Ban on ‘low impact’ hand line fishing for pollock in Donegal should be lifted, committee told

Transcript

00:00On the pollock, just for background, it's a couple of years now since the handline

00:07fishery was closed and our member Moran Kavanagh has been highlighting it since

00:12then. She fishes with her uncle from Ironmoor Island using a handline with

00:19six hooks. This fishery has been closed as a result of AC's zero tack advice so

00:27this means you can't have a directed fishery for certain for the fish stock

00:32and pollock in this case. It's a really low impact fishery, it's probably the most

00:40low-impact fishery you can have and it hasn't changed in hundreds of years but

00:45meanwhile the industrial bycatch fishery continues and Moran's been highlighting

00:50this in Strasbourg and Brussels and elsewhere and it's good to be able to

00:55talk about it today. There was, in our opinion, a big issue with the science

01:02that informed that decision. The actual surveys were not for pollock habitats and

01:09they didn't take into consideration seasonal differences. Our

01:16experience on the islands is there are plenty of pollock around but the

01:22management areas is huge so it's from the west of Scotland down to the coast of

01:27France and it doesn't take into consideration the kind of regional

01:32differences in the stocks. I think we need to have a system where low impact

01:39fisheries are prioritised so that you know if there are going to be restrictions it

01:46doesn't apply to the small boat and small person first and I think that maybe the

01:53committee could help with that and change in policy on that. Thank you.

01:59When you consider that you're going out and it's catching them by line, I mean the impact that

02:10that has on stocks, it's minus our point not, not, not, not percent, one percent and I think that's something

02:19that we should take a particular interest in and make a case to the Minister and we'll make that case

02:25and to the Commission to allow for that because it has no impact at all on the on the stock.

02:32There's no more environmentally friendly fishing.