Drift-net fishing for salmon may shortly be banned, but will this boost fish stocks? Lorna Siggins, Marine Correspondent, reports.
If he was an Iberian lynx, a Spanish imperial eagle or a brown bear living in Greece, John O'Brien reckons he would have more of a chance. A self-professed "de Valera" Fianna Fáil man from the Co Donegal island of Inishbofin, O'Brien is an endangered species - but without any EU habitats directive to protect him.
He meets many "habitat" qualifications, including being a fluent Irish speaker who professes to finding it difficult to converse in English, a father to six young Gaeilgeoirí who are the mainstay of the local school, a skilled boatman.
But O'Brien depends for part of his income on another fragile species, the wild Atlantic salmon. Since he took his Leaving Cert in Falcarragh, Co Donegal, O'Brien has endeavoured to earn a living off his coastline, having no desire to emigrate east or west as many kinsmen have before him. Nor does he want that for his children.
"The Government says it is committed to keeping people in Gaeltacht areas, but that's easier said than done around here. The nearest factory to us - and we've seen quite a few closing in this county recently - is almost two hours away."
In summer, that journey would include a sea passage from Inishbofin, where O'Brien, his wife Mary and their children live among a community of some 20 families. In winter, they move into Machaire Rabhartaigh to be near secondary schools for the older children. One of his sons, aged 19, has his name down to study at the Bord Iascaigh Mhara (BIM) fishery school in Greencastle.
"But he is in two minds, and it's all because of this shadow over us now."
That "shadow" has taken on a new intensity since a vote on February 27th by the National Salmon Commission (NSC), a Government advisory body to which O'Brien was nominated last year. That vote recommended an end to "mixed stock" exploitation of salmon from the end of this season - some quarters have interpreted this as a ban on drift-net fishing of salmon. Confusion at the meeting was caused by an interpretation of scientists' advice by fishery managers who are currently jockeying for position in the new centralised inland fishery authority.
There is no agreed definition of "mixed stock" exploitation, but loosely it means the interception of returning migratory fish which originated in different river systems - at sea, on estuaries, or even up rivers below tributaries.
The meeting's recommendation has been forwarded to Minister for Marine Noel Dempsey and his Minister of State John Browne, who have just days, under current regulations, to rule on the highly complex issue.
O'Brien is in a minority within a minority - as one of some 1,500 commercial licence holders pitted against 30,000 anglers, and as one of 10 per cent of bona fide commercial salmon netsmen who do not want to quit their activity for any compensation. His staple is crab, but his licence to drift net for wild salmon during two months of the summer has been a vital piece in the economic jigsaw that sustains his small community on Inishbofin and on the neighbouring island of Arranmore.
O'Brien never wanted to be one of the "big boys" of Killybegs - the pelagic (mackerel/herring) vessel owners who are currently feeling the heat from the same Government which previously lobbied the European Commission to register the Irish supertrawler Atlantic Dawn.
He has been relatively happy with his more modest lot, as one of 3,500 catchers employed on small inshore vessels which account for 80 per cent of the national fleet. This sector lands some €50 million of shellfish annually, according to BIM statistics.
SCIENTISTS ADVISING THE NSC had never specified a drift-net ban, while highlighting the serious state of wild salmon stocks. A key report emphasised the value of a phased approach to a voluntary buy-out of licences, and challenged the basis of the economic argument that wild salmon was worth more to tourist angling.
Similarly, a Joint Oireachtas committee report last October recommended set-aside or voluntary buy-out options for commercial licence holders, costing anywhere between €5 million and €70 million. This would be drawn from the tourism angling sector, as the main beneficiary of any such move, and from national and international conservation groups, the report said.
O'Brien was among commercial representatives who left the NSC meeting in tears after the February 27th vote.
"Ban was not in the vocabulary until then," he says. "It was always understood that those who wanted to leave the commercial fishery would do so voluntarily. Some 80 to 90 per cent of licence holders probably do now because of the price of the gear, competition from farmed salmon, but there's no guarantee of that if a ban is imposed first. Then there are some of us who do need this fishery - and we know that the public always wants to continue to be able to buy wild salmon."
Significantly, the €6.5 million annual commercial fishery for salmon takes pressure off shellfish stocks such as crab and lobster during those two months of June and July.
There are many ways to net a salmon, but drift netting with monofilament dates back only to the 1970s. However, long gone are the "bonanza" days of a 24-hour, five-day-a-week fishery.
AFTER DECADES OF scientific research and reports, a Government task force 10 years ago recommended a series of measures which have largely curtailed the commercial fishery to licence holders over two months of the year (see panel).
The introduction of a commercial annual, and gradually reduced, quota was intended to increase runs of salmon up rivers.
"We gave up the spring fishery for the same reason - conservation," O'Brien says. "So if the runs haven't increased, why is drift netting still regarded as the sole culprit?"
The StopNow campaign, representing private fishery owners and angling organisations, says that scientific evidence shows "the long-running argument about drift netting for salmon is over". The cost of the financial package required to compensate drift-net licensees leaving the industry "is only a small fraction of the environmental, biodiversity, economic, social and recreational benefits" to be derived from "restoring salmon to abundance in our rivers", it says.
Anglers seem not to have been as co-operative as the commercial licence holders in relation to new management restrictions.
Tags designed to trace the fish were initially resisted by the angling lobby, and only 50 per cent of logbooks issued to anglers are returned annually. At the recent NSC meeting, anglers were allowed a bag limit of 15 fish, and one fish a day for the month of September.
"Multiply that by 30,000 anglers, and you have an awful lot of fish," O'Brien says. "But the argument has been set up as us versus the anglers, when it isn't quite that."
O'Brien views the row as a class war - "a transfer of the resource, the loss of a public right among coastal communities, to private fishery owners who will charge for access. I will do anything for conservation, but this deal will do nothing for wild salmon," he argues. "This is about who is shouting loudest."
