Dr. Ciaran Kelly:

As was referred to beforehand, the surveys of the Marine Institute, which detect sprat populations both within and without the six nautical miles because they are distributed across both of those areas, have shown a change in abundance over time. That change in abundance fluctuates quite highly. Part of the issues we have regarding looking at the population is that, in some cases, we consider that the abundance we detect in surveys may not actually be due to a fluctuation in the population. It might actually be due to detection measures. These things are subject to errors as we go forward in time but we have not detected a signal from those surveys to suggest the stock has collapsed. We see a stock that changes in abundance rapidly from one year to the next.