Belfast Letter: Protecting the prawn starter’s integrity

Getting ready to kick off your Christmas dinner in style in two days time with a classic prawn starter?

It's a perennial favourite but one that could have a certain ingredient missing in the North according to one local fishing co-operative: prawns caught by Northern Ireland fishermen. Despite the fact that the most important catch for fishermen along the Co Down coast is Nephrops or Dublin Bay prawns, the Anglo North Irish Fish Producers' Organisation says they are more likely to be enjoyed by diners outside the North.

Thousands of tonnes of prawns are landed every year in harbours like Annalong, Ardglass, Kilkeel and Portavogie. But a significant percentage is exported to Europe and, more recently, the Middle East were people are developing a taste for the prawns harvested sustainably in waters all around Britain and Ireland.

Family run firms like Kilkeel-based Rooney Fish are firmly focused on winning new export business. It exports its entire output of shellfish.

Businesses like Rooney Fish and Kilkeel Seafoods, which earlier this year invested nearly £1 million to expand its processing facilities, are vital employers in the area. Kilkeel is still the North's principal fishing port but the local community has had to look outside the fishing industry to try and create new economic opportunities.

Quota cuts

Fishermen have suffered repeated cuts to

quotas

which govern the amount of fish they are permitted to catch under European Union laws. Last week, the EU Fisheries Council imposed a further 20 per cent cut in the Irish Sea cod quota for 2015. Alan McCulla, chief executive of fish producers’ group, says the quota cut highlights why fishing communities need to “diversify to survive”.

“In the past 16 years, there has been a 97 per cent reduction in the Irish Sea cod quota despite the fact that cod is important to the management of deep-sea fisheries in the Irish Sea.

“One positive development is that, next year, there will be a 3 per cent increase in the amount of prawns our fishermen can fish for and there will be no change to the Irish Sea haddock quota, but the cuts to cod are still a big issue for us,” McCulla says.

He says the Co Down fishing community is very aware that quotas can fluctuate every year and this is why fishermen have had to change the habits of a lifetime and look for other work.

“They are using their skills and their expertise of the sea to do other things, like provide services for offshore energy firms or survey companies and research organisations. It is a change of direction for them: they’re still fishermen but they are not doing what their father or grandfather was doing every day. But this is also bringing indirect benefits to entire communities on the Co Down coast,” McCulla said.

Promoting fisheries

The fish producers’ group has itself also blossomed into a new organisation – SeaSource – that not only encompasses the responsibilities of the producers’ organisation but also promotes and seeks to protect the local fishing industry.

The board wants to position Kilkeel as a maritime centre of excellence and is hoping to secure funding to upgrade the harbour. In the meantime McCulla says that, if people made just one simple new year’s resolution, it could transform the North’s fishing industry in the short term.

“Most people wouldn’t know that, in all likelihood, the fish they buy at their local chip shop probably hasn’t come from Northern Ireland fishermen; its more likely to have come from Iceland, Russia or Norway.

So McCulla’s message to anyone thinking of giving up their regular visit to a local fish and chip shop as a new year’s resolution is, pause a moment. Check first if they are selling fish caught or produced locally and then make your decision.