Pair trawling: Sieving the life out of small bays and estuaries
Centimetres Trust " Length More In To Of Boats Which Column No Small Up Trawling Water The Shoals Two Than Usually Through Fish, Single Few Dragging Picture: Wildlife Fogarty: Irish Net Are Pádraic A Involves Scoop A "pair Sprats,
Why did the outgoing government fail to regulate fishing trawling in nearshore areas as they had promised?
This sorry saga goes back more than a decade when anger erupted among anglers and small-scale fishermen using pots and lines over the arrival of large trawling boats sieving the life out of small bays and estuaries along the western seaboard.
The practice, referred to as pair trawling, involves two boats dragging a single net through the water column to scoop up shoals of small fish, usually sprats, which are no more than a few centimetres in length. The practice illustrates everything that is wrong with how the seas around Ireland are managed.
Many of the areas in which pair trawling occurs are designated for biodiversity conservation as Special Areas of Conservation (SAC) or Special Protected Areas (SPAs) under EU law — and yet actual protection measures on the ground are close to non-existent.
While all kinds of industrial fishing (strictly-speaking, large boats or the use of particularly harmful gear) should be excluded from SACs and SPAs, for the vast majority there are no restrictions whatever on the types of fishing activity that can take place.
The sprats themselves, like many species that are targeted in inshore areas, are not governed by any kind of quotas or restrictions so the boats are free to take all of them if they are so inclined.
And it’s not like the fish are feeding hungry people; sprats are mostly destined to be churned into fishmeal — a brown powder destined for other unsustainable industries, particularly feed stock for captive-farmed salmon.
The fishing industry complains constantly that it is in a state of collapse, but is it any wonder?
Sprats are a key species in the marine food web. They eat plankton and their flesh is oily and so full of calories. Now that herring populations have collapsed around our coasts due to overfishing, the sprats are just about all that’s left for seabirds, dolphins, whales and the larger fish which, if allowed to recover, might provide a living for small-scale fishermen.
According to figures from an Bord Iascaigh Mhara, 71% of active fishing boats in Ireland are less than 10 metres in length while banning all pair trawling within six nautical miles of the coast, where nearly all the fishing for sprats occurs with larger boats, would impact six vessels.
You read that right: only six boats, out of a total of 1,425 which were registered in Ireland in 2022 are responsible for one of the most ecologically harmful forms of fishing in our waters. And yet it goes on.
In 2018, then-minister for agriculture, Fine Gael’s Michael Creed, announced that pair trawling by vessels more than 18 metres in length would be banned. This decision, however, was over-turned in the courts and while the incoming government in 2020 committed to reintroducing the prohibition on inshore pair trawling, this didn’t happen. A public consultation was held early in 2024 but the results of this have not been published.
Pair-trawling is where two boats drag a net with a fine mesh through the water column. It can sieve the water of whole bays in a few hours while the small fish which are caught (sprat) are the foundation of the marine food chain. They are better left in the sea! pic.twitter.com/SRJ8R0ouyZ
— Irish Wildlife Trust (@Irishwildlife) May 5, 2018
If anything though, these proposals do not go far enough. The sprats need to stay in the sea where they can support the rebuilding of the food web, which, if given a chance, would in turn support wildlife and local economies built around small, low impact boats. The consultation did not refer to bottom trawling by smaller boats or dredging for species such as scallops and razor clams, which are particularly destructive practices, even though they are carried out mostly by small boats.
This winter, the return of the pair trawlers to inlets from Cork and Kerry right up to Galway and Donegal, was met with the usual despair from those locals who fret over the ongoing collapse of marine life. In Donegal and Sligo dead common dolphins were washing up soon after the trawlers left. According to Grace Carr of the Irish Wildlife Trust it is “extremely frustrating” that the original law was overturned, which was on a point of a technicality rather than the policy itself.
The conservation organisation said that “the Irish government, the courts and the Irish people all know these measures are vitally needed in order to protect fish species, the entire marine food web and the livelihood of the smaller fishing boats. It should have been a higher priority for the last government to get this ban back in place considering there was nothing wrong with the substance of the policy".
They are now hoping that the incoming government will make it a priority because, says Carr, “this is an ecological disaster that’s happening right in front of our eyes”.
- The long-promised legislation for MPAs must include targets for ‘strictly protected’ areas, i.e. where there are no fishing or harmful activities of any kind.
- Bottom trawling and dredging needs to be stopped, not only are these forms of fishing disastrous for biodiversity but newer evidence points to the emissions of carbon dioxide caused by the non-stop disturbance of seabed sediments.
This may not sound palatable to many who make a living from the sea but they are the ones with the most to gain.
If there is to be any future for commercial fishing in Ireland it must be based on restoration of the ecosystem, without which what little commercial activity that remains will continue its terminal decline.