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Operation Fish and Microchips: Tagging is latest weapon against poachers
Last updated at 23:37pm on 30.05.07
Chips4Fish is taggng carp in private fisheries to save them from poachers
Freshwater fish are being micro-chipped in an effort to deter poachers.
The project – dubbed "chips for fish" – involves hundreds of carp, pike and perch in private fisheries. They will be injected with the electronic tags to help identify them if they are stolen.
As with micro-chipping a cat or dog, the tiny chip is registered to a national database which stores information on the owner.
The devices mean that a thief who eats a fish and its chip can be traced – as long as the culprit is found in time for his stomach to be scanned.
Carp rustling is a growing problem in the angling world and costs fisheries and farms tens of thousands of pounds a year.
Thieves hook prize fish, place them in water tanks in cars and sell them to rival fisheries. A top-of-the-range 30lb carp can be worth as much as £2,500.
Recent years have seen the added problem of eastern Europeans plundering the lakes to take fish for the dinner table.
Although we don't eat coarse fish in this country, in Poland and Russia they are part of the staple diet.
The scheme has been launched by a company called Chips4Fish based in Eastbourne, East Sussex. Its owner, Tony Loveless, has already chipped hundreds of fish in the South-East and hopes to roll out the scheme across the country.
He said: "We are doing this to primarily help venues keep their fish and defeat those who steal them for financial gain.
"Large specimen carp are always the likely target of thieves, both from garden ponds and from commercial fisheries and fish farms. They are quite valuable. To put a 30lbs carp in your lake will cost you several thousands of pounds because it generates more business as anglers want to catch them.
"But we are aware there has been a problem of some immigrants removing coarse fish and taking them home for the dinner table.
"They will probably detect the chip just like a fish bone but the tags would still work if they were eaten."
Mr Loveless admitted there were some drawbacks. "If somebody is determined to steal a fish either to sell or eat then they are going to do it. You have got to know where the fish has gone to or for somebody to find it for it to be scanned and then it can be returned to its rightful owner."
David de Vere, owner of Temple Lake fishery near Dorking in Surrey, has had all his fish tagged already.
"It is a great fishery management tool," he said. "But it helps with security as well. If a fish was stolen and cropped up elsewhere there will be no debate as to who owns it."
