Mackeral reports '06 here

Mfv Atlantic Dawn And her sister ship Veronica

Already dubbed the factory ships from Hell

The Atlantic Dawn , the largest trawler in the world, built in Norway and launched in Dublin in August 2000. at a cost of £50 million
[img]http://img378.imageshack.us/img378/4742/atlanticdawnsl4.jpg[/img]

Owned by Irish Businessman Kevin McHugh managing director of Atlantic Dawn ltd

[img]http://img348.imageshack.us/img348/2249/kevinmchughownerveronicaeq8.jpg[/img]

Some Interesting Facts

1.Even though Ireland was already exceeding the EU’s mandated maximum allowable domestic fleet size by 30 per cent, the Irish government gave the Atlantic Dawn a temporary fishing license to fish in international waters.

2. October 2001 the European Commission launched two court actions against Ireland for exceeding the allowable fishing-fleet size and for registration infringements concerning the Atlantic Dawn.

3. EU regulations mandate that all fishing vessels be placed on a European fishing registry. Having the Atlantic Dawn added to its fishing fleet would have blown Ireland’s already excessive over-capacity way out of the water. The Atlantic Dawn was, therefore, initially placed on the merchant marine register.

4. In December 2001, the commission did a remarkable deal with Ireland. Behind closed doors, it legitimised the Atlantic Dawn by increasing the permitted size of the Irish fishing fleet by 14,055 gross tonnes – the exact size of the Atlantic Dawn. The deal also allows the Atlantic Dawn to fish in EU waters three months out of the year.

5. McHugh achieved this by transferring the fishing rights of the other factory ship form hell he owns the Mfv Veronica. In exchange, the Veronica (106 metres in length and 5,206 tonnes in weight) has been removed from the Irish fishing register. It now operates under Panamanian registration – a well-known flag of convenience.

6. McHugh managed to secure a private licence for the Atlantic Dawn to fish nine months of the year in Mauritanian waters .Although McHugh was recently fined $100.000 for overfishing

7.McHugh is a well known supporter on Fianna Fail.

A video of Atlantic Dawn in action [url=http://www.dsi-as.com/default.aspx?m=2&i=190]here[/url]

Ive got loads of stuff on this , i'll post more when I get t#some time

that would be the same case across the board for everything in big business - thats how they got big in the first place :x

I found the article I referred to, dated 7th August 2006 from the Irish Examiner:

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Stop this rape of the world’s oceans

The shorn-off heads are in the sink, eyes round and bright. Fresh mackerel, caught an hour before off the rocks on the Seven Heads, fresher than any one sees on a fishmonger’s slab. God bless the harvest of the sea! Yet I’m saddened to see these lovely creatures, so streamlined and perfect, supple and strong, lying there dead on the platter. I always feel this regret; still, my son and his friends, who caught them on a single silver spinner, tell me that when they’d caught enough to feed the various households, they began to throw those they hooked back, alive and squirming, into the sea.

My conscience is easier as I applaud their efforts. They have learned this respect; they know the planet is finite; they know the bounty must be sustained. They count what they take, and take only enough. But even enough may soon be too much.

The mackerel are masters of their element, each an exact copy, larger or smaller, of the next, replicated in infinite number, in myriad, in legion; and yet, for all their millions, can they any longer sustain their vast tribes and deliver us their annual summer bounty? Each fish spawns thousands but, yearly, fewer survive to spawn themselves.

While I worry about taking six fish, super-trawlers vacuum up entire populations. The largest in the world, the Irish registered Atlantic Dawn, takes 400 tons a day. It is licensed to fish three months a year in our waters, the rest of the year elsewhere. On its website, mackerel heads the list of species caught. If the average mackerel weighs half a pound, the Atlantic Dawn, alone, can vacuum 1.8 million mackerel from the ocean every day, seven days a week, and can accommodate 7,000 tons, over 31m fish, before landing.

How can the wealth of the ocean survive? Already, it is everywhere depleted. It is not just too many boats chasing too few fish but that, fed by subsidies, technology has outpaced the capacity of the fish to reproduce and grow.

There are 20 or more such super-trawlers fishing off the Mauritanian and Senegalese coasts. Most are European. God help the African fishermen and their families. Happily, the new Mauritanian regime is introducing controls.

Industrial-scale vessels represent only 1% of world’s fishing fleet, employ only 2% of the world’s fishermen but take 50% of the fish catch.

Furthermore, they use the most destructive and unsustainable fishing methods: purse seines and trawl nets.

The Atlantic Dawn’s purse seines measure 3,600 feet in circumference and 550 feet in depth, large enough to twice engulf (by 11ft) Ireland’s tallest building, Cork’s County Hall. The trawl nets are 1,200 feet in breadth and 96 feet in height, big enough to span four football fields. In shallow water, the nets drag along the sea floor like bulldozers clear-felling a forest. Up to 15% of the catch is unwanted marine life, thrown back into the water dead.

West African fishing boats are wooden pirogues, 12 feet long, with an outboard motor and a crew of two or three. The trawler’s target fish is mainly sardinella, the bread-and-butter of these fishermen. Since local waters have been opened to super-trawlers, stocks have so reduced that many local fishermen can no longer sustain themselves. While super-trawlers owned by Irish millionaires, supported by Irish banks, vacuum away their livelihood, the Irish public digs in its pockets to provide them with food aid.

Is not this rape of the world’s seas a crime? But where does the crime begin? Netting anchovies by the teeming millions and then turning them into fertiliser, ploughing them into the land? It may be argued that this ‘terrestrial-ises’ the sea’s bounty; it literally ‘lands’ the catch.

Landed, it becomes Man’s property alone where, before, it was that of a thousand creatures that are not Man, the predators of the ocean, the whales, sharks, seals.

But we do not, as a species, have a record of making this world an Eden. Wars are a constant; now, we lay waste the seas; if fish were humans, we would call it genocide. We wipe out entire species, to our own ends. The kids know this is wrong. While our banks finance the Atlantic Dawn and our government licences it to rape other people’s patrimony, the kids try not to waste, to conserve the stock. It is not enough for us to teach them to cherish the natural world. As voting adults, we have a duty to tell governments that the wealth of the seas must be preserved and passed on.
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Until I read this article, I had no real concept of how many fish these trawlers could take out of the sea. :evil:

Sorry if I've posted this in the wrong thread.

great stuff tony - good article

encouraging catch and release and then getting the message around about the conservation - may hit a note with the non-fishing public - even though on the grand scale it probably doesnt do much to the actual fish figures themselves

its all about getting people to think - not whos shagging who in coronation street or what politician is having an affair on sky news :evil: :evil: :evil:

these are the reasons you commute in traffic for 3 hours a day - apathy

getting on to the politicians is the way to go and good luck to the SACN boys

Mackerel aren't exactly bottom of the marine food chain, but they are a staple of the diet of many larger fish.

So, if fleets of boats like this are sweeping up similar amounts of fish, I guess something has to give - what do all the fish who prey on mackerel eat now? I guess they go hungry. And in the sea, if you don't eat, you get eaten, one way or the other.

It's no wonder shark and other top predators are vanishing like snow off a ditch.

The world's fish catch is of the order of 75 million tons per year, but only about 1% of man's food is fish, although 10% of his animal protein intake is fish protein. The fraction of the annual catch used for reduction to fish meal and oil is about one third.

For the mathematically challenged, that's 25 million tons annually of fish like mackerel that go to make food for the salmon farms etc.

Think about that....

Guys

You're skating very close to the edge here, I've deleted one post that was potentially libelous.

Looking at the indiviudals concerned and the vast resources, financial and legal, that are available to them I feel that I must again point out that the forums can not be used as a battleground, or you risk losing them all completely and for good.

I know you all understand this and I know what was written was written from the heart, and that most of it is factual (which is why it has been left up) but once again I would just ask people to think very carefully before they post any item that relates to a specific individual company or organisation...

Hello ,
I want to apologise to all concerned for what may have been a libelous comment :oops: :oops: :oops: :oops: :oops:

The comment was meant as nothing other than a throw away joke in an attempt to get the thread back to being a resource for those around the country interested in catching a few macks - a resource that a lot of users obviously find useful/interesting judging by the number of views.

Again, sorry if any offence etc. was caused.

T Mc Donagh
aka Blackie

Kinsale

Sun Sept 10th 5.30 to 6.30 PM (HT around 7PM)

I caught one stray mackerel.
Saw about 10 or more people fishing from the bridge to the town but didn't see any other fish caught.

Is it the same elsewhere?

Blackie

was the same in newquay clare on friday 5 fishing over 4 hours - 3 macks

Fished off the coast of west Clare on Sunday morning mackeral everywhere.

Hello John,
was that out in a boat or from the shore?

Blackie

Monkstown

Fished 2 rods 1 hour from 7PM to 8PM, HT around 8.30??

Not a sniff

Anyone else around the country catching or not catching??

Blackie