Getting the tourists hooked to save our fish

Now is the time of year when, across the proof-strewn, coffeestained desks of the ad agencies, nature is found recruited to that least natural of concepts, the tourism product. As she herself lies low, leafless and sodden, the strategists of fantasy dispatch their final images of Ireland at its lushest and most pristine.

A year ago, as if suddenly assailed by doubts, the Marine Institute commissioned research into the potential market for our angling in Britain, France and Germany. In the effort to search hearts and minds, local focus groups were conducted in these countries by a trained moderator. . . in an unstructured, natural or conversational manner.

Enlightened by these (one trusts, suitably well-lubricated) talk-ins, the researchers have presented a report and recommendations.* The largest market segment, predictably, is the routine compromise holiday in which the angler can go off on his own (three out of four are men, if you needed to ask), persuaded that the family is otherwise happily engaged. The smaller segment, in which Ireland does rather better, is the self-indulgent fishing break in which the angler sneaks off for a long week-end, either on his own or with a bunch of like-minded mates .

The French are all for solitude, apparently, seeing themselves battling wild salmon and pike in an unspoilt, untouched green landscape. The Germans want a macho angling adventure, with the chance of hunting and riding on the side. The Brits just need some assurance they won't be shot at while splitting a six-pack as they wait for pike or bream at a likely lake in Cavan.

The psychographic profile of anglers is fairly common across all three markets. They like reading, music, photography and cycling - and nature. They may be lonely fishermen - the smallest group, who desire total isolation in their escape from job and family - or buddy anglers in need of a bit of male bonding. Either way, angling has a lot to do with affirming the male identity.

These not-too-secret longings will now, presumably, inspire our glossy ads in the Angling Times, Fisch und Fang or on ???????eche et Chasse on French cable TV. No hint must appear of Ireland's romp astride the Tiger, and never will our waterways have looked more unspoiled, untouched and green.

Meanwhile, the sport angler's passion is being recruited, however paradoxically, to conserve one of our most endangered salmonid species, the Arctic charr. Salvelinus alpinus swam from an icy sea into Ireland's waterways at the end of the last glaciation, together with the salmon, the trout and the pollan. Along Arctic coastlines it remained a sea-going fish, spawning in fresh water and reaching sizes comparable with salmon. But in Ireland it became landlocked, and surviving shoals of charr have just finished spawning in gravel near the shores of trout lakes from Donegal to Kerry.

Ireland is known to have had more than 70 separate populations of charr, but, as has happened in Britain and Scandinavia, deteriorating water quality has extinguished them in one lake after another. They are the first fish species to be lost as oxygen levels decline, and some 25 Irish populations are thought to have vanished, including all those east of the Shannon.

In the midlands, for example, charr were last reported from Lough Ennell during the 1920s. By the 1980s, even the great western lakes were affected, as run-off of farm fertilizer and cattle-slurry raised eutrophication past critical thresholds. Lough Conn in County Mayo had a very large population of charr, assessed in the 1970s and 1980s; by 1990 it had suddenly crashed. Lough Corrib and Lough Erne, two of Ireland's richest lakes in terms of biodiversity, have both lost their populations of charr in the past decade.

How, then, can promoting the angling of charr, a fish so little known to fishermen that it is not even listed in the Irish Speci- men Yearbook, assist the rescue of the species?

Enter the enthusiasts of the Irish Char Conservation Group, so dedicated to survival of this native fish that they insist on spelling it with one r in the apparent conviction that this is more Irish (whereas the international usage, charr, is very plausibly derived from the Scots and Irish Gaelic tarr, or belly, referring to the males striking flush of bright, abdominal red in the breeding season, but let that pass).

The young fisheries scientists who founded the group argue that anglers, once they have turned on to the joys of flyfishing specifically for charr and become appreciative of the species's vulnerability, would provide an important lobby for conservation, together with valuable monitoring data through their catches. Dr Fran Igoe, in particular, notes that fishery surveys of the lakes where charr are still thriving show very large numbers. He sees no reason why they could not sustain controlled angling pressure, as they do in Lake Windermere in Britain's Lake District, and at other European locations (read him at the group's lively website: http://charrsoc.tripod.com/).

Sport angling does indeed seem highly unlikely to dent the charr population of a large, biologically productive lake. One problem in promoting it may be the size of fish on offer. Irish charr feed on organisms at the bottom of the lake and on zooplankton, and some populations in poorly-nourished lakes have a lot of diminutive specimens.

The group talk wistfully of the staggering chars of 10 kilos caught in Lake Geneva in Switzerland, and confess that the biggest Irish fish caught today (in Lough Mask, where they share with the trout) reach 36 centimetres and weigh about half a kilo. Much more representative would be the average 24 centimetres of the pansized charr that still thrive in Lough Eske in Co Donegal.

Here each autumn, when the charr come inshore to breed, the locals take out their rods, thread maggots on a hook beneath a black-painted cork, and strike at the merest touch, flicking the fish out of the water by the dozen as if they were dapping. This ritual goes back many generations - possibly for centuries - and the number caught hasn't changed in living memory.

As a product, however, it would have little appeal pour l'homme solitaire (how are we going to space them out?) and offers far too little Fang for the really fanatischer Fischer. In the Irish Char Conservation Group, fly anglers all, scientist Myles Kelly is working to perfect the ultimate Salvelinus experience.

Overseas Angling Tourism is published by the Marine Institute, 80 Harcourt Street, Dublin 2, at £5