An Irishwoman's Diary

Galwayman Martin Burke was out walking on the shore at Ballinacourtey, near Maree in the south Galway Bay area, several weeks ago when he heard a loud splashing in a small pond. He caught a glimpse of grey and silver. . . this was no little blenny. A stranded dolphin, perhaps?

He clambered over the rocks to investigate, and found himself looking at a large and very live tuna. "It was in about a foot of water - a bluefin of about 80 to 90 kilos."

Being a man of the sea, Burke knew the fish wouldn't survive much longer - and indeed its fate was to be "iced" within hours. Dr Peter Tyndall of Bord Iascaigh Mhara (BIM), who knows a thing or two about tuna and has been involved in tagging the elusive migratory fish, is not easily surprised. However, he was both dumbsmacked-and-gobfounded by the discovery.

"You'd see them a few miles off the salmon farm at Clare Island in Co Mayo, but I've never heard of a sighting in a tidal location," Dr Tyndall told The Irish Times. "He must have been feeding on mackerel, but he was almost up at the oyster beds at Clarenbridge by the time he got caught!"

Bluefin have been recorded as an accidental by-catch in Irish waters since the late 1970s, and are now attracting would-be Hemingways in a developing sport fishery market.

US scientists working with BIM have recommended that Ireland declare a 200-mile bluefin conservation zone. The fast swimmer is under pressure, as it can fetch up to €30,000 fresh on the Japanese market.

Burke's catch was one in a billion. . . at a time when luck is not exactly on the side of the average Irish skipper right now.

Down south, Donal O'Driscoll spent almost half a century fishing out of Castletownbere, Co Cork, and was once a national spokesman on behalf of the industry. He has fought many a battle in that capacity, but has never been so despondent about the future as he is now.

O'Driscoll subscribes to sustainable fishing, for the simple reason that coastal communities won't survive if they fish themselves into extinction.

As a former chairman of the Irish South and West Fishermen's Organisation, he has not only endeavoured to expose some of the inequities in the flawed EU Common Fisheries Policy, but has also been actively engaged in making Ireland's case for technical conservation measures.

Now retired, he recently witnessed two Spanish hake boats landing into Castletownbere's main pier. One articulated truck took the load from each vessel. There was a second landing in the same week, making a further two articulated truck visits. He estimates the total haul at 80 tonnes of hake in the one week - while larger Irish vessels must survive on a total monthly quota of just eight tonnes each.

"Go over that quota by even a very small percentage, and the average Irish skipper faces severe penalties in time, money and perhaps confiscation of catch and gear. . . and be branded a criminal on conviction under the new Sea Fisheries and Maritime Jurisdiction Act," O'Driscoll says. "Yet these Spanish vessels quite obviously have no problem whatever in landing huge quantities."

They admit as much, he says. "A Spanish fishing master who recently appeared in court in Truro, England, said that one wouldn't get a berth as skipper with a Spanish fishing company unless one was prepared to flout EU regulations.

"Would EU Fisheries Commissioner Joe Borg care to explain to Irish fishermen how he can justify this large inequity?"

Not only is the Irish whitefish fleet being strangled by quota restrictions, fuel price hikes and regulations , but the "pelagic" boats fishing for herring, mackerel and horse mackerel have been tied up since March 1st. "Meanwhile Dutch and other large factory trawlers continued to fish close to the Irish coast for another five to six weeks after that, and then transferred their activities to waters off west Africa with EU licences."

The enormous pressures on skippers to make boats pay was highlighted in the recent BBC television series profiling three Scottish boats. Trawlermen, which ran for five consecutive nights, elicited many goodwill messages from the public, according to the Scottish Fishermen's Federation. "The true cost of our fish and chips!" one viewer remarked.

O'Driscoll believes that there is a lack of knowledge about the true quantities of fish being caught in waters under Irish jurisdiction and landed elsewhere, and envisages a repeat of the Celtic Sea situation of the 1950s and 1960s when the Irish territorial limit was only three miles and fleets of up to 100 non-Irish vessels could be seen chasing herring from the shore.

"When Irish fishermen complained about the impact on stocks, the then taoiseach Jack Lynch assured people at a meeting in Waterford's Dunmore East that there was more than enough herring in the Celtic Sea to feed all of Europe." Within several years of that remark, the Celtic Sea was closed and has never quite recovered its former abundance.

"So much for the wisdom of Mr Lynch's advisers," says O'Driscoll. He believes little has changed among bureaucrats who wouldn't survive one day out on the Atlantic and might even think it normal to find a large offshore tuna struggling in a tiny coastal pond. . .