Best foot forward...
Aoife Moriarty and Jennifer Flahive setting off on Dingle Walking Club’s Storm Festival walk to Bull’s Head on Sunday morning.
IT has become so difficult for West Kerry’s inshore fishermen to make a living that they are being forced to risk their lives heading further and further out to sea in search of fish in small boats that are desperately exposed in the open ocean.
Young Dingle fishermen told The Kerryman this week that, ten years ago, a decent wage could be made fishing for inshore species such as pollock. Now they can barely cover their costs and they reckon that in 10 years’ time there will be no inshore fishermen left.
The fishermen are being hit by a combination of factors, including depleted fish stocks, lack of quota for some fish species that appear to be plentiful and, significantly, by the impact of the growing number of marauding seals which make it virtually impossible to fish in the rich waters around the Blaskets.
Faced by these challenges, fishermen are forced to travel up to 30 miles or more from land, often fishing on their own because what they catch isn’t worth enough to pay a crew. The level of risk associated with this is frightening: aside from the ever-present dangers of the open sea and the weather, even a simple accident or a leg snagged on a rope going overboard could cost a young man his life.
“In 10 years’ time there will be no local inshore fishermen left and the government don’t want to hear about it; they don’t care,” said Adam Flannery who sold his 8.5m boat just last week because he sees no future in fishing.
Adam, and his fellow Dingle fishermen Tom Brosnan and Liam Flannery said that the single greatest threat to their livelihood at the moment is the increasing population of seals around the Blaskets. The men said the seal population in the area is officially calculated at over 1,400 but they believe the actual number could be many times greater and the impact on fish stocks and fishing practices is devastating.
They said it is now impossible to fish around the Blaskets because fish that are caught in nets or on long-line hooks are eaten or damaged by seals before they can be hauled on board the boats. To prove the point, Adam was able to show The Kerryman a phone video of a seal eating fish from a jigger (fishing line) as it was being hauled about his boat. He also had pictures of boxes of fish that were unfit for human consumption because huge bites were taken out of them by seals.
The Kerryman asked the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS), which monitors the Blasket seal population, to comment but they had failed to respond by the time of going to press. Meanwhile, the local expert view is that the NPWS needs to define the maximum sustainable number of seals on the Blaskets and to carry out humane culls if the population exceeds this number, as is done with deer in Killarney National Park.