“In our immediate family, there’s no fishermen coming up. And that would have been from a long line of fishermen. It’s sad when you think of it.”
Jerry Early, a part-time fisherman on Arranmore, is hoping to make fishing more attractive for the next generation by finding ways that small-scale island boats can prosper.
A lost generation of fishers was created on the Donegal island, according to Early. This happened when a perfect storm was created 15 years ago due to a ban of driftnetting for salmon in 2006 combined with the economic boom which attracted islanders to higher wages in Dublin, he explained.
“That lag, of the generations not following through with fishing, has put all the islands at a disadvantage.”
It’s very important for the future of islands and coastal areas, to make it more attractive to get back into fishing, said Early. In order to do this, a group on the island are hoping to promote heritage fishing, where traditional methods are used.
This includes hand-hauling of nets and line-catching of fish. They are in the process of developing an app that will market their produce directly to the consumer.
“Back in the day, when it was [all] rowboats or sailboats, fish were plentiful. We were fishing different species at different times which allowed for sustainability.” Progress can be a dangerous thing, added Early, who said it has had “a detrimental effect on island fishing”.
“Big was supposed to be better”, but this has proven not to be the case in fishing, said Early. “One boat can catch enough fish in one trip that can keep all the islands of Ireland going for a year.”
The fisherman said that more emphasis needs to be put on small-scale and traditional methods, with “poor policy” making it “really hard to be a fisherman on the island”.
Quotas are the first thing that almost everyone with a connection to fishing talks about whenever fishing is discussed. They are the share of certain stocks of commercial fish that are allowed to be caught and were one of the points of contention of Brexit, with Ireland losing a large share of its valuable mackerel quota.
In the EU, each country’s quota is based on its historic track record. Once the country quota is allocated, Member States have a lot of freedom in how they are distributed.
In Ireland, quotas are “a public resource” owned by the State and are made available to fishing vessels based on a lottery for some quotas and on vessel size or other details for others. To calculate which boats and companies are allocated the Irish quota by the Government is extremely complex as the information is not publicly available.
A 2019 European Commission report compiled a database of the entire EU fleet register and found that most Irish vessels are owned by individual Irish fishers, with only about 3.5% of the fleet registered to a foreign owner or foreign registered company.
They also found that larger Irish companies are increasingly common as, due to the Irish – first to catch the fish, gets the quota – system, only those who can modernise are able to compete. This means smaller, less efficient vessel owners “are left behind”.
The study authors suggested that “there is a need for greater transparency” in Ireland about the “ultimate beneficiaries of initial allocations of quotas”.
TheJournal.ie