Commercial salmon fishermen have as much right to a livelihood as anyone else, writes Frank Flanagan.
Everybody is talking about us and nobody is prepared to talk to us. Almost daily in the media, there are calls for a ban on drift netting, as if this was the only problem in the salmon industry.
As an inshore fisherman living in Galway, I depend totally on the sea for my livelihood. I work with a small open boat, and I am typical of the 150 or so licence- holders in the Western Regional Fisheries Board area.
I have a right to work and share the same aspirations for my family as any other person. I do not, and will not, apologise for catching salmon commercially. Being an inshore fishermen, I must target what are known in the trade as "low-volume, high-value" species. These include lobsters, velvet crab and shrimps, and, traditionally and seasonally, wild salmon for which there is an ever-growing demand.
There has been a surge of anti-commercial fishing legislation and restrictions in the name of conservation. The commercial sector has co-operated with restrictions, which include shorter days, shorter seasons, shorter week, dubious quota system and tagging of legally-caught fish.
Yet the commercial sector has received no feedback on the results of our efforts. The scientific community has failed to evaluate the benefits of our conservation measures. The only people investing in salmon conservation here, through lost earnings, are commercial fishermen.
Improvement in spring salmon stocks is one particular issue. Since 1996, drift netting and draft netting for spring fish have been banned. What other measures have been taken to improve or solve the problem with stocks? We still see anglers proudly displaying their dead spring fish, and our angling magazines publish boastful reports about the number of spring fish removed from their natal rivers.
In the western region, commercial fishing for sea trout was banned around 1993. What was the follow-up to this ban? Has the root cause of the demise of the sea trout been tackled or solved? It is easy to pass a bylaw to ban commercial fishing for sea trout, but can any scientist, manager or legislator claim success in solving the sea-lice problem which everyone was so concerned about at the time?
There is a need for more dialogue with commercial fishermen. We are not seals. We are not just another predator, and we are certainly not snakes to be banished from our national waters by a modern-day St Pat (The Cope Gallagher). I would like to see greater involvement by the commercial sector in management of wild salmon stocks.
Banning drift netting will solve nothing in the long term. The commercial "window" is only 40 per cent of the week, and there are only eight weeks in the season. Our country is full of greedy anglers and self-styled, self-appointed experts. When there is a commitment to a properly regulated catch-and- release regime on our rivers, that is when conservation measures can be justified for everyone.
The angling sector must "put up or shut up". The drift-net sector will not continue to be the scapegoat for all the problems in the wild salmon industry, or the many years of bad management by the State.
Frank Flanagan is secretary of Galway and Connemara Fishermen's Association