Mornington

DONACARNEY SCHOOL ENROLMENT 2019

Junior infants new admissions evening: Parents/Guardians (adults only) are invited to a meeting in relation to junior infants starting school in September 2019. These meetings will be held on Tuesday 12th February at the boy’s school at 7.30 pm. Wednesday 27th February at the girl’s school at 7.30pm. For enquiries about all enrolments for the 2019-2020 year please contact: Bunscoil Buachaillí Réalt (boys’ school) at 041 9827045, Réalt na Mara Caillini (girls’ school) at 041 9887684.

WHERE HAVE ALL THE SALMON GONE

On Tuesday last February 12th, for many generations, there would be no men to be found in Mornington.

They would be all, well most of them, on the Baltray side, north of the river about a mile away from the mouth of the river.

Some men would fish on the Southern side. It wasn’t just Mornington men who fished on the Boyne. You had men from peripheral villages and also men from Drogheda. In the halcyon days, there would be on up two hundred men fishing. A few days before the fishing started the priest would bless the boats and nets. Whilst

the men were fishing the women folk would bring tea and bread down to the fishermen. The tea would be in a milk bottle and the bread would be in a wrapped

in newspaper. Everything seemed so simple in those days. Unlike nowadays people lived a far less stressful life. I would guess that the word stress wasn’t in the dictionary, if it was then no one looked it up.

Fast forward to nowadays there is no net fishing on the Boyne River. Many rivers, especially on the east coast were closed in 2006, except for the catch and release programme which was carried out until 2015. This operation was carried out under strict conditions in the presence of a fishery inspector and some of his staff.

The angling fraternity are still doing the catch and “Release”. The reason for the closure of these fisheries was to do with the small number of salmon that were returning to the rivers. Apparently.

This shortage is because of commercial fishing, angling, pollution, predation, poaching, global warming, scarcity of krill and capelin, which is the staple diet of the salmon. The krill and capelin is under serious stress from the Japanese boats and have decimated the stocks. There is another danger to salmon which is rarely mentioned, and that is the number of seals that are in the Boyne. They are doing serious damage to salmon and trout stocks. This is never

mentioned. Now if the boot was on the other foot if salmon were killing seals there would be uproar. Surely these seals should be in a seal sanctuary or if not then have a seal cull like some other countries.