EU supports fishery research: Fishing for climate answers

It has not yet been established beyond reasonable doubt whether US President Donald Trump’s extraordinary complexion is a consequence of global warming or some other human activity. 

It is a fact though that he and his drill-baby-drill supporters have dismissed humanity’s role in changing this planet’s climate as a fanciful swizz hatched in China to steal American jobs.

Despite that clarification, the EU has decided to invest over €7m in a Welsh/Irish research programme to try to establish the risks posed by climate change to the sustainability of fish and shellfish in the Irish Sea.

The ultimate objective is to protect and enhance marine life and the fishing industry. which depends on healthy, life-sustaining seas. The migratory movement of commercial fish and risks posed by non-native species will be considered, as will measures to help fisheries businesses adapt to environmental change.

A second strand of the programme will focus on energy use in the industry and will be run from Waterford’s Institute of Technology piSCES project.

These waters have supported communities for millennia and it is appropriate that such an investment should be made in securing their viability, especially as that investment epitomises the kind of cross-border co-operation that the EU so readily facilitates. Hopefully, the project reaches worthwhile conclusions before Brexit intervenes.