The Lough Neagh fishery is the largest, as well as one of the last, wild eel fisheries in Europe, but the supply of elvers continues to decline, writes Susan McKay.
At dawn this morning the eel fishermen of Lough Neagh began to pull in the lines they set yesterday evening, on the first day of the new season. Their catch has been described by poet Seamus Heaney as: "The furling, slippy/Haul, a knot of black and pewter belly."
Their's is an ancient way of life, and the Lough Neagh fishery is the largest, as well as one of the last, wild eel fisheries in Europe.
However, the season opened this year under threat. The supply of wild baby eels known as elvers continues to decline, and there is conflict between the head of the Lough Neagh Fishermen's Co-Operative and the Lough Neagh Fishermen's Association, the trade union representing many of the fishermen, over how to deal with the crisis.
Ten-year-old James Donnelly is on half-term holiday, but he'll be up like a lark at four all week. "I'm going to be a fisherman," he says. "Like my Daddy." Martin Donnelly is proud his son wants to follow him - he himself is a fourth-generation eel fisherman.
"It's in the blood," he says. However, he fears that without radical action, the boy's ambition may be thwarted. "The eel fishing is in decline. It needs a new strategy, even if that means closing it down for a few years.
"Twenty years ago there were more than 200 boats fishing the lough - it's down to 40 or 50 full-time now. Ten years ago you could put out a line with 300 hooks and pull in 100 eels. These days, you're lucky to get 40."
The Donnellys live on "the moss", on the shores of vast Lough Neagh. Their house is just a few miles from the motorway connecting Lurgan and Belfast, but their way of life feels like it belongs to an earlier time.
The extended family works together in a rhythm. Martin inherited his father’s permit to fish. His brother, Thomas, is his designated helper. His mother, Mary, makes soda bread on the griddle and strong tea for the fishermen when they come in off the lough.
The lorry from the co-operative arrives before 8am to weigh and take away the barrels of live eels. Martin’s uncle, Eddie, spends his days during the season seated with his elderly dogs beside a big coal fire, unravelling the lines. Martin’s wife, Ashley, looks after the children.
It is peaceful on the shore. Behind the fishermen’s homes on the "ramparts", there are stands of silvery willows, known locally as "black sallies". Birds sing and herons stand in the tall bulrushes.
Across the water, the Sperrins rise gently on the horizon. The factory at Toomebridge is on the far side of the lough. There, the live eels are packed in ice and sent off to Belfast to be flown to the Netherlands. They’ll be smoked and ready to eat within 24 hours of being pulled from their deep waters.
These days, there are bulldozers on the moss, and the fishermen supplement their incomes with out-of-season work as labourers on "prestigious developments" of "exclusive homes" for commuters. Donnelly says the association is fighting for better terms and conditions and for a say in planning the future of the industry.
It has joined forces with Friends of the Earth to combat the growing problem of pollution in the lough. It also wants to wrest the ownership of Lough Neagh back from the British aristocracy. A rent is still paid to the Shaftesbury estate for the right to fish.
"In the 1600s the British took the rights to the salmon and the Catholics were pushed on to the moss to subsist on coarse fish," says the association’s treasurer Brian Bannon. "From then to the present day goes the misery. The lough is still in the hands of absentee landlords."
The association, which has 120 members, is critical of the co-operative, set up by Fr Oliver Plunkett Kennedy 40 years ago, and still chaired by him.
"The co-op is tired and has no new ideas. It should hand over the sinking ship to those who want to rescue it," says Patricia Campbell, the association’s chairwoman.
Fr Kennedy is dismissive of such claims. "There’s a junior group down in one corner of the lough who’ve been causing a lot of bother," he says. "The EU has a lot of idiotic proposals which they say are to protect an endangered species but which would simply kill off eel fishing.
"The Government has been simply useless. They don’t know anything and they don’t care. There is a crisis. There is an inadequate intake of young eels into the lough and we have to restock it. Since the early 1980s we’ve spent £1 million, but prices are rising. We apply every year for grants, and every year we are turned down."
There is no known reason for the worldwide decline in elvers, though global warming may be a factor. "The eel is a mysterious creature," says Donnelly. "His mother spawns in the Sargasso Sea in the Gulf of Mexico and it takes three years for the elvers to drift down the Gulf Stream and make their way up into the River Bann."
Heaney described this remarkable journey: "Against/ebb, current, rock, rapids/a muscled icicle/that melts itself longer/and fatter."
Donnelly says the elver is "not much bigger than a darning needle". The co-op catches the elvers at the Cutts near Coleraine, and brings them the rest of the way to the lough. "They lie feeding then for seven years or more. The Lough Neagh eel isn’t like the long hungry eel you’ll get in a river," says Donnelly. "He’s fat and well fed, the best eel in the world."
After another decade or more – some eels are aged 40 or so – the brown eel turns silver and, in the autumn, heads back towards the sea. "It depends on the flood waters. The surge comes and the mother eel goes away in the dark of the moon. They won’t go in the bright of the moon."
The silver eels head back to the Sargasso Sea where they spawn and die.
Many of them are trapped on their way at the weirs in Toomebridge by the co-operative, but a "queen’s way" is left open. By this stage they are "fat as a pipe", according to Donnelly. "The sale of the silver eels pays all our expenses," says Fr Kennedy. "It pays for restocking the lough, but the numbers are falling."
This is another source of dispute. The association says the co-op is taking too many silver eels. Fr Kennedy says increased fishing of brown eels has led to a decline in the number of silver ones.
Young James Donnelly’s future depends on the resolution of these rows and the development of an agreed survival plan.