IT doesn't take a rocket scientist to work out that no pleasure fishermen and only a very hardy minority of commercial fishermen went anywhere near the offshore grounds this past weekend and into the week. Quite apart from the Arctic-like conditions that were enough to keep anyone near a space heater or fireplace, the winds were more than sufficient to make for high seas that made fishing all but impossible. With the water so stirred up, any trolling effort would likely be in vain and no one would even want to hazard a guess at what the tide conditions would have been like for chumming.

Actually heavy weather fulfils a vital role in nature's recycling programme. If you think of the ocean as a farm with green plants (phytoplankton) and animals ranging from the microscopic (zooplankton) all the way up to the very large, marlin, sharks and whales, it is relatively easy to grasp some idea of what is going on.

Just about everyone knows that it takes water, nutrients in the form of fertiliser and sunlight to grow plants. Well, the ocean has all that and more. Obviously, no shortage of water, and there are lots of nutrients dissolved in the water (not unlike hydroponics practised on land) and sunlight during the daylight hours. Given the above, there should be no reason that the plant material should not do well.

The trick comes from the fact that the areas where the water is richest in nutrients tends to be at latitudes where the day length is more variable.

Consider the rich-waters of the Gulf of the Saint Lawrence.

During the winter the day length is really short so perhaps the relative absence of light means that the plant life can't grow and multiply as much as it would during the summer.

As the spring arrives and days get longer, the plant material really starts to turn on. Unfortunately, much as is the case on the farm, when the grass starts growing the animals start feeding. The microscopic animals get to work first, grazing on all this nice green stuff.

Shortly thereafter filter feeding organisms start to sieve their way through loads of tiny animals. Remember that some of the great whales are filter feeders and it is these tiny zooplankton that are their mainstay.

Some of the other filter feeding organisms are what the sportsman terms bait species. While they are filtering away madly, predatory species show up and start to feed on these smaller fishes. As the food chain progresses, larger fish feed on the species on the rung below them and so on all the way to the top when giant tuna are tearing their way through schools of menhaden or mackerel.

Sounds good, doesn't it. Unfortunately perpetual motion doesn't exist neither do perfect energy systems. As each level of the food chain is attained some materials are lost to the living organisms. This may be in the form of metabolic wastes, excrement or simply bits of a fish chopped into pieces that escape the predator's jaws and slip down into the black depths where the bacteria will have their crack at it.

The net effect is that all living things are made up of the stuff of fertiliser and as plants and animals die they are converted back into the chemicals that made them up in the first place. So far there is nothing wrong with this but the problem comes that things sink in the ocean and the nutrients resulting from either direct input from rivers or indirectly through the decomposition of once living organisms often end up in the water below where the light reaches and, so, are effectively lost to the system.

This is where Mother Nature plays a bit of a trump card. Winter storms, often of a magnitude not seen here, cause incredible levels of mixing of the deeper water back up with the surface waters bringing the temporarily lost nutrients back into play. As surely as spring follows winter, the abundance of nutrient material and the lengthening days ensure that the process is repeated, seemingly ad infinitum.

Although we are situated in the ocean desert, this process does work locally to some degree. Here in the mid-Atlantic, we are far from most of the sources of nutrient input. That is to say, we have no great rivers close to us, pouring out hundreds of tons of material, no sources of heavy organic input such as bird guano and little else. What we do have, though, is recycled through the same process and, truth to tell, there are much larger and far more complicated systems in nature whereby water that is here now eventually travels the world undergoing various changes over a very long period of time.

As with so many of nature's wonders, these things are poorly understood but universally acknowledged that they do work. What it all boils down to is it provides the basis for life in the ocean and this is essential if we want any fish to catch. It has to be remembered that it is a fish's first job to try to remain alive and reproduce, so it too is dependent upon this greater scheme of things.

So not to worry about a wintry blast and a few gales, it is all part of a system that makes the world as it should be. Now that we are into March, which incidentally, tried to slip in in lamb-like conditions, spring is not far away and before you know it you'll be wishing that you had got the boat ready in good time.

Speaking of which, now is a good time to think about getting the boat ready for the season. Boatyards are usually on a bit of slow time prior to the mad dash that precedes the 24th May rush (a scant 11 or so weeks away). Getting the boat ready sooner rather than later means that you will be ready for anything that happens and you will have avoided the madness of trying to compete with all the rest of the crowd as summer comes into bloom. Once you are ready, the whole year lies before you, ready and waiting.

Certainly by April, and that's just weeks away, there will be every chance that the fishing will be picking up. Early runs of wahoo are certainly not unheard of and, all too often, these can be exceedingly brief. The present offshore water temperature is not far off that associated with such runs and, doubtless, the pro's will be keeping an eye on things. If everything comes right there will be a sudden mad dash for Tight lines!!!