trout river in Europe, anglers will no longer have to pitch their wits against the fish. As the Times reports, ”cameras and sonic devices installed in the river will now tell anglers how many fish are around, what type they are, and where they are heading”.
”Reports on the number, size and swimming direction of the fish will be published on the Carmarthen Fishermen’s Federation website, giving vital clues to anglers,” it writes.
It’s just not cricket, you might think. Surely this gives the anglers an unfair advantage over their quarry? ”The cameras are not intended to make fishing easier,” says Garth Roberts, secretary of the Federation. But if, as an unintentional by-product of the CCTV surveillance, fishing does become easier, it can only be a good thing for the area – more than 5,000 tickets are granted for tourists to fish the Towy every year, with more than £5 million generated in commercial spin-offs.
But still, there are some people who smell something fishy about the whole scheme. ”They are basically cheating,” says a spokesman from the Campaign for the Abolition of Angling. ”A sport is supposed to be a contest between equals and this technology is really an extra advantage.”
But fish have proven time and time again that they are more than equal to a human being with a fishing rod, and maybe all this high-tech underwater surveillance is just evening up the score.
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Posted: 29th, August 2002 | In: Broadsheets Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
