Fish farming controversy continues in Co Kerry
Oyster farm enterprises are planning at least eight projects on beaches off the famed tourist trail.
One of the applications lodged within the last year had been compared, by campaigners opposed to shoreline farming, as being the size of five golf courses.
During 2017, over 1,100 people, many of them holiday home owners on the Ring of Kerry, petitioned against a proposed oyster farm on the shore between Dooks and Rossbeigh.
Objectors claim they have encountered difficulties in securing full details about the proposals.
However, a map published with the latest application for the Point, at Rossbeigh, shows proposals for at least eight oyster farms filling the ‘back bay’.
It is envisaged hundreds of acres of oyster farming activities will stretch along the foreshore and water from just in front of Dooks Golf Links to the breach in the sands’ spit at the rear of the Blue Flag beach at Rossbeigh.
Although one 40-acre farm is up and running, there is no history of oyster farming in the area where the beach is normally used for pony trekking, windsurfing and leisure walking.
However, demand for oysters is going through a boom period and France cannot get enough Irish-grown oysters. Although the shoreline is a special area of conservation for birds, objectors fear the oyster activities will be difficult to stop.
BIM and other state agencies are supporting oyster farming, insisting there was no conflict with the tourism industry.
The Department of the Marine has already assessed Castlemaine Harbour, including Rossbeigh — a protected Natura 2000 area — as an appropriate site for aquaculture applications.
Mussels have long been a feature of the wider harbour area.
In a submission being prepared by the Save This Beach Campaign, the effect of a breach in recent years of the sandspit at Rossbeigh is strongly underlined. The submission points to a shift in trends by walkers and other beach regular to use the ‘back beach’ area, objectors say.
“Due to the erosion to the front of the Rossbeigh dunes, it is usually not possible to walk on the sand at the front of Rossbeigh for at least three hours each side of full tide. As a result, the east side of Rossbeigh is now widely used by walkers and others,” the submission says.
The issue of a county council ban on holiday home development, under the county development plan, has also been raised.
“The council has banned the construction of holiday homes and imposed major restrictions for new homes in rural areas so as to preserve the landscapes,” the submission states.
“The development of numerous fish farms in the bay would be totally contrary to the requirements of the council and good planning principles.”
Maurice Murphy, a spokesman for a local Save This Beach campaign, said most people don’t realise the industrial nature of oyster farming which involves tractors, and high trestles.
With a protest march being planned, protesters in Rossbeigh have joined forces with Donegal where the oyster industry is expanding hugely on local beaches.
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