An indigenous industry shut down by greed
That might sound dramatic but a similar scenario confronts my community.
Like mine, hundreds of other fishing families living along our coast are facing this prospect.
They get married, raise their children and are part of small communities that make a living from the sea. Our incomes will tell you that fishing is not about money, it’s a way of life. It is about self-esteem and being part of the community and having a place.
Shortly it looks likely the Minister for State will be closing down the source of our traditional livelihood on the advice of the Salmon Commission of which I am a member.
My livelihood and that of my fellow fishermen has been made a political football. Almost all political parties, influenced by a highly-organised well-funded media campaign, of which your esteemed paper has been a willing cheerleader, have abandoned for political gain the traditional rights of our fishing communities, allegedly to protect salmon.
Government policy seems intent on transferring the point of kill of these salmon elsewhere.
What’s at issue here is the privatisation of a regulated public fishery and the transfer of wealth from communities who traditionally harvested this wealth to a cartel of private individuals who own our rivers. This free bonanza to these private fishery owners will make them millionaires overnight at the taxpayers’ expense. If what has happened in Scotland is anything to go by, the fishing rights of these rivers will not be affordable by the ordinary angler and will once again become the “sport of kings”.
For the past 10 years, we fishermen have watched our incomes plummet as savage cuts - both in the length of time we can fish and the quantity of fish caught - have been imposed on us.
Our catches have been reduced from 257,000 fish in 2000 to 91,000 this year.
During this time we were assured by successive ministers from Frank Fahy onwards that if we took the pain we would eventually get the gain.
It now appears that our pain is for the benefits of others.
All of this time the fishery owners and angling bodies have been allowed to wrap the flag of salmon conservation around themselves without any critical comment from the media. Whether a salmon is caught on a hook or a net, it is still a dead salmon.
What have they done for conservation? At the last commission meeting, angling representatives, who have a majority on the board, refused to accept a catch-and-release programme for the month of September recommended by scientists, when everyone knows that at that time of year salmon are heavy with spawn and by killing these fish they are potentially killing hundreds of fish and jeopardising the future.
However, the powers that be dropped this recommendation so they could vote us out of existence. It beggars belief the arrogance they get away with.
It will be a terrible day if these small fishing communities that are as tenacious and proud as the salmon are forced to disappear.
Seamus de Burca
Member of National Salmon Commission
Member of South Western Fishery Board
Shannonvale
Clonakilty
Co Cork
