Come summer, and you're looking for that unmistakeable taste of wild salmon grilled with a hint of lemon . . . forget about it - unless you want to be charged with consumption of an illegal substance. The new ban on driftnetting for wild salmon comes into effect this season.
As seasoned fish processor Peter Dunn pointed out during the debate on the issue last year, estuary-caught salmon just don't hold the same appeal for international buyers. However, the ill wind affecting commercial inshore fisheries may be of benefit to those Irish fish farmers, who have survived years of competition from Norway, internal difficulties and periodical bad publicity, to make inroads into the fresh fish market.
Recent statistics from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) show that 43 per cent of all seafood eaten in the world is now of the farmed variety, compared to just 9 per cent in 1980. In Ireland, almost 40 per cent of all seafood produced here is farmed, including both finfish and shellfish, and the first cod reared to market size were recently harvested in Connemara.
Stefan Griesbach, who runs a fishmonger's stall in the Galway market every Saturday, and in Ballinasloe, Co Galway during the week, has no qualms about selling farmed fish and shellfish, once it is fresh.
"Of course I prefer to sell what I can buy locally and so I start my week by looking at the Sunday evening weather forecast," Griesbach says. "If it is forecasting gales, I know that the Thursday auction in Rossaveal won't be quite so good and so I increase my orders from abroad."
Much of his imported stock is from Iceland, and he attributes this to the Icelandic government's farsighted fisheries management, and the fact that air transport is now so cheap. "Very large lemon sole, place and cod are caught on lines, and are of very good quality," he says. "Iceland is not in the EU, and it was smart enough to regulate its fisheries in such a way that they are sustainable."
"It is such a pity, because Ireland traded off its fishing industry for farming when it joined the EU," he says.
"It could have such a brilliant industry now if things had been different. Instead, the amount of fish taken by the Spanish, French and British flagships out of Irish waters is equivalent to what Ireland received, up until recently, in financial transfers from Brussels," he notes.
"I think people do feel fresh is better for its nutritional value, and perhaps there's more respect for it now because it is more expensive. After all, you can get a nice piece of steak for the €30 a kilo you will pay for monkfish. But then, there's nothing like a piece of monkfish . . ."