“THE FINEST COD bank on the Irish coast lies about two to three leagues to the northward of Boffin, nearly midway between that and Achill Head.”
In order to do this, Sinkevičius said, in a recent online conference, that managing fisheries is key. Yesterday, we revealed the impact that fishing is having on wildlife. Tomorrow, part three examines the lack of transparency in much of the decision-making in the fishing sector.One of the important methods that Irish authorities use to enforce fishing policies and regulations are inspections of vessels. This is done by the Sea-Fisheries Protection Authority at ports when the vessels land their catch, and mainly by the Naval Service at sea.
However, Noteworthy can reveal that land and sea inspections of fishing vessels dropped by 30% in 2020 despite this Commission warning. Our analysis of SFPA annual reports shows that vessel inspections by both the SFPA and the Naval Service were at their lowest level in five years. A spokesperson for the SFPA said that the Commission letter “referred to concerns should Covid restrictions significantly reduce fisheries inspections”. They added that “this situation did not arise in Ireland” as they continued to maintain its regulatory services throughout the pandemic, with some health and safety modifications.
“Modern control tools” were also suggested by the Commission’s letter on Covid-19. It stated that remote electronic monitoring , and in particular CCTVs, “may become indispensable” when physical checks are “interrupted or significantly curtailed”. This will now be further debated by EU Member States, the Commission and Parliament before it is fully implemented. If passed, cameras and remote monitoring could be mandatory on vessels deemed as ‘high risk of non-compliance’ and voluntary on others by 2026.
Instead, the authority “embraced other aspects of remote electronic monitoring” such as sensors, according to a presentation they made on the pilot last year. “There is already remote electronic monitoring and we’re fully supportive of that,” added O’Donoghue. Before this was implemented, unwanted catches were thrown back – or discarded – into the sea either dead or alive. Lisa Borges of consultancy company FishFix explained this is usually because they are smaller than the minimum size required so cannot be sold for human consumption or they are over quota or have no quota for that species of fish.
Illegal discarding will contribute to ongoing declines in overfished stocks, preventing or delaying the positive environmental and socio-economic benefits that will accrue as stocks recover. Kelly told Noteworthy that there’s been “a total lack of leadership to ensure that it has been implemented”. It stated that two suspected infringements relating to the landing obligation were detected at landing in 2019, but no infringements were detected at sea in 2019. A spokesperson for the SFPA told Noteworthy that one suspected breach was found last year- this time at sea.
“Control of the landing obligation remains a challenge that has not been resolved,” it concluded. From an audit series, it found “Member States in question have not adopted the necessary measures and that there is significant undocumented discarding of catches”.“The notion of having a discard ban or landing obligation for every single stock under quota is utter madness,” according to BIM’s Rihan.
The Killybegs Fishermen’s Organisation is concerned about the impact the discard ban is having on mixed fisheries. Source: Maria Delaney via Noteworthy For example, because of the poor state of cod in the waters off Donegal as well as in the Celtic Sea, scientific advice recommends that none are caught and it is given a zero total allowable catch . However, when vessels are fishing for other species such as Haddock, cod is often caught as it is a mixed fishery.
“If that damages the stocks, then the stocks are adjusted accordingly,” Patrick Murphy of the Irish South and West Fish Producers Organisation told Noteworthy, as stocks are assessed every year. The 70-page document is very detailed but some of its main findings in terms of enforcement and control were:
More recently, a review of organisational capability of the SFPA in April 2020 which concluded that the authority “is not working effectively and requires urgent attention”, also highlighted issues previously found in the audit. It found that “crosschecks of data relating to landings are still not recorded electronically, but a solution was being worked on as part of VALID project”.
Through FOI, Noteworthy requested access to the results of this tank survey – which found larger storage capacity than officially recorded on a number of vessels, but this was refused by the SFPA under section 32 of the Act as it could “prejudice or impair”, amongst other things, “the apprehension or prosecution of offenders”.
The 2018 EU audit also mentioned these features, stating that though it is unable to verify they were definitely used, this “compellingly indicates a historical systematic under-declaration of catch within the industry”. I suspect that [redacted] did not consider that his catch would be weighed on landing and instead expected that he would land his catch to [redacted]’s premises for official weighing and processing and that his unrecorded surplus [herring] would be unrecorded in the Official Pelagic Weighing Record of that premises. Because of a number of suspected offences, the officer then recommended the vessel be considered for “very high risk classification”.
The Minister will shortly be commencing a process of engagement with the EU Commissioner. In advance of this engagement, the Minister is not in a position to comment on the findings of the Inquiry and the package of measures that the Commissioner has set out.
The Commission measures also included the removal of the exemption to permit pelagic fish, such as mackerel, to be weighed in factories. “This will require that all fish are weighed on the quayside,” according to a DAFM spokesperson. The SFPA told Noteworthy that currently 5% of pelagic vessel landings “are being controlled at quayside”.
In an email, Murphy said he could not comment on the audit findings or the recently reported measures by the Commission due to not being aware of the contents of the report or being consulted about it. O’Donoghue said he is “quite annoyed” about this. “Here we are again, being accused of something and we are not being given the opportunity to see the report”.