Deep sea free-for-all threatens fish stocks

DEEP sea fish stocks in the North Atlantic are being trawled at more than twice the rate they can stand by European fishermen to provide food for farmed salmon.

A free-for-all is in progress with some of Europe’s largest fishing vessels scooping up vast stocks of blue whiting, a relation of the cod, and selling it for fish-meal.

However, reports that one of the prime culprits is the Irish vessel Atlantic Dawn, the world’s largest trawler, was strongly refuted yesterday by a fishing industry spokesman.

Scientists believe stocks of blue whiting, usually caught at 660ft-1,300ft down in international waters from North Africa to the Barents Sea, cannot last for more than a couple of more years at this level of plunder.

The World Wildlife fund, the international conservation body, said the practice made farmed salmon “unsustainable” and called for the sale of blue whiting for fish-meal to be stopped.

Kevin McHugh, the owner of Atlantic Dawn, was abroad and unavailable for comment yesterday. However, Sean O’Donoghue of Killybegs’ Fishermen’s Organisation laid the blame for depleted stocks squarely at the fishing industries of Norway, Iceland, Russia and the Faro Islands.

“We are fishing within agreed EU quotas but those four countries have increased their catches by over 1,600% in the last six years. In 1996 their catches of blue whiting stood at 600,000 tonnes a year; now it’s over 2 million.”

According to a report in Wednesday’s Daily Telegraph, vessels “including the 14,000-ton Atlantic Dawn are arriving in port, some of them so heavily loaded with blue whiting that they look like submarines.”

But Mr O’Donoghue said this was nonsense: “Irish tonnage, at 63,000, is literally a drop in the ocean and Atlantic Dawn is only responsible for between 12% to 14% of that, so to lay the blame at us is simply ridiculous.”

Each year since 1994, the London-based North East Atlantic Fisheries Commission has set a total allowable catch of 650,000 tonnes of blue whiting. But last year, fishermen caught 2.3 million tonnes.

The reason for the free-for-all is a diplomatic dispute between the EU, Norway and Iceland. The 12th attempt in four years to break the deadlock occurs in Brussels next week.