Why it’s vital we fish out illegal practices

ON APRIL 23 Fisheries Officers on a routine patrol of Lough Derg on the Shannon came across a party of French anglers fishing for pike from boats.

They investigated and discovered the anglers were using small live carp as bait. The carp had been imported from France.

This is illegal on a number of counts. Using live fish of any kind as bait in fresh water is banned in this country. This isn’t just because it’s inhumane, it’s to prevent the baits escaping and introducing alien species. It’s also illegal to import live fish into this country, or to transport them from one water body to another within the country, without a special licence.

The investigating officers discovered live carp on fishing rods, in tanks inside one boat and containers that were attached to another. There were also carp in a keep net that was attached to a jetty on the shore and in their holiday accommodation.

The significance of this is that, although carp are found in some waters in Ireland, they aren’t present in Lough Derg. The boats were seized.

The worry is two-fold – firstly the introduction of an alien species has ecological ramifications and could upset the balance of nature. Secondly the imported fish could be carrying diseases to which the local fish population has no resistance.

Eamon Cusack of the Shannon Regional Fisheries Board said: “Incidents like this are becoming all too common. While on this occasion I would hope that we have prevented a more serious situation developing, we cannot cover all waters all of the time. While we are currently working with other agencies to tighten regulations it is also imperative on us to make anglers and people aware of the consequences to our native fish of such actions.”

The statement goes on to request the public, in particular the providers of holiday accommodation and anglers, who become aware of this sort of illegal activity to contact the Board on 061-300238.

This sort of problem has a long history. Experts believe that most, if not all, the coarse fish species in this country were originally introduced by people, though in most cases the introductions go back many centuries. Medieval monks were keen fish farmers and introduced new species for their stew ponds from Britain and the continent. But in 1889 an English pike angler came to Ireland for a fishing holiday on the River Blackwater on the Cork/Waterford border. Like the Frenchmen, he brought live bait for pike with him, though in those days this wasn’t illegal. At the end of his holiday he released the baits he hadn’t used into the river and added two new species to the Irish list – roach and dace.

The fish flourished but for nearly a century they remained confined to the Blackwater system in the south of the country. Then first the roach and later the dace started to appear in other rivers. Roach turned up in the Erne, dace in the Barrow and then both species started to colonise the country’s largest river system, the Shannon and its many lakes and tributaries. Nobody knows for sure how this happened but the likelihood is that it was deliberate rather than accidental.

The spread coincided with a growth in popularity of Irish coarse angling both among visiting foreigners and locals. The range of species available was still small compared to most other European countries, so private individuals took it upon themselves to increase it. More recently another new species, the chub, has appeared in the Shannon catchment.

There is no doubt that this is irresponsible as well as illegal. You only have to consider rabbits in Australia or mink in this country to realise the damage alien species can do.

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