Up to 75 per cent of small-boat owners have been forced out of inshore fishing by competition from seals, according to a member of the Northern Regional Fisheries Board.
Inshore fishermen have now become the "endangered species", while seals can apparently do what they like, Mr George Gallagher, board member, has said.
"When did the seal become the sacred cow of Ireland?" he asks in the current issue of the Marine Times monthly. "We protect them. We feed them. They can come and go at their leisure, eating what they want, destroying gear, endangering livelihoods, and never a hand is lifted against them.
"Fishermen deserve protection, too," Mr Gallagher continues. "Nobody is calling for seals to be destroyed. But they must be managed and, as a protected species, the only way of doing that is a cull."
Mr Gallagher blames politicians for avoiding the issue which has been a live one in coastal communities for a decade or more. However, he pays tribute to the Fianna Fail Donegal South West TD, Ms Mary Coughlan. She asked the Minister for the Marine and Natural Resources, Mr Fahey, if he would carry out a survey on the number of seals on the north-west coast, and if a cull was being considered.
The Minister, in his reply, said he had no direct function in relation to seals as a protected species, and he would be concerned about any excessive losses incurred by inshore fishing vessels. He referred her to an EU-funded project on seal diet at University College Dublin, which would give greater information on seal diet, migration patterns and impact on fish stocks.
"I can tell Minister Fahey, and anybody else who wants to know, what the seals' diet is," Mr Gallagher says. "The best of everything, preferably served up in a static net." He queries the need for another survey, given that research was carried out by Bord Iascaigh Mhara (BIM) in 1995-96 which "proved beyond doubt the damage the seals were causing and the cost of it to fishermen".
The study was never published, presumably because it was too political. Mr Gallagher was a member of a deputation from the Northern Regional Fisheries Board which met the minister, Dr Michael Woods, to show him examples of the damage caused. It has been estimated that some seals can destroy up to 400lb of fish a week. The official line is that the offenders are grey seals, migrating annually from Scotland.
Mr Gallagher refers to a seminar over a year ago on the decline of spring salmon, involving the Salmon Research Agency of Ireland, now part of the Marine Institute. The 85-page report, published afterwards, listed many causes for that decline, but no reference was made to the effect on stocks of seals, he says.
He believes a study should be made of the funds spent on reviving salmon stocks in rivers and estuaries. "We don't need another survey." Current expenditure is "money down the seals' throat at the end of the day," he concludes. "The more salmon in the estuaries, the more the seals will be there to eat them."
