Sir, - The sea trout runs to rivers and streams on the east coast have generally remained stable over the years with the somewhat better than average runs of 1998 most likely due to the continued high water levels we have experienced this year.
In examining this stability of sea trout runs in our region we cannot escape the fact that salmon farming does not exist in the Irish Sea along the east coast. If proof were needed that salmon farming propagates the lice which have devastated sea trout populations in the west, then this is proof indeed.
Salmon farming at sea is obviously a dirty industry. This is so because the waste matter emanating from the salmon farming goes straight into the water, causing immediate pollution. In any other branch of farming the waste matter generated has at least the chance of being contained and treated on land. So lice in salmon farming proliferate in the dirt under the sea cages and spraying with chemicals on a regular basis by salmon farmers is carried out in an attempt to control the lice. This creates further pollution of the sea and so despoils the environment of the wild sea trout in the coastal regions.
Mr Peter Mantle of the Delphi Fishery has quite rightly pointed out that scientific opinion no longer disputes the evidence that salmon farms have caused the collapse of sea trout stocks in the west. As he intimates, the outpouring from Mr Richard Flynn of IFA Salmon Growers is entirely predictable and not at all believable. What is most disquieting, however, is the silence of the Department of the Marine in the matter, even though it is well known that the Department has been provided with this scientific advice over a long period. Indeed, advice on the management and location of sea farms was available right from the time before the Department of the Marine was set up in the first place in order to attract investment in an industry which was no longer being accepted without question in other European countries because of its bad reputation.
When the new Department was named "Marine" it seemed like a brave new world was coming. In this new regime the pollution potential of salmon farming at sea was acknowledged, but the plans then were that salmon farms would not be located near the estuaries of the main salmon rivers and sites of fish farms would be fallowed. These plans have in the main been ignored and political expediency has allowed the salmon farms to be located in many cases in the worst possible places for the sea trout.
It is now well past time for the Minister for the Marine to come clean and acknowledge the devastation of sea trout stocks in the west and the consequent obliteration of the tourist angling in the affected areas. He should insist on going back to first principles and force the sea farming industry to relocate, fallow the sites and clean up, or close down. - Yours, etc.,
Paddy Conneff,
Angling Representative
Board Member,
Eastern Regional
Fisheries Board,
Thorncliffe Park,
Dublin 14.