We spare the rod while nets wipe out salmon
The management of Ireland’s precious salmon resource has been the subject of political expediency and knee-jerk actions for generations and if immediate steps are not taken there may shortly be no salmon left to manage.
The four main game angling federations met in Athlone on July 24 together with fishery owners and tourist interests to establish a national campaign to have drift nets removed. If that were done and properly policed then some 200,000 more salmon would enter the rivers.
There would then have to be an enforceable regime about how many of those extra fish the estuarine nets and the anglers would be allowed to catch.
Throughout Europe and North America, only one country permits drift netting for salmon - Ireland. All of the other countries have come to recognise that conservation and indiscriminate killing cannot go hand-in-hand and that limited exploitation should be concentrated on those activities which offer the greatest economic and social value.
The latest initiative from the Minister of the Marine, according to his own letter to fishery boards, recognises that there are “serious concerns over stock levels arising out of the poor run and commercial catches”.
Of course the minister did not have to wait until the end of July to find that out, as he was told by the Marine Institute in June that the summer salmon flows would be below earlier scientific estimates. That was the time to have taken action by curtailing the netting effort with possibly some contribution from the angling sector. A reduction the netting season by just two or three days would have had a much bigger impact on salmon survival rates than the imposition of catch-and-release on anglers.
No amount of new restrictions on anglers can possibly compensate for the huge depredation caused by the drift nets. If the 2003 record is replicated, the drift and draught nets will legally catch upwards of 150,000 salmon during their two-month season. In the whole of their nine-month season, the rods will take 30,000 fish at most.
The Minister’s move is quite ridiculous in terms of the numbers of fish that it may save. His proposed restrictions on angling will do precious little to increase the survival rates. Unfortunately, what it will do is cause a great deal of damage to employment in the tourist angling sector.
The proposal is ill thought-out and is devoid of any scientific basis. We will continue the fight for a rational, science and fact based management system for the Atlantic salmon fishery in Ireland.
Niall Greene
Chair
Stop Salmon Drift Nets Now
Raheen
Lisnagry
Co Limerick
