Fishing Industry warns five-year seafood strategy could be a pipe-dream

BIM chairman Kieran Calnan; Minster for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Simon Coveney; Jason Whooley, BIM chief executive and Tom Moran, secretary general, DAFM at the strategy launch

The Irish sea-fisheries board has launched an ambitious five-year strategy to deliver 1,200 jobs and €1bn in seafood sales by building scale and enhancing competitiveness in the seafood sector.

Capturing Ireland’s Share of The Global Seafood Opportunity is “grounded in Ireland’s ideal position” to take advantage of the projected increase in seafood demand of an additional 42 million tonnes per annum, by 2030. 

With constraints on wild fish catches to meet this demand, “informed market analysis” predicts a 50% increase by 2020 in the current annual production of two million tonnes of farmed salmon,” remarked BIM chairman, Kieran Calnan.

 Jason Whooley, BIM chief executive said the strategy targeted the sector’s capacity to become a more “heavy-weight education provider and career option for Ireland’s younger generation. “As a result, BIM will enter into a series of partnerships with third-level education institutions, the training component of which alone will see the agency deliver 8,000 training places by 2017.” (exclusive interview IIAug/Sept) 

Industry concerns

Commenting to Inshore Ireland, Francis O’Donnell, chief executive of the Irish Fish Producers Organisation said that while development of the industry was “of paramount importance, he warned that the 2014 TAC and quotas forecast published by ICES made disturbing reading.

“Our fishing opportunities are set to be cut by half in the whitefish fleet for 2014. We’re facing wipe out. Scaling up to meet the needs in emerging economies is a pipe-dream if fishing opportunities continue to fall at the alarming rate suggested by ICES for 2014.”