Posh diners help revive inshore fishing

Another Life It's in the calms of early summer that the sea between Thallabawn and the distant islands begins to seem very empty.

In winter and spring the ocean is about its own business, roiling and rolling in the ritual of renewal, but a silky May morning prompts a burst of wishful nostalgia: there ought to be more local boats out fishing. As it is, one little red lobster boat from north Connemara, curtseying around the reefs, seems to intensify the blue, blank sweep of sea (like that touch of crimson Constable put in his trees, to make the leaves look greener).

As the Atlantic deeps are trawled of the last palatable shoals of wild fish, is there any hope at all for a revival of inshore fishing? I think of that bright little fleet of salmon boats in a cove at Belderg, wedged among the cliffs of north Mayo: are they now to become a memory, like the cod-fishing craft of Newfoundland? My recent column on the dumping of "discards" by big trawlers brought a heartfelt submission from John Woodlock and John Daley, fishery advisers to the Irish Seal Sanctuary. As a marine NGO, this has seats on the North Western Waters Regional Advisory Council, which gives "stakeholder" feedback to the EU Fisheries Commission. Busy with mainly deep-water issues, it has yet to consider a modest proposal from Woodlock and Daley: that commercial net-fishing be excluded from inshore waters.

This would ban trawlers from the spawning and nursery grounds of deep- water fish and thus, in theory, save a great many small, juvenile fish from being discarded: an agreed and major threat to stocks. According to Woodlock, "if one looks at the angling press, rarely a month goes by without a shore angler complaining about boats netting within casting distance of the beach." But the Marine Institute reports that "some of our largest pelagic [ open sea] boats fish for sprat up to the coast". And while inshore landings are usually attributed to boats of less than 10 metres, many of the current fleet are far bigger boats of "great age" and retired from towing nets to setting pots for lobster, crabs and whelks.

Nobody knows exactly how many inshore boats there are, which has prompted the current drive to license them all and get fishermen to log their pots and catches.

The spawning and nursery areas for pelagic fish are well known by now, even to particular bays where juvenile herring and mackerel, for example, spend their first two years growing. Mackerel "boxes" along the south coast are sometimes closed to trawlers to boost the recruitment of young fish.

It is at Dunmore East in Waterford that handlining of mackerel has been proving an ideal seasonal option for inshore fishermen. They use feathered jigs among the shoals, keep the big fish fresh in boxes of slush ice, and rush them ashore to upmarket restaurant kitchens and to consumers prepared to pay premium prices for fish caught by selective, "eco-friendly" means.

The fishermen have taken their cue from handlining off the coasts of Cornwall and Devon, where boats working from small coves and harbours troll for bass with lines trailed from bamboo rods. They observe a minimum landing size of 40 centimetres, lift them with landing nets, and rush them to posh outlets without a scale out of place.

Most supplies of this sumptuous, streamlined fish are farmed, like salmon: the wild fish are a treat. I last ate one in Venice, for Dicentrarchus labrax prefers warm water, and I last saw a whole shoal in a turbulent tank in Salthill's Atlantaquarium. It is slow-growing and late-maturing (a 5kg female may be 18 years old) and a good bass year in these latitudes is usually explained by raised sea temperatures.

But the southern inshore waters of Ireland have their share of the north-east Atlantic bass stock - or, rather, had until about the 1970s, when heavy commercial landings took their toll. The fish have never fully recovered. In one of Ireland's first marine conservation measures, bass were made an angler-only species, with minimum size of 40 centimetres and a limit of two fish in 24 hours (today, as it happens, is right in the middle of the four-week closed season). Even so, the Marine Institute's expert on bass, Dr Edward Fahy, finds "every reason to believe" that "a lucrative trade" continues.

Handlining ought to be a promising option for a protected inshore zone especially, perhaps, as a warming sea makes bass more abundant and adds others to our range of species. But how will our rising tide of sea anglers, scrupulously returning their fish to the sea, regard a fleet of local fishermen busily hauling in their lines for a living?