Fishermen forced to dump fish

The Federation of Irish Fishermen says the majority of fishermen are working for very little pay because fisheries regulations are forcing the dumping of fish catches at sea.

New FIF chairman Michael Walsh has called for an urgent meeting with the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries & Food.

He says uncertainty in the industry is a serious threat to employment in many fishing ports.

Fish scammers must pay back £1m

Three County Down fishermen have been ordered to pay back more than £1m which they netted through a fish quota scam.

They were convicted at Liverpool Crown Court in January of landing fish stocks in excess of their permitted quotas.

On Monday, a judge at the same court said the trio and two Kilkeel-based fish-selling firms had made more than £15m from this criminal conduct.

The fishermen were given six months to either pay the money to the Assets Recovery Agency or face imprisonment.

The Marine and Fisheries Agency brought the prosecutions after the detection of inaccurate fish-landing declarations involving 12 fishing boats.

Practice of dumping fish criticised

Fish producers across Europe have claimed that large quantities of fish are being dumped at sea because of EU bureaucracy.

The claim was made at the annual convention of the Association of European Fish Producers in Kinsale, Co Cork where delegates called for an end to the practice.

If several species of fish get caught in nets and if a boat does not have a quota for a particular species under EU rules, the fish must be dumped back in the sea.

 EU to tackle illegal fishing

The European Commission is to blacklist countries and vessels suspected of illegal fishing and stop them from selling their catches in Europe.

Illegal or 'pirate' fishing on the world's oceans is estimated to yield catches of around €10bn a year of which about €1bn is imported into and sold on the EU market.

Much of the illegal catches are making up for a shortfall in catches caused by the EU Commission's own cutbacks on fishing quotas for its own fleets.

Scam fishermens' assets frozen

The Assets Recovery Agency has frozen the assets of three County Down fishermen as part of a crackdown on a fish quota scam.

The agency obtained restraint orders against three men, including a father and son, from the Kilkeel area.

Investigators moved in after they were convicted at Liverpool Crown Court in January of landing fish stocks in excess of their permitted quotas.

The prosecution was brought by the Marine and Fisheries Agency.

It was over inaccurate landing declarations involving 12 vessels - some owned by the defendants - over a period stretching back to October 2003.

 Colony of vulnerable porbeagle sharks at risk after fisherman lands 60 in single day

Conservationists are investigating reports of a vast catch of more than 60 rare sharks by a long-line fisherman operating from a port in North Devon.

If confirmed, the haul would be one of the largest on record and a devastating blow for the population of porbeagle sharks off the isle of Lundy in the Bristol Channel where numbers had been increasing in recent years, having been fished near to extinction in the 1970s.

The catch has coincided with the first substantial study of porbeagle sharks in British waters, which included fitting several with satellite-tracking devices.

The porbeagle can grow up to 12ft and is closely related to the infamous great white. It is one of the largest predatory sharks in British waters and is hunted for its meat, which is particularly popular in France. The porbeagle’s white belly may have led to it being mistaken for a great white, sparking last week’s shark scare off the Cornish coast.

Garda raids on boats linked to over-fishing

A series of co-ordinated garda raids and searches on fishing boats, houses and factory premises were carried out earlier this morning.

The raids in Cork, Kerry, Galway and Donegal appear to be linked to ongoing investigations into allegations of overfishing of mackerel. The investigations began more than two years ago.  

Overfishing has already resulted in severe cutbacks on quotas allowed by the European Union to the Irish fishing fleet for 2007 and over the next few years. These were agreed between the Government and the EU.

 Author Charles Clover on the scourge of overfishing, disgraceful restaurants, and yes, sustainable McDonald's.

By Samuel Fromartz June 20, 2007

I first met Charles Clover, the environment editor for London's Daily Telegraph, over a dinner of striped bass in Washington. I used to surf cast for the fish off the beaches of Long Island, N.Y., in the 1980s, a time of stringent catch limits because of the shrinking bass population. Then strong fisheries management and conservation measures led to a dramatic rebound in the fishery, now evident on our dinner plates.

Clover has been monitoring the oceans since the late 1980s. His book, "The End of the Line: How Overfishing Is Changing the World and What We Eat," was published in the United States last year but, sadly, was met with a deafening lack of attention. That's a shame, because Clover presents a compendium of how precisely we are eating our way through the seas. Scientists reported last year that fish would be gone from the oceans by 2048 if this behavior goes unchecked -- though Clover points out that it's not as if the seas will be empty. In the absence of all the fish we've eaten, we'll also experience a surfeit of species like jellyfish because biodiversity has been undone.