The Government has gravely underestimated the decline in wild salmon and needs to initiate radical measures, including curbs on commercial fishing, a group campaigning to conserve the species has claimed.
The Wild Salmon Support Group said yesterday that over-fishing and failure to ensure more fish got upriver to spawn had "ominous implications for both commercial and recreational salmon fishing".
Current policy was aimed more at sharing a dwindling resource than at its replenishment, according to WSSG, a voluntary body representing angling, tourism, and some private fishery interests. The group also includes a number of salmon experts including Dr T.K. Whitaker, former senior civil servant and economist, and Mr Fionan O Muircheartaigh, former secretary of the Department of the Marine.
The gravity of a "prolonged and steep downward trend" in wild salmon numbers, in Ireland and throughout the North Atlantic, was not fully appreciated, according to the group. Last year's Irish catch of 515 tonnes was less than a third of the average for the 1970s when catches averaged 1,580 tonnes a year, the WSSG said.
Dr Whitaker said there were people who would claim catch figures along Irish coasts were unreliable. But while the figures were not the absolute truth they were an indication of trend, he insisted. The figures over three decades clearly indicated a need for more radical action, not only to protect stocks but to regenerate lost numbers.
In recent decades, greatly reduced numbers of fish were reaching spawning beds. "Unless this trend is soon reversed, both commercial and recreational fishing for salmon are doomed. Within another decade or so our salmon stocks will have virtually disappeared," he added.
Unfortunately, policy appeared to be more concerned with equitable sharing of this dwindling national resource than with the primary and urgent imperative of ensuring more fish were allowed to ascend the rivers to spawn. This was the nub of their concerns, Dr Whitaker said.
Tagging - which tracks salmon, helps determine their catch and sale, indicates extent of conservation and provides information on the true state of stocks - is due to come into force next January. It may lead to better statistics and equitable access to incoming salmon, but the group was not confident it would effectively restrict the interception of fish on their way to spawn.
Policy should, in the group's view, be "more directly and surely aimed at markedly reducing (preferably ending with appropriate compensation) the commercial interception of wild salmon". Angling may also need to be curtailed on impoverished rivers, the group accepted.
Ireland is the only North Atlantic country that has not yet moved towards ending drift-netting for salmon and must expect to come under increasing pressure to do so, the WSSG added. The countries near the salmon feeding grounds - Greenland, Iceland and the Faroes - had accepted quotas limiting their catch but were complaining they were constrained to conserve stocks "only to see them slaughtered by Irish and English fishermen".
The gross annual value of the Irish commercial catch has fallen to about £2.5 million. "This suggested a net sum of under £2 million was available for some 1,200 licensed netsmen and their helpers; hardly so significant a support that it could not be replaced by a combination of reasonable compensation for ceasing to fish for salmon and help in developing sounder alternatives," according to Dr Whitaker.
It was often claimed, he added, that such activity was vital to coastal communities, but based on such figures this could not be so. Moreover, there may be more national benefit by exploiting the fish recreationally. "We are not out to eliminate netsmen without consideration of their livelihoods," he added.
