Throwing tonnes of dead fish from trawlers back into the sea is a funny way to conserve stocks

LIVING a lie is what fishermen throughout Ireland and Britain are doing at the moment in relation to conserving fish stocks. It is a problem that nobody wants to talk about and nobody wants to know about.

There has been a lot of controversy regarding quotas of fish stocks. Quotas for most species are small.

There is a very strict landing regime and the larger part of the catch is checked onshore.

Each vessel gets a monthly quota for each species of fish. Once the quota for a particular species is caught, the rest must be thrown back dead for the remainder of that month, while continuing to fish for the other species. For six months this year most of the Irish coastal area had no quota at all for cod. That does not mean fishermen were not catching cod. It means that all cod caught while fishing for other species had by law to be thrown back dead.

The law does not prevent fishermen from catching any species — it states that they cannot retain on board or land any species caught in excess of the monthly quota or any species for which there is no quota.

It is extremely important to note that when trawling the seabed, there is no way to govern what species of fish enter the nets, or in what quantity.

In June last year, one vessel fishing the south-west coast threw back almost three tonnes of monkfish as well as cod and haddock — to conserve fish stocks! It is normal practice for Irish and Scottish boats to throw back excess fish. This is an EU law.

There is no point in playing the blame game, but it is not sustainable. The quantities of fish being landed and logged is one thing, but the undocumented fish being dumped is another story.

In the pelagic fishery, if two pelagic vessels towing for scad fish haul 200 tonnes and find they have a 15% mixture of mackerel, having already caught their mackerel quota, they have no alternative but to dump the 200 tonnes and try again. This is the system we are working to conserve fish stocks!

I do not have all the answers, but I do know what we are partaking in is very, very wrong — where fishermen are only worried about viability, the Government is worried about a paper trail and commonsense in the conservation of our greatest natural asset have been lost.

Ed Sheehan

Sheehan’s Fishing Co Ltd

Castletownbere

Co Cork