Salmon poaching increases in line with recession

SALMON POACHING is on the rise because of the recession, according to officials in charge of the State’s inland fisheries.

They say that “illegal activity on rivers has increased due to the recession as people have more time on their hands”. There is also a “tradition of poaching” in some rural locations where people believe they have “the right” to harvest and sell the fish.

Authorities are dismayed by recent evidence of the illegal “lamping” of salmon (the use of powerful bright lights to stun the fish), a practice more traditionally associated with hunting rabbits.

Poachers use pitchforks to spear fish when they have come to spawn in shallow water. Spawning salmon have “lost all their fear, are exhausted and are easy prey”. The poachers attach “barbs” to the prongs of the pitchfork to prevent the fish from slipping off. But the activity was described as counterproductive because the flesh of such fish is “insipid”.

Suzanne Campion, of the Southern Regional Fisheries Board, has appealed to the public not to buy poached salmon because the activity is “threatening to ruin the biodiversity” of Irish rivers and is “harming angling tourism”.