Sir, – Commenting on the new Kerry Marine Park, Ella McSweeney points out that the local fishing industry was not consulted (“A new marine national park in Kerry? Nobody told the fishermen”, Environment, May 25th).
A related aspect, also ignored, was salmon farming. Salmon farming and marine diversity are incompatible.
A line drawn from the Skelligs to Derrynane House, both in the Marine Park, cuts right past the operational salmon farm in Ballinskelligs Bay, which is currently seeking a new licence. The wild salmon and seatrout stocks in the Lough Currane system that feed in Ballinskelligs Bay have collapsed in the last decade; this iconic ecosystem took tens of thousands of years to be honed by evolution, and a decade to destroy. There is overwhelming international evidence, some cited on the Inland Fisheries Ireland web site, that salmon farms in open water concentrate sea lice, leading to destruction of locally wild fish stocks.
Open sea pens in salmon farms can be replaced by tanks on land, allowing for recovery of waste biomass as a fertiliser, eliminating spread of lice and pathogens, and stopping genetic pollution by escaped farm salmon. It is hypocritical, not to mention ecologically ludicrous, to allow a salmon farm operate beside our flagship Páirc Náisiúnta na Mara, Ciarraí. – Yours, etc,
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Prof PAUL W O’TOOLE,
School of Microbiology,
University College Cork.