Poaching crackdown now hi-tech

IT’S the season when salmon are heading up rivers to spawn, a time when poachers once engaged in cat and mouse games with gardaí and bailiffs, now known as fishery protection officers.

In those days, poachers went along familiar river banks in darkness, carrying ‘dazzlers’ and using gaffs and spears to kill salmon, a dish then regarded as a winter treat on many a country table. It’s a huge part of rural folklore and probably a throwback to colonial times when people were instinctively ‘agin’ the law.

Bailiffs acting on information or suspicion would also patrol river banks and weirs and would sometimes hide in the bushes for hours in dreadful conditions, waiting to pounce. We rarely hear of this type of carry-on any more.

Anglers and conservationists, however, argue there isn’t nearly enough protection. Many types of illegal fishing continue and poachers have become more sophisticated, as have those charged with protecting fisheries. Nowadays, protection has become a hi-tech operation with modern technology, generally unseen and operated by remote control, being used to pinpoint illegal fishing hotspots.

Small internet-based cameras can focus on the hotspots. The tiny cameras are placed in secret locations and can work in the lowest of light levels using infrared technology. They have built-in motion detectors which can send protection officers a text message when movement is sensed.

But, rather than immediately heading to a pinpointed area, an officer can log into the camera with their mobile phones and watch live footage of what’s going on. In that way, he can separate events of concern, such as poaching, from, say, the movements of cattle or other animals.

According to Dr Ciarán Byrne, chief executive, Inland Fisheries Ireland (IFI), the technology enables eyes to be in many places. He stresses in the latest issue of Sherkin Comment that there’s no substitute for accurate information from human beings and urges people to use a 24-hour hotline to report illegal fishing: 1890 34 74 24.

It seems like an eon since we heard a knock on the back door late on a winter’s night from a man offering a freshly-caught salmon for sale.

Conservation measures and awareness of finite salmon stocks, penalties and, of course, the scarcity of fish are also militating against this. And that’s not to mention the huge amounts of cheap farmed salmon, now available year-round in fishmongers and supermarkets. So why should poachers go to all the trouble?