Blackwater fish kill: Angling clubs 'appalled' at report's failure to find culprit
The River Blackwater in Mallow, Co Cork. A fishery operator upstream at Castletownroche said: 'I had two experienced anglers test fish it for a full day. They didn’t even get a bite.' Picture: Dan Linehan
A multi-agency taskforce’s failure to identify a culprit for the State’s biggest fish kill has been described as “shocking and unacceptable”.
The taskforce's 102-page report said that, despite extensive testing, no evidence of disease, pesticides, heavy metals, or chemicals were detected in samples taken from some of the 40,000 killed in the River Blackwater in Co Cork.
The report’s findings were despite an EU-accredited independent scientist finding previously that some fish died agonising deaths, having their eyes burst out of their sockets and flesh eaten away.
Conor Arnold, who owns Bridgetown Salmon Fishery in Castletownroche, has closed his business for this season as the river there has been “wiped out”. He said:
Mr Arnold said the devastation is so bad it could take the Blackwater at least 10 years to recover.
He added that the reputational damage done to what was one of the finest salmon rivers in the country is incalculable.
He described it as “shocking” that the multi-agencies involved took two weeks to undertake toxicology reports on the fish following the kill first reported on August 11. Mr Arnold said:
Sean Bowen, a spokesman for 150 members of the Mallow Salmon and Trout Angling Club, said they are appalled at the investigation’s lack of findings.
“We’re shocked. We’re in total disbelief. I’m getting constant phone calls from anglers who can’t believe nobody’s being held accountable,” he said.
Killavullen Angling Club secretary John Flynn said it will “continue to press for answers” to the delayed action of the agencies’ investigation, “which resulted in it becoming a catastrophic failure”.
Tom Ryan, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) head of environmental enforcement, said the multi-agency team looked for the presence of 900 likely compounds which could have caused it and couldn’t find one of them.
He admitted that “it’s a concern” that an unknown killed so many fish.
“Nobody wants to get the bottom of this more than us and hold somebody to account,” Mr Ryan said.
He refused to speculate if the source was industrial or agricultural.
The EPA and other agencies involved are to appear before the Oireachtas committee on climate and environment next Tuesday to discuss the investigation.
Pat Hayes, a keen fisherman who owns a country lifestyle outlet in Mallow, said the inability of the responsible agencies to determine the sources “is unacceptable, particularly given the environmental and economic importance of the river to our region”. He said:
Mr Hayes, a Fianna Fáil councillor, recently got cross-party backing to write to Inland Fisheries Ireland (IFI) urging it to re-open a trout and salmon hatchery in Mallow that closed 20 years ago.
It released 1.25m young salmon and 250,000 young trout every year, and Mr Hayes said it’s vital to replenish devastated fish stocks.
On foot of a motion from local Labour councillor Ronan Sheehan, the council is also asking the EPA and IFI to use the river as a pilot for the deployment of solar-powered monitoring systems, known as Sonders, which send real-time data on river quality.
Mr Sheehan said these need to be deployed urgently, adding: “It’s absolutely extraordinary, after weeks of investigation by multiple agencies, no source of the pollution has been identified.”
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