Thomas Pringle (Donegal South West, Independent)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

106. To ask the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources the scientific investigations that are being carried out, or will be carried out, on wild salmon stock; if the Government will consider a limited reintroduction of drift-netting to assist the collection of scientific data on wild salmon stock; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [23127/15]

Alex White (Dublin South, Labour)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I am advised that research on salmon in Ireland’s coastal areas and marine environment both concentrates on increasing knowledge of juvenile and adult migratory patterns, identifying and partitioning marine based mortality, understanding the impacts from aquaculture on wild salmon and monitoring salmon survival rates. Stock assessments can only be carried out on the individual stock in each river.

Juvenile salmon migrate from rivers to marine feeding grounds returning to their native rivers as adults. Research has shown that adult salmon from both rivers in Ireland and other counties travel through Ireland’s coastal waters. These “mixed stocks”, either in coastal waters or distant waters, pose particular difficulties for management as they contain individual fish often from a wide range of rivers some of which are below sustainable reproductive capacity.

In order to align fully with the EU Habitats Directive and the North Atlantic Salmon Conservation Organisation (NASCO) advice, the Irish Government closed mixed stock fisheries in 2007 including coastal and offshore fishing for salmon. This measure also had regard to the decline of almost 75% in mixed stock catches in the period 1975 to 2000. Since then the independent Standing Scientific Committee on Salmon (SSCS) advise annually on the predicted returning stocks for all of Ireland’s 142 salmon rivers; based on this advice harvest fisheries are only allowed on individual river stocks which are shown to have a surplus of fish over the conservation limit.

A conservation limit is, in its simplest form, the number of adult salmon required on each river to maintain a healthy population. Fisheries in estuaries may also be permitted where the stocks from individual rivers entering the estuaries are each meeting their individual conservation limits. Ireland’s current salmon management regime is compliant with the Habitats Directive under which salmon is a protected species.

The conservation/exploitation balance is best achieved where fisheries target individual river-based stocks that have been shown to be at full reproductive capacity and capable of sustaining the genetically unique population of that individual river. Any deviation from this policy, such as the opening of drift net fisheries for salmon, would be contrary to national and international independent advice and such a move could potentially lead to conflict with EU and international obligations on grounds of not protecting vulnerable Irish and international salmon stocks.