Signal warning about the dangers of alien crayfish

As a boy, writes Damine Enright, I enjoyed catching crayfish in the River Suir near Thurles, Co Tipperary. River-prawns, I called them. I was in short pants at the time.

While my parents enjoyed the fairways of the local golf course, I waded the river and gathered for myself an education in the water birds, fish and frogs that teemed in the Suir and the wetlands along the banks.

Health and safety wasn’t an issue. My parents would drop me off at the gates to Lady’s Well, and collect me at nightfall. They didn’t seem to worry that I’d drown — at times, they might well have thought it would be a relief. Meanwhile, with rolled-up pants legs, thigh deep in the Suir, I witnessed gravel-beds blanketed with migrant black lampreys heading upriver, found stone loaches beneath the stones, eels galore, gudgeons and crayfish.