Fishy goings-on with salmon farming
For the first time, TV cameras unveiled salmon farming’s routine and scandalous abuse of our environment:
a) sea-beds knee-deep in dumped salmon carcasses;
b) stocks of wild salmon and seatrout eaten alive with parasites from the densely-packed salmon-cages;
c) fisheries destroyed;
d) bogs used as convenient dumps for diseased salmon and offal.
And what about the IFA spokesman’s claim that salmon-farmers were legally entitled to dump their dead salmon in the nearest bog-hole?
That the two principal salmon farmers exposed in some of these practices were also members of the boards of the Marine Institute (which regulates salmon farming) and BIM (which bankrolls salmon farming), beggared belief.
Since 1992, the county councils knew dead salmon were being dumped on municipal dumps and bogs but turned a blind eye.
Eleven years on, the unexpected arrival of TV cameras galvanised the Galway CC to investigate these practices. Will the Mayo and Donegal councils now commence digging in Achill and Fanad to remove buried carcasses? Remember, dead salmon don’t decompose in bog-soil.
What about the wild fisheries, their owners, hotel and guesthouse proprietors that depended on wild salmon and sea-trout angling for their livelihoods? Hard cheese, a chara, it’s salmon farmers first.
The State authorities (BIM, Department of Marine/National Resources, etc) routinely broadcast that salmon farming is rigorously controlled and regulated.
How, then, can the appalling environmental sacrileges and illegalities exposed by Prime Time be allowed to go unpunished?
Simple.
The backbone of the Marine Institute board comprises men who are up to their necks in salmon farming.
And the latest recruit to the aquaculture appeals board is an ex-salmon-feed manufacturer.
These political shenanigans guarantee that salmon farmers ignore scientific findings, ride roughshod over environmental concerns while simultaneously remaining protected from sanction and prosecution.
We must be grateful for Prime Time finally dragging some of these spurious environmental protectors under the full glare of public scrutiny.
Unless this opportunity is now seized to clear the decks and honestly enact worthwhile legislation to protect what is left of our environment, then by next week it will be an admonishing wag of the finger from the Marine Institute then, “back to business, lads”.
Dr Robert D O’Sullivan,
8, Devonshire Place,
London W1N 1PB,
England.
