Seanad Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 14 Feb 1990

Vol. 123 No. 17

Marine Institute Bill, 1989: Second Stage (Resumed).

Question again proposed: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."

Mr. Fitzgerald

Ba mhaith liom fáilte a chur arís roimh an Aire agus na daoine ó Roinn na Mara.

I will start where I left off on the last occasion, a Chathaoirligh, and that is that the proposal to establish a Marine Institute is indeed to be welcomed, as well as the obvious requirement for research into fisheries which are of great importance to us at this point, the quality of water, etc., and other research of a scientific nature. Research is also needed in new materials, machinery and vessel design, in the fishing, commercial and leisure areas.

Dealing with the leisure side of it for a moment — even though from what I know of it I would not call it "leisure" where they are just now — I would like to place on record my congratulations to Ron Holland and all those involved in NCB Ireland who are carrying the banner and the flag of this small nation around the world. While other nations have been in the Whitbread around the World Race since its initiation and have gained massive experience from other races, we are relatively new to such an event. Joe English, the skipper, and all his crew have taken on the world in this event and, as far as I am concerned, even if they finish last, to me they are winners because they have dared and tried and they have given a warning to all that they are a force to be reckoned with in the future.

The design of yachts and boats is an important part of the industry at which the Institute, when set up, could take a deep look because of a complete lack of knowledge in boat design. To our credit in Kerry, Tralee Regional Technical College is going some way towards rectifying the latter problem by the provision of a national certificate in boat technology and production. This certificate course operates over a two year period, with an intake of students every two years. There are eight graduates from the first intake of students and there are currently eight studying in the second year of the second intake of students. These students are finishing off the construction of a revolutionary 25-foot yacht designed by the course director, Leonard J. Brewood. Leonard himself is a great ocean-going man, who is also part-time skipper captain of the Asgard. The students are working on design projects consisting of a 65-foot passenger catamaran, the conversion of a trawler to an “emigrant ship” which will be used in the Blennerville Cultural Heritage Centre, and a fish farming vessel for mussel harvesting.

While the course content is providing a good mix of subjects, that is, 60 per cent of naval architecture and related subjects and 40 per cent business, finance and office procedure, to suit the needs of the industry, it is difficult without the back-up of a body such as the Institute to make much of an impression on the industry. The Institute would give authority to the need for technicians with design skills by the organisation of seminars and the dissemmation of literature. In order to make full use of modern materials and modern design for passenger vessels, such as catamarans, it is necessary for the Institute to examine and make recommendations for the enactment of new regulations to replace outdated Acts. If possible, the Institute should instigate research into the design of small harbours, such as the marina type, to fully develop the potential of Ireland's coast. The west coast, for example, is the greatest potential sailing area in Europe and the provision of small harbours of the marina type would greatly assist the sea-angling business on the west coast. The former and present Ministers for the Marine and the Government have taken great steps towards this end but we are basically groping in the dark without a proper marine institute, so that the necessary research and planning can be carried out well in advance.

I suppose people would say I was talking through my hat if I said that, historically, we do not have a good record in relation to the sea and fishing, with the notable exception of St. Brendan, the Navigator, who actually started in Brandon Creek in the Dingle Peninsula to go to find a new world——

Mrs. Doyle

Kerry papers, please copy.

Mr. Fitzgerald

Nobody ever left Wexford like that. Of course, there was John Barry. Saint Brendan started off from Brandon Creek in the Dingle Peninsula to find a new world in a small boat about 30 foot long made of ox hide and tied together with leather thongs. His little boat was a far cry from the Nina, and the Pinta and the Sancta Maria in which Christopher Columbas set sail in to find a new world. My point here is that the Spanish, French, and Portuguese were all fishing off the west coast of Ireland three centuries ago while we were still inshore fishermen with small boats like the coracle, the naomhóg, the seine-boat and, I suppose, the Galway hooker. They seldom ventured out more than 20 or 30 miles from the shore, while other countries were developing and going further and further afield and were venturing possibly 400 or 500 miles from their own shores. As a result they have over the centuries gained a knowledge of the west coast of Ireland, a knowledge which is still very new to us. To illustrate my point I would like to quote from Tomás Ó Criothain's book An tOileánach, and I am sure you are all familiar with this. At the time Tomás was writing his book lobsters were unknown to the people of the Blasket Islands. To prove this I will quote from The Island Man on page 153:

A day or two after this I went up the hill to fetch a load of turf and what should I see but this very canoe, I thought, down below me, full of some objects which they were throwing into the sea. The things I had seen them throwing into the sea were pots to catch lobsters. The Blasket people were as strange to that sort of fishing tackle as any bank clerk at that time. Not much of the year had gone before there were four Dingle canoes fishing lobsters around the Blasket Islands after this fashion. The Dingle fisherman took hundreds of pounds worth of lobsters from the waters around the island before we had any notion how to make a shilling out of them. They fetched one pound a dozen and, to make the story better, the dozen was easily got.

My father used to say: Slán beo leis an sean aimsir. Things have definitely changed since then. If you were to fish around the Blasket Islands today in the same manner as the islanders fished, the number of lobster and crawfish would be few and far between.

Crawfish are another species of shellfish around the west and the south-west coast, which, again, was relatively unknown until the late 1940s when French fishermen were seen fishing for them off the west coast of Ireland. We then made an attempt at copying the French people and to this very day the actual pot being used for catching crawfish — I am saying "crawfish" because there is a subtle difference between a crawfish and a crayfish, a crawfish is a salt water shellfish, whereas a crayfish is a fresh water shellfish — is still called the French barrel pot, because the first crawfish pots that were fished around the Dingle Peninsula were got from French boats who were fishing there at the time.

To come back to today's world, the number of lobsters and crawfish to be got in the south coast and west coast of Ireland today has greatly dwindled. This is where research is now needed. The recent discovery that the Continental Shelf is extending out to 700 kilometers west of our coast, that is directly off the west coast of Ireland, has opened up a great ocean of wealth to the Irish fishermen providing proper research is carried out. Fishermen from time to time have found while fishing in the Porcupine Bank a large number of crawfish in depths of water in excess of 100 fathoms or more but they have neither the resources nor the time to exploit these fisheries. Again, this is where the Marine Institute and research could be of immense value not alone to the fishermen but to this country.

There are a lot of other migratory shoaling fish, off the west coast of Ireland in summer time within easy reach of Irish fishermen. In recent times the fishermen have turned their eyes towards tuna fishing. As of yet I do not know of any Irish fishing boats that have gone out on a full-scale to try and catch tuna. Only last year the shoals of tuna came so close to our shores that there was an excess of 50 foreign tuna boats sheltering in Castle-townbere during bad weather. This must only mean that within 50 to 100 miles off our shores they were fishing for tuna fish. The big advantage of tuna fishing is that it is a non-quota species. It is also a very large fish.

Mrs. Doyle

Do they catch any dolphins with it?

Mr. Fitzgerald

No, we keep the dolphins in Dingle. It is a very big fish. It is not unlike the dolphin as a matter of fact; it is a distant relation maybe. It fetches a very high price. The tuna fish weighs anything from 700 or 800 pound up to 1,200 or 1,300 pounds weight so that, in effect, from a monetary point of view a fisherman who can catch 15 or 20 tuna fish in the week would have a good week's fishing. Very little is known in Ireland about the tuna fish other than the stories I have heard from fishermen who go out to the Continental Shelf from the Porcupine Bank to fish for prawns in summer time. There they see the large fleets of foreign boats fishing for tuna. I believe the tuna fish stop shoaling as far down as the Azores and they follow the Gulf Stream right up past our coast. If we had proper fisheries for tuna our fishermen would have a good three months in the summer; with proper methods and knowhow they would have a very lucrative industry indeed.

I do not know how many Senators have read cowboy books written by the famous author, Zane Grey. He spent his life studying the tuna fish and he has written many books about the matter. The person who gave me that information was none other than Derek Davis, the RTE presenter. Derek spent about three weeks off the Dingle Peninsula trying to catch tuna as a game fish. I have yet to find the book but I hope to trace it. Tuna fishing would be one of the most exciting fisheries for exploitation in the future by our Irish fishermen.

There are, of course, many other non-quota species of fish like the argentine, blue whiting, scad or horse mackerel, which is a very coarse fish. It is a very bony fish but in the Japanese market it is a very expensive item. On the Japanse table it is a delicacy. Last year fishermen off the north-west coast of Ireland, landed something in the region of 36,000 tonnes of scad. That fish or the horse mackerel is still a non-quota species in Ireland but I am afraid the day will come when quotas will be brought in for these fish.

It is time now to urge our fishermen to fish for and land as much as they possibly can of scad so that when quotas are brought in on scad our quota will be based on our catches of the previous year or years. If we happen to have a low catch in the previous year then there is no chance of expanding this fisheries because we will again be caught in the quota system.

Blue whiting is another species which is non-quota. Large tonnages of blue whiting have been and are being caught but, unfortunately, the price of blue whiting is very low because it goes mainly for fishmeal. With proper market and research these fish could be exported to countries where they are treated as an edible species. There are two countries I know of whose people eat blue whiting on a regular basis and where the price is far higher than the fishermen get for it here for fishmeal.

The argentine is another non-quota fish that has been caught in hundreds of tonnes on the Continental Shelf and the Porcupine Bank. This has been done successfully over the past two years but, unfortunately, the fishermen had not got the back-up service or the proper research. The argentine is a fish that is found in very deep water and that species shoal much the same as mackerel. Argentines shoal in depths in excess of 100 fathoms. In their body there is a little sack of air and when they are caught in such huge numbers, anything up to 600 or 700 tonnes at a time in a net, and if they are brought to the surface too quickly two things can happen. When the fish come up from the bottom too fast the sack of air expands so the volume of fish in the net expands on reaching the surface and they just burst the nets and destroy the gear. If a fisherman is successful in getting the fish to the surface the sack of air within the body of the fish bursts. The quantity of fish he would have in his net would be 600, 700, 800 or maybe even a 1,000 tonne of fish. These fish then become absolute deadweight the same as lead and they sink. This happened in one of the fishing boats in Killybegs and the boat began to capsize. The weight of fish was so great that the wires holding the nets pulled the winches out of the boat. The fishermen were very lucky this happened because if it did not the boat would have turned over and lives would have been lost. There is a clear need for research.

I am delighted the Minister has put the first cog in the wheel by introducing this Bill here. Hopefully the Bill will get a reasonably speedy passage through this House and through the Dáil and in a couple of months people with proper knowledge of what I am talking about will be on these boards. Then we will go places with our fishing industry. We know very little about that industry, about the species of fish and about the processing of fish. Senators will probably laugh again at this, but what people buy in cans such as sardines, kippers and so on, are put into these cans in a raw state and it is only when the can is sealed that they are cooked in the can.

Debate adjourned.