The tenth workshop of the International Society of Arctic Char Fanatics takes place this week in Killarney, Co Kerry. It is the first time the international meeting will be held in Ireland and it brings together the world's leading experts on the rare trout-like fish which are remnants of the Ice Age in Irish lakes, but which are now under threat.
Representatives from Russia, the US, Canada, Sweden, Norway, France, Austria, Britain, Iceland, Finland, and Japan will address a series of public and private scientific workshops and meetings. Char live only in pristine clear waters and act as a barometer of pollution - they disappear quickly once a lake becomes polluted. "Char are lovely to eat, beautiful to look at and are inspirational to those who come across them," according to Dr Fran Igoe, of the Irish Char Conservation Group. The group was set up two years ago to promote awareness of this and other species of fish as they become extinct in Ireland.
Outside the Arctic Circle, char, which naturally like to migrate to the sea, now only exist in landlocked lakes where they have adapted to the conditions. They change colour, sporting brilliant red-orange bellies during the spawning season. Once plentiful here, up to 40 per cent of populations have disappeared since the turn of the century.
In the 1990s, they disappeared from Loughs Conn, Corrib and Dan. They are already extinct in the Shannon, midlands and Wicklow lakes. At least five other populations are now under threat, it is thought.
"The big threats in Ireland are eutrophication, fish introductions, acidification. Heavy engineering, with silt run-off altering the lake levels also has an impact, as does global warming," Dr Igoe explained.
Char in Kerry are thought to pre-date the Ice Age. In other areas, they appear to have arrived after the Ice Age, Dr Igoe said. "There are as many char in Ireland as there are dialects," he explained. As well as having a high heritage value, char can be used to study climate change and are interesting for people who study evolution processes and fish ecology, he said.
The Irish group would like to promote rod angling for char in lakes where big populations exist, "in order to promote their value in the public eye", Dr Igoe said. The rare blunt-nosed Killarney char, believed to be unique among the world's char, will be studied for the first time at the workshops.
The Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism, Mr O'Donoghue, will address the conference on Thursday.