No quota for local boats to fish bluefin tuna in Irish waters
Sinn Féin spokesperson for fisheries has called on the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Charlie McConalgue, to “urgently engage” with his European counterparts to secure a “reasonable share of bluefin tuna quota” set by the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT).
There is “growing outrage in Ireland’s coastal communities at the spectacle of a flourishing bluefin tuna fishery in Irish waters” that feed on pelagic fish (mackerel, horse mackerel (scad) herring, sprat) cod and other species, he said.
Since 2016, the EU share of the global bluefin tuna (negotiated under ICCAT) has increased by 73%, from 11,200 tonnes to 19,360 tonnes, “yet the Irish government didn’t secure one single tonne of this for the Irish fishing industry.
“This is a shocking failure,” says deputy Pádraig Mac Lochlainn.
“And to add insult to injury we have only been allowed a ‘catch and release’ scheme since last year.
“Irish governments have allowed this nonsense to continue without asserting what would normally be our rights as a coastal state in accordance with the Convention on the Law of the Sea,” contends Deputy MacLochlainn.
Ministerial response
In a written answer to Deputy MacLochlainn (November 3), Minister McConalogue said available quota is allocated annually to Member States on the basis of relative stability, established in the late 1990s. At the time, Ireland did not have a track record of commercial fishing for bluefin tuna.
“Accordingly, [Ireland] did not receive a quota allocation,” he explained.
The only way to obtain a share of the EU quota now “would involve reducing the shares of those EU Member States” [who have a quota] and for whom bluefin tuna is an important commercial fishery,” Minister McConalogue added.
A small ‘by-catch quota’ of bluefin tuna is available to Ireland, primarily for use in the Northern Albacore tuna and Celtic Sea herring fisheries.
While obtaining a viable commercial quota for bluefin tuna is “unlikely in the short to medium term”, Minister McConalogue said Ireland was successful in introducing a clause in the 2018 management plan that allows countries without a commercial quota to set up a ‘catch and release fishery’ for scientific data collection purposes.
