THE Minister of State for the Marine, Mr Eamon Gilmore, is expected to launch an inquiry into the conduct of a four year State funded scientific research programme following the discovery of major flaws" in the data.
An independent report due to be published this week into sea trout monitoring from 1992 to 1996 has found "discrepancies" on such a "large scale" that it rejects the link made between fish farms and sea lice numbers.
Loss of samples, misreporting and transcription errors are some of the flaws identified by Dr Ian Cowx, of the University of Hull International Fisheries Institute in his evaluation for the Department of the Marine, a copy of which has been seen by The Irish Times. The 1992-1996 sea trout monitoring programme has been the centre piece of a £1 million annual research strategy on the collapse of western sea trout stocks, as first noted on the Galway Mayo coastline in 1989.
So damning are Dr Cowx's findings that they challenge the recommendations made in earlier Government studies of the problem, including the 1994 Whitaker report. Most of the scientific work has been carried out by the Department of the Marine's Fisheries Research Centre, the central and regional fishery boards and the Salmon Research Agency in Co Mayo. The report is expected to be published tomorrow.
The most recent Sea Trout Working Group report, on 1995 data - a copy of which has also been seen by The Irish Times - found a reversal in the trend towards sea trout recovery which had been recorded in 1994. The 1995 data indicated that only two western fisheries, in Burrishoole and Inagh/Ballynahinch, had increased rod catches of sea trout. Three fisheries which had recorded a rise in 1994 - Delphi, Erriff and Kylemore - noted a decline the following year.
However, such scientific data gathered from 1992 is now open to question. It contains "unacceptably high" discrepancies, of the order of seven to 14 per cent, Dr Cowx says. In the worst cases, over 40 per cent of data had some associated inaccurate element. No longer can the finger he pointed at fish farms, he suggests. "The variability in the number of sea trout sampled between rivers virtually negates any hope of assessing a relationship between fish farms and fish lice landing," he writes. He recommends that genetic fingerprinting techniques be used in a new attempt to identify the source of sea lice affecting sea trout.
Dr Cowx was commissioned by the Marine Institute to carry out the independent evaluation for the Minister, following concerns raised by Dr David Jackson, a former member of one of the sea trout research groups. Last December, the Government's Sea Trout Monitoring and Advisory Group (STMAG), which superseded an earlier task force, recommended the review.
Tracing the data trail, Dr Cowx says many of the discrepancies are thought to have arisen from the procedure used to collate weekly reports. These weekly reports were frequently drawn together over the telephone by the Central Fisheries Board. He found data was often not recorded in healthy fish returned to the river; infested smolts were not sent for analysis; some samples were sent for analysis hut lost; there was misreporting of dates on the database; inaccurate or misreporting of the number of fish caught; and in some cases fish were moribund or considered to be too long in fresh water to be valid.
The author found the sampling programme was inadequate to meet the high demands of such a sensitive issue. Many fisheries which should have been sampled were not; or were sampled insufficiently or during bad weather conditions, when few fish were likely to have been caught anyway. Some invalid fish and other species, like brown trout, were retained for analysis, so artificially boosting the numbers caught.
The author says previous reports should be "considered invalid", unless amended to account for the flaws. A new strategy must be adopted to evaluate the causes of the decline, he says.
