Where's the Catch ?

Throughout the ages, fishing was one of the main livelihood's of coastal towns and villages up and down the country . In times gone by, fish for the most part were caught and consumed at home, or sold locally at local markets. Small quantities of superior fish such as turbot, cod and ling were more usually destined for sale in Dublin for a larger pricetag. Fish-curing was confined to salting cod, ling and herrings in wooden barrels, which were sold in the markets for local consumption during the winter months. But times have sure changed.

Recently, in Dublin I went to buy some fish in a well known gourmet fish shop, in a fishing village which will remain nameless. Renowned for it's quality seafood, this establishment has built  it's reputation off the backs of local fishermen and freshly caught local produce for generations. I was infuriated and shocked by what I was presented with. There was seabass and bream from Greece, salmon and smoked salmon farmed in Scotland and Norway, mussels and Mackeral from Spain, Prawns farmed in the Indian Ocean and South East Asia, and Squid from China !  No wonder our fishing industry is on it's knees.  I felt so disheartened by what I was seeing, the loss of culture, the loss of an industry, people's livelihoods, and ultimately this is no good for the survival of our fishing industry or our economy.

The Marine Institute is the Government's own respected authority on maritime affairs, the voice of the State shall we say on marine research, and it has valued the total available catch of fish off Ireland last year at €1.18 billion, for a total of 994,155 tonnes.

That is an massive figure, indicating huge potential wealth for this cash-strapped nation of ours in the throngs of an economic meltdown. But of this total value of seafood, Ireland was only entitled to catch €0.19 billion. Foreign fishing fleets had exclusive rights to take the rest of the fish from Irish waters.
So Essentially, Ireland handed over around €1billion of its natural economic resources to other EU countries. A damning figure indeed, frittering away hard earned cash, such financial waste by the Irish government in this case, should not be tolerated. Ireland, a nation with some of the richest and fertile fishing grounds in the world, where coastal communities are being financially starved and frustrated through their inability to catch their own fish, because they are not allowed to do so due to the many unfair EU regulations imposed upon us. Shame on the politicians ! It's no surprise then that Irish fishermen, forced to tie up their boats at the quaysides of Irish fishing ports and watch as foreign vessels unload into those ports, are bitter and frustrated.

Despite our small Island nation being blessed with some of the richest fishing grounds in Europe, did you know we now employ more fishery officers, both inland and along the coast, than there are fishing vessels? and we further spend almost as much on monitoring and controlling fishing vessels as is derived from landings. Margins barely exist for those that do land their catch successfully. Fuel costs have risen, and imports of cheaper fish from non-EU countries have been flooding the market.
This level of Unfairness and discrepancies within the quota system, the massive greed of larger nations and the blatant disregard for future fish stock trawling everything in sight leaves a very bleak outlook for future generations to come.

The less discerning fish eater is often misled. A recent Food Safety Authority of Ireland investigation found that 19 per cent of cod and haddock samples taken from shops, restaurants, pubs and takeaways had been mislabelled – with takeways being the worst offenders. Commonly serving “pangasius" fillets, farmed in Vietnam.

This frightening abuse of the seas has been actively promoted by governments in the developing world, as territorial waters are handed over to transnational corporations to meet debt obligations. Take for example, agencies like the World Bank who have promoted aquaculture prawn farming as a foreign currency earner in the Third World.

Pangasius is a catfish which is intensively farmed in south east Asia, in particular Vietnam, and china's muddy and often polluted waters, and passed off as cod or simply “whitefish” to none the wiser  consumers in both supermarkets and restaurants. Last year, Europe imported some 668,000 tonnes of this catfish.

Following the TV chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's victory some weeks ago in the ethical fishing fight which has brought about EU fishing reforms, perhaps we should utilise this momentum wisely and push for further reforms and demand fairer quotas and fishing methods for all countries. According to this new reform Fishermen will be banned from throwing dead catch back into the sea in the most radical reform of their industry in 40 years. This certainly is good news, and hopefully will halt such an immoral and vast waste of fish. Furthermore, All fish will now have to be labelled in order to show how sustainably they were caught as part of these measures .

So what's the catch ? What will this mean when it comes to quotas intended to protect endangered fish species? Should there not be a penalty system implemented for those who continue to catch endangered fish ? akin to a driving licence, too many penalty points and you loose your right to fish until you can prove you are capable and can do it properly.

For more sustainable fishing, the whole quota system must be changed and so must the fishing methods practiced. The current EU quota system is devoid of fairness.

For fishermen stock recovery is a mixed blessing. There is a general belief that Ireland will never receive fair quotas from Europe. They also believe quotas are not evenly monitored, and never will be while the EU’s control agency is based in the Spanish port of Vigo.

I would definitely agree with the Food writer Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, when he refers to fish discards as 'immoral'. The Irish fishing industry has been trying to bend the European Commission’s ear for years over this issue, by avoiding catching unwanted fish in the first place,  by using different netting, square mesh panels, larger mesh and other technical conservation measures, however it has always fallen on deaf ears. Following this new reform proposal, this momentum should be used as a springboard for further reforms. Further discussions when it comes to sustainability, fairness and protection of local waters as fishing grounds for local fishermen and local fishing industries should be respected, supported, and encouraged. The Irish fishing communities should learn to go back to their roots. Small local fishing practices respected marine life more, taking only what they needed to survive, whereas nowadays the big guns in the fishing industry with their state of the art technology and trawlers are motivated purely by money and greed, this bodes no good for anyone but themselves, certainly not for the future of fishing, or indeed the marine life and sustainability for future generations. We need to follow up this momentum in the name of sustainability both for the future survival of the fish species, and our local fishing communities.

We should really embrace the plethora of seafood on offer to us, and become more adventurous when it comes to cooking fish. There are some cultural barriers to cross in getting to grips with unfamiliar species such as pollock and flounder, gurnard and black bream, halibut and haddock, coley and bearfish.  And cross these barriers we must – from fishermen, wholesalers, retailers and shoppers – if we want our children to eat fish we are going to have to change our mindset, expand our personal choice beyond Cod, Salmon, and Tuna. By spreading our nets wider, but less deeply, we can lighten the load across the world's oceans, for generations to come.

let me leave you with a small anecdote I read recently :

"There was a man taking a morning walk on the beach. He saw that along with the morning tide came hundreds of starfish and when the tide receded, they were left behind and with the morning sun rays, they would die. The tide was fresh and the starfish were alive. The man took a few steps, picked one and threw it into the water. He did that repeatedly. Right behind him there was another person who couldn't understand what this man was doing. He caught up with him and asked, "What are you doing? There are hundreds of starfish. How many can you help? What difference does it make?" This man did not reply, took two more steps, picked up another one, threw it into the water, and said, "It makes a difference to this one."

I think the moral of this story is this, If everyone tried to make a small difference, we'd end up with a big difference, wouldn't we?