Charlie Bartlett

Are you the only charter boat out of Aberdyfi?

I’m the last one here. There’s one in Barmouth and one in Pwllheli. I’m 73, and most of the lads I know still doing it are all in the same age group, so we’re all getting to that stage. I offered to hand the business down to my grandson, Tom, and he said, “Nope. Because I don’t know what the weather’s going to do”.

And even I’ve noticed that now. I was very sceptical about climate change, but I am seeing things now. It’s definitely here.

So you’ve noticed changes in weather patterns?

Yeah, I’m finding extremes. Now you get three, four, maybe five days of decent weather, and then you get six or seven days of extreme weather where nobody can get out. My diary’s full for next year. But it’s no good if you have to keep calling people to say we can’t get out there.

Are you seeing changes in the types of fish you’re catching?

We’re seeing things in our waters we’ve never seen before. I’m a member of SIARC (Sharks Inspiring Action and Research). We’re monitoring the angel sharks; they’re a protected species. SIARC said angel sharks were very rare and of course I said, “Are they? Because I’ve been seeing a lot of them. I can go and catch you one to look at if you want!” So within 10 minutes we got one. They were so over the moon to see it and they took DNA samples. It fascinates me that they can take a water sample now which can tell you if there’s angel sharks out there or not.

We also used to catch a lot of thornback rays out here. But commercial fishing came along and wiped them out. Thornback rays used to keep spider crab numbers down by eating the smaller crabs.

But with fewer thornbacks around, the crabs aren’t being controlled anymore. So when a thornback ray comes in to lay an egg purse, lots of spider crabs gather, tear it open and eat what’s inside. There’s an imbalance now. They’ve never recovered. The trouble is, I’ve always said, commercial fishermen only fish for today.

We’ve also started tagging tope, a small shark about four to six feet long and we’ve had a lot of success. I’ve occasionally caught the odd red mullet now and again but I’ve been helping SIARC put cameras down on the seabed, and the amount of red mullet that was swimming past the cameras – I couldn’t believe it!

And are you seeing different patterns in the species that you’re catching at different times of the year now?

Yeah. Things are getting earlier. We’ve got a species that’s spawned here, black bream. And the bream literally arrived two to three weeks earlier this year because of the heat, and they’ve gone two weeks earlier.

Up until the last five years, we used to get mackerel right throughout the season. Well, now we’re finding that once we get into May, we’re struggling. And then all of a sudden, it’s like the end of September/October, the bay’s full of them again, absolutely full. I’ve got a feeling that the water is getting too warm in the bay. I mean, we’re talking 20, 21°C in the height of the summer. Once I get out 30 miles offshore it starts dropping down.

How do feel looking forward to 50 or 100 years’ time?

I’ve always said right from the start, I’ve had the best of it; I’m only borrowing it. I was very sceptical about climate change. Now I’ve suddenly realised, yeah, these patterns of weather are changing big time. And this is where I get lads on the boat saying “Climate change? This is the British climate – it’s always been changeable”.

And I think yeah, it’s changeable, but not to the extremes we’ve seen lately. Or people say to me, “Charlie, you sound like you’re an environmentalist”. I say, “Not totally”. But if we carry on the way we are at the moment, I dread to think what it’s going to be like, we’re going to have nothing left. A lot of it is common sense, isn’t it? We’ve got to think about the consequences.