Captain breached EU rules on fishing

Almost €345,000 worth of fish and €55,000 worth of fishing gear was confiscated from a factory ship that was found to have equipment capable of dumping fish overboard.

Since January of this year, EU regulations have made it illegal to discharge or return pelagic fish such as herring, or mackerel to the sea.

The skipper was found guilty by a jury last month at Cork Circuit Criminal Court and the case was adjourned for penalty.

Klass Dirk Meijvogel, of Jan Tooropstraut, 9 Katwick, Netherlands, pleaded not guilty to the offence which was detected on an inspection of the vessel, Wiron 5, on February 11, 2015.

Taking account of the huge value of fish and gear mandatorily confiscated, Judge Seán Ó Donnabháin imposed a nominal €500 fine on the captain.

The Wiron 5 was boarded by the Irish Naval Service as part of routine inspection. The ship was catching and processing pelagic fish.

Sub Lt Niall McCarthy said he noticed an automatic grading system running from the stern where fish were passed over a hole and smaller fish fell through into a chute beneath.

He noted the automatic grading system then carried into a manual grading area near the bow where fish could be sorted.

The chute carried back to a sump at the stern where small and broken fish could be discharged into the sea via a vortex pump, he said. He saw seven small and broken horse mackerel coming through the chute and warned Meijvogel that he believed the automatic grading equipment was in breach of EU regulations.

Cross-examined by solicitor Dermot Conway, for Meijvogel, Sub Lt McCarthy accepted the Wiron 5 was catching around 350,000 fish per day for processing.

Sea Fisheries Protection Officer John Hederman testified to seeing automatic grading equipment and a manual grading area. The risk with an automatic grading system is that it can lead to the discarding of legal, but less valuable, smaller fish .

Mr Hederman agreed with Mr Conway that he had not inspected any of the cartons on the Wiron 5 to see if they contained smaller fish.

Andrew Pillar, fleet operations manager of the firm which owns the Wiron 5, accepted the chute began under the manual sorting area and ran to the sump. However he said the system was not being used as it was not company policy to discard smaller fish in contravention of EU regulations.

However, prosecution barrister Don McCarthy told the jury in his summing up the charge was not whether the ship was discarding fish, but whether it had the capacity to do so.

Mr Conway said: “My client has taken steps to amend the equipment so that the possibility of secondary offending behaviour has been taken care of.”