THE Government's future policy on drift netting may be influenced by a case opening in the High Court tomorrow, which is being taken on behalf of 67 currach and small boat skippers from Connemara and south Mayo.
The plaintiffs are suing the Minister for the Marine and the Western Regional Fisheries Board over the imposition of sanctuary areas off the Galway and south Mayo coastlines to protect sea trout. The measures were introduced without consultation, the plaintiffs claim, and have forced currach and small boat skippers to go further out to sea at considerable risk.
The by laws were introduced by the Minister for the Marine in response to scientific reports on the collapse of the western sea trout fishery from 1989. To date over £1 million has been spent on research into the collapse, which has been linked - disputedly - to sea lice emanating from fish farms. Sea trout stocks have begun to recover in the last two years.
The High Court case is expected to last for some weeks and may have a direct bearing on Government policy on drift netting, which has already come in for some international criticism. - Intense lobbying to impose a drift net ban has continued over the past month as a task force on wild salmon management prepares its final report.
An influential salmon lobby group - chaired by Ms Margaret Downes, deputy governor of the Bank of Ireland, and including the chief officer of the Central Regional Fisheries Board, an ESRI economist and a former Department of the Marine secretary - has urged the introduction of conservation measures to restore wild stocks.
Commercial fishing of wild salmon is a "wasteful use of a scare resource", the Wild Salmon Support Group has said. An economic assessment carried out far the group by Mr Fionan O Muircheartaigh, former Department of the Marine secretary and now with the ESRI, records a "disastrous" drop in the Irish catch of wild salmon, reflecting total North Atlantic experience. It says this is directly related to increased use of drift nets.
The fall in prices for wild salmon, and increased supply of farmed salmon, has reduced the average income of drift netters, it says, and this has induced "intensive and, at times, illegal efforts to sustain what is, nationally, a marginal and doomed enterprise"
The Wild Salmon Support Group argues that, unless wild salmon stocks are regenerated, there will be no future for recreational exploitation and the associated benefits of angling tourism. Improving the freshwater habitat is important, but is, much less significant than ensuring that greatly increased numbers of salmon return to their native rivers to spawn.
Any scheme for control or withdrawal of nets must be comprehensive and simultaneous, it says, and the EU could reasonably he expected to make a "significant contribution" to compensation costs.
The support group was set up last year and has close links with the North Atlantic Salmon Fund, which was established by an Icelandic businessmen, Mr Orri Vigfusson, to buy out drift net licences. Among its members are Dr T. K. Whitaker, former Department of Finance secretary; Mr Micheiil Breathnach, Central Fisheries Board chief officer; Prof Brendan Whelan, of the ESRI, and Dr Ken Whelan, of the Salmon Research Agency.
The task force on wild salmon management, chaired by Prof Noel Wilkins, of UCG, has received over 200 submissions.
