Climate change is costing Irish inshore skippers up to 100 fishing days annually, their national representative association says.
The cost of bait is also at “crisis” levels due to Ireland’s loss of pelagic (mackerel) quota, the National Inshore Fishermen’s Association (NIFA) says.
As The Sunday Independent reports, NIFA has drawn up a submission for Government which calls for back-dated State financial support in return for voluntary efforts to respond to pollution and assist with marine research.
“What the farmers are facing with Mercosur is what we have already experienced, with a growing and significant percentage of our fish now imported due to lack of quota for our own fleet,”NIFA chairman Michael Desmond told the newspaper.
Mackerel quotas will drop by 70 per cent, blue whiting by 41 per cent and boarfish by 22 per cent, as a result of the December council, with the Government and industry blaming it on overfishing of mackerel by non-EU states, principally Norway, the Faroe Islands and Russia.
Minister of State for Fisheries Timmy Dooley has set up a task force in the wake of the quota cuts, but Desmond says that NIFA prepared its own submission as “we don’t need a task force to tell the minister what we are already experiencing ourselves”.
The submission has been made on behalf of an estimated 900 active inshore vessels among a total inshore fleet of some 1300 on the register.
It argues that “preventatives supports” will be significantly cheaper to the State than “post-collapse intervention", and that for every one inshore fishing jobs, an estimated seven jobs are supported onshore, with total employment of 7,200 people in remote coastal areas.
It also points out the inshore fishing fleet has had none of the support that the agriculture sector has had.
The association has drawn up proposals for three support schemes, backdated five years, which would cost an estimated 150 million overall.
NIFA is also seeking the re-opening of several key inshore fisheries for small-scale vessels, with “appropriate conservation safeguards”, including access to wild salmon, sea bass and trout.
It has proposed that BIM should develop markets for pilchards and anchovies – now more frequent in Irish waters due to climate change – along with spurdog and octopus.
It says that inshore vessels should have access to more mackerel quota for line-caught fish which would fetch a higher market value, and argues that Ireland should pursue a quota for bluefin tuna which are more frequent in these waters.
Inshore fisheries supply “high value, low carbon local seafood,” the NIFA submission says.
However, it points out that no young person will want to enter an industry where “an honest mistake, paperwork error or minor technical breach” can result in a criminal record under current fisheries legislation.
Read The Sunday Independent here
