Letter to Minister

Brendan Kenneally of Croshaven S.A.C. is lobbying hard to try and stop trawling in Cork Harbour. If you agree with him send a similar letter to the Ministry. remember the more who shout, the louder the shout will become !

Good Luck.

18 January 2001  

Dear Minister Fahey.

                                I am writing to you in the hope that you might be able to help not just me but the people of Ireland as well.

I am writing to you about the rape of Cork Harbour by the  indiscriminate trawling of the harbour from Roches Point to Marina Point.

I am the Conservation Officer with Crosshaven Sea Anglers and at a recent meeting I was instructed to write to you to express our concern that in a very short time we will be fishing in a barren harbour raped of all it’s stocks for the short term profit of a few greedy trawler men who are decimating the stocks of small fish in the harbour. Our Club has nearly one hundred adult members and nearly fifty juvenile members and we are only one club of nearly twenty that regularly fish Cork Harbour. The trawler men have taken the view that it is easer to trawl from Marina Point to Roches Point than to actually go to sea. There are times when the cross-river ferry at Carrigaloe has to swerve to avoid the trawlers as they trawl so far up the river. The trawlers are so close to the shore that they are well within the casting range of even the most basic caster. While there is a reasonable amount of fish in the harbour for now I have to ask you as our Minister, for how long more will the stocks last? Even if the trawlers only keep the fish over the size limit how many fish under size are killed. We on the other hand fish a catch and release policy and only a few fish for the table are taken and all under size fish are returned alive.

                    While we have no problem with the trawlers fishing out side the harbour, but it can not be in our best interest to  see our fish stocks so treated. There can be no doubt that there is by far a greater benefit to our economy from rod anglers than there is from the few trawlers who are treating our harbour so badly. Cork harbour is one of the premium harbours in Ireland and so is a major attraction to tourists and should be exploited as such. If it is denuded of its fish stocks how can we as Irish people and anglers promote it around the world.  I am not trying to tar all trawlers with the one brush in fact there are only about four boats behaving in this deplorable way but they are trawling two or three times a day when they can so you can imagine the loss to our fish stocks. Two of these boats are forty feet plus. These boats are taking every species of fish from Conger and Lesser Spotted Dogfish to Cod and Turbot. I under stand from people that I have spoken to that the trawlermen are not even able to sell the majority of the fish taken except at a very low price, nearly below cost selling but that’s another letter.   At times we wonder how they can afford to trawl when the amount of saleable fish they take is so small. I wonder if all these fish are being declared. Most of these fish are harbour stocks and by that I mean that they are fish that do not return to the deep sea once they have taken up residence in the harbour and are not easily replaced if ever.

I understand that you probably have been contacted by lots of people about this problem including our representative body the Irish Federation of Sea Anglers but we also think that we should also add our voices to the clamour to save our stocks for our future and for our children who hopefully will have somewhere to fish with your help of course.

                                     We are asking you to ban the trawling of Cork Harbour from inside Roches Point lighthouse by any means as soon as possible.

I remain,

Yours sincerely,