Write to the Ministers ref. Shore Crab before its to late

Poor fisher men working for nothing should we have a whip around and get a few cents for them.
I should say that it was the inshore fisher men that first got in touch with me about the large number of crab being removed from the food chain and how it would impact on the fish stock.
So captain AHAB you do not speak for all the inshore fisher men

BASSPOINT,now your just makin it up as you go along,if this were true you would`ve said in your origional post.it seems to me you want to be right even when you`re wrong, dangerous.i hope you dont whip up too much of a frenzy just to be told by government to go away thus destroying our chances of adherence to future important protests.

Yes I do Remember the skip loads of rotting fish (all L.S.D's) but this was as a direct result of changes that had to be made to the rules.

I think that you will find that this situation was rectified pretty quickly, not due solely to outside pressure but also through a great deal of pressure placed on the angling bodies from inside the organizations.

The green crab already has a bounty on its head. I'm not sure if the below applies to the area which you are discussing, but BIM offers a bounty for the removal of green crab from shellfish layings stating it contributes to better survival of juvenile bivalves. The main market for the green crab is in France where it is estimated at 1000t. It is also used as bait in whelk fishing and food processing. The landings of green crab in Ireland in 2006 were about 46t valued at around €51,000, so with the fuel prices now, I don't believe it is a sustainable industry, so perhaps it was for the BIM bounty also. In regards to the commercial industry, I do see their plight. Irelands own fleet could probably fish around the Irish coast and we would still be catching 10lb cod from the shore if other countries didn't have such large quotas in our waters. The problem is when the EU common fisheries policy came into effect, we had such a small fleet, that huge quotas were given to larger fleets in the EU for our waters. For instance, France has a quota for 71.2% of the Cod in the Celtic Sea and western channel, whereas Ireland is only allowed to catch 16.3% of Cod. In relation to an earlier post in this thread relating to investigation and production of exact facts and figures, these have already been published several times by the FSS (Fisheries Science Services). The have previously advised on complete bans on certain stocks of Fish, and along with ICES who advise directly to European parliament, have been completely ignored by these politicians. These are some of the brightest scientists in Europe, hired by the governments for such information, and then ignored when the information does not correspond with their political policies. Now, if the Lisbon treaty comes into effect, we won't even have a say in our own marine or agricultural policies for 5 out of every 15 years as we won't have a representative in such decisions.. not that it made much of a difference anyway!!

One of the main problems with the potting of shore/green crab is the fact that these fishermen are taking crab with egg pouches. This has been going on in Youghal for a while now. I have seen the crab - it is shore crab. I have seen them being collected - they pull up the pots and empty them into bags straight away, they dont check them for size or type or whether they have eggs or not. I have seen softbacks in the bags, which i presume were taken as they were mating with the hardbacks.
The boats that pot for the crab only travel a few hundred feet to get to the pots they have set, so it is cheap on fuel and not very time consuming, this probably ensures that they are making a profit on trips for shore crab.
I dont expect the government to ban fishing for shore crab, but i would be hopeful that they would regulate it with regards to times of year they they can fish for they ( not during the couple of times a year that they mate would be an idea ) and maybe have a restriction on how close they can get to the shore ( anyone who has fished the quays at Youghal have seen how close the crab pots were at times ).
Any argument comparing bait collection with potting for crab is flawed for a few reasons. The main one being that, when collecting crab for bait shore anglers do not take pregnant crab. Other than that - we generally only take what we need (even bait collectors), we are selective in the crab we take (generally nothing too small) and we are limited in the areas where we can gather crab and the times that we can get to these areas.
The bigger picture for the fishermen who pot for crab should be simple, if you let the crab breed they will be there for years to come, if you dont, there is a very real possibility that crabs will be wiped out in certain areas.

For WRITTEN answer on Wednesday, 4th June, 2008.

Ref No: 21802/08

E-mail from James McCartan. Details attached.


REPLY


The Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food: (Brendan Smith)
It is the policy of my Department to strive for both economically viable and environmentally compatible fisheries which take account of other interests in any given area of activity. In this regard we employ the appropriate tools and take the appropriate measures to achieve this.
With reference to the specific question on shore crabs in the Suir estuary, I have asked BIM to examine the issue and await their advice on the matter.

I got the exact same response - word for word.
I don't know if that's good or bad?
I suppose all it tells us is that he has received more than 1 complaint and he has responded in the same way.

Regards,
John D.