Sir, - Commercial fishing (by drift and draft nets) for wild salmon tends to be represented as an important economic support for rural and coastal communities. This belief is at the root of proposals aimed at ensuring, by way of quotas and tagging, that all "stakeholders in the resource" retain their current share of the catch.
The primary concern, however, is the regeneration of this threatened resource. This depends on arranging that more salmon enter our rivers to spawn. To ensure this, quotas would need to be tightly drawn and strictly enforced.
The situation is critical in Ireland and throughout the North Atlantic. Our total catch of wild salmon, as assessed by the Central Fisheries Board, has dropped by 60 per cent in recent decades: from 1,580 tonnes a year on average in the 1970s to 1,050 in the 1980s and to 640 in the 1990s to date. Moreover, the market price of wild salmon has been undermined by the year-round availability of much larger quantities of farmed fish.
There appears to be little recognition of how much, in consequence, the landed value of wild salmon has dwindled. Last year's total catch was 232,196 fish (weight, 574 tonnes). Virtually 85 per cent of the catch (equivalent to 488 tonnes) was commercial in character (drift-nets 70 per cent, draft-nets and traps 15 per cent). With dealers paying on average about £5 per kilo, the total; commercial value was around £2.5 million. This can hardly be considered a major social support, particularly when fishing expenses are deducted and the remainder is divided between more than 1,000 licensed nets-men.
This support for the local communities could be replaced and even strengthened if the suspension of commercial fishing were accompanied by appropriate compensation for nets-men, if (as one would then expect) recreational fishing and tourism were boosted by more fish being present in local rivers, and if good employment prospects were enhanced not only in this way but also, once stocks had recovered, by co-operative operation, with the aid of counters, of river traps to cull fish surplus to spawning requirements. This form of managed commercial exploitation of an abundant stock would be more economic and scientific than a resumption of netting.
The State would benefit generally from the regeneration of an important national resource. The cost of salmon management to the Exchequer, relieved of the considerable expense of administering a quota and tagging scheme, could be borne in part by fishery owners and anglers as direct beneficiaries of a programme as outlined above.
It is desirable that salmon management policy should remain open to review in the light of the foregoing considerations. - Yours, etc., T. K. Whitaker,
Stillorgan Road, Dublin 4.