Protecting wildlife - Bass ban must stay

FISHING communities have, and are, facing huge changes, many of them unwelcome.

Stocks of once plentiful fish – cod, tuna and Atlantic salmon – have collapsed. Technology has made many of the old skills redundant and changed a lot of commercial fishing from something sustainable to something utterly destructive.

Two decades ago, this led to the introduction of a complete ban on bass fishing in Irish waters as the stocks of this slow-growing fish – a 10-pound bass might be 20 years old – had reached dangerously low levels. Stocks have since made a partial recovery.