Super-trawlers: what they take and leave behind

I WISH to respond to the letter from John F Murray headlined ‘Ban the ocean floor sweepers’ (Irish Examiner, November 13).

Mr Murray should be brought up to date with modern fishing practices.

Super-trawlers generally spend four to six weeks at sea and freeze and ‘carton’ all their catch — they do take the smallest sprat but these are also frozen in blocks.

None of the super-trawlers’ catch goes for fishmeal and they do not, as he puts it, “dredge the bottom”.

Fishmeal boats generally are from Denmark and Norway and target sandeels, which are an important link in the food chain.

Irish, Scottish and English fisherman are dead against this practice, but what say have we or they any more? After all, we are all Europeans and we have to tolerate our neighbours malpractices. Mr Murray is right in saying that not long ago (late 1980s), fish was for intervention. However, it was never “sprayed with diesel” — it was covered with a harmless red food dye and returned to the sea for the “birds, seals and all the rest of God’s creatures”, as he says.

Thank heavens this does not happen any more.

I have been fishing for 23 of my 39 years. I have more than €1 million invested in my business and I am sick to the teeth of bad press putting us down as an industry.

We have agreed to ‘closed areas’ from January 1 to May 1 to let fish spawn and also to bigger mesh sizes to let immature fish escape.

These practices are the start of our industry managing the future and safekeeping our greatest resource which is crucial to our rural coastal communities. People in Dublin 6 should do a little homework before shouting the odds from their fancy apartment blocks.

Johnny Walsh

12 Fort View

Ardbreack

Kinsale

Co Cork