Irish fishermen face another precarious year following the EU fisheries ministers' agreement yesterday to cuts of a fifth in their total allowable catches (TACs) of key whitefish stocks.
But the ministers backed an emergency management programme, proposed by the Irish and Northern Ireland governments, for the Irish Sea where stocks of cod have collapsed below biological sustainability.
Mr Jason Whooley, of the South and West Fish Producers' Organisation, said he was wondering how they were going to survive.
The monkfish quotas for the areas off the south coast have been cut by 14 per cent and were only half those needed to survive, he said. Irish officials were desperately scrambling to increase quotas by trading with other states.
Following the final agreement at 4 a.m., the Minister for the Marine, Dr Woods, acknowledged the scientific evidence of massive whitefish stock depletion. It was "too bleak to have been brushed aside if we are to be responsible in fisheries management and ensure that we have a renewable resource for the future. The experience of fishermen themselves this year has borne this out," he said.
The Northern Ireland Minister of Fisheries, Ms Brid Rodgers, said she would not downplay the implications for the fishing industry in the short term. "It is going to be a bleak year, although in the circumstances we did manage to improve the situation," she said.
The ministers battled successfully to halve the overall cutbacks of about 40 per cent proposed by the Commission for whitefish. Other key stocks of Irish interest off the south coast have seen TAC cuts of 20 per cent for megrim, 16 per cent for cod and 10 per cent for whiting.
Proposed TAC cuts of 69 per cent for cod in the Irish Sea were eased somewhat (62 per cent), after ministers backed a special qualitative cod recovery plan proposed by Dr Woods and Ms Rodgers in a joint initiative. Haddock and whiting TACs in the Irish Sea are also being cut by 38 and 40 per cent respectively.
Instead of relying simply on crude catch totals to control stock, those states with quotas in the Irish Sea - Ireland, the UK, France and Belgium - have agreed to get together with scientists and fishermen to take more selective measures.
Although these have yet to be agreed they are expected to include the closing of fisheries during spawning and the use of wider-mesh nets, both to protect the vulnerable young whose kill and discard rates are believed to have contributed largely to the stock collapse.
It is hoped that the management measures will also help the recovery of haddock, whiting and prawn stocks in the Irish Sea and provide a model for fine-tuning the Common Fisheries Policy.
Ms Rodgers secured a reduction from 25 to 10 per cent in the proposed cuts in TACs for prawns in the Irish Sea, while the impact of the overall cutbacks on the fishermen of Co Down will be partially eased by quota trades with the South and continued ring-fencing of the catches within the British quota.
Meanwhile the news was somewhat better for Ireland's pelagic fishermen (mainly herring and mackerel). TAC levels are down by only half of 1 per cent by volume over all the species, with the Minister pointing in particular to successful resistance to Celtic Sea herring cuts. Increases have also been secured in mackerel and blue whiting from the recent negotiations with Norway about North Sea stocks.
But cuts in herring TACs off the north-west coast of a third reflect the very real need to rebuild severely depleted stocks.
