Commercial fishing - We must save this vital food source

IT IS natural to have sympathy for communities whose ambitions and traditions are threatened by the shortages and escalating costs stalking the world we have created.

Most people would put our fishing communities in that category, imagining a sort of maritime idyll. A modern Old Man of the Sea, only online and far, far bigger, using far more modern vessels than the tragic skiff in Hemingway’s classic novel.

Maybe a less-worn Spencer Tracey skippering a super trawler with sat nav and, like Ireland’s first super-trawler the Atlantic Dawn, 28,730 horsepower engines, a huge