Trawler Leviathan Has Got To Be Bad News For Fish Stock Sustainability

NEWS FROM THE CELTIC LEAGUE

The second largest trawler in the world the 143 metre Margaris which can catch and process 250 tonnes of fish a day is in waters to the North West of Donegal.

I have been tracking the vessel all day as it meanders back and forth obviously enjoying steady catches because it has stayed in the one area for many hours.

The news that a vessel of this size and capacity is operating in coastal waters of the western British Isles has got to be bad. The vessel has previously been banned from Australian waters but is able to avoid controversy here because registered in Lithuania it is covered by EU Fishery policy

Although the vessels operations are being securitised by the Irish Sea Fisheries authorities assisted by the Irish Naval Service and Air Corps. However there is little they can do about it and more worrying there is little they know about it when the Irish web pages Journal ie did a story on this see link no one seemed to know what it was fishing for and what quota it was working to.

Whatever quota working offshore like a giant vacuum cleaner hovering its way through the seas many species will caught as by catch to the horse mackerel it is suspected to be fishing.

Rigid quotas are now enforced for fishermen off Scotland and in the Irish and Celtic Sea and then one of these trawler leviathans appear over the horizon –it makes no sense!

The marine environment is finally balanced and one species depends on another it is past time the EU looked again at the regulation of vessels of this size and capacity whose operating costs are often artificially low by employing third world labour.

A link to the journal ie story can be found here:

http://www.thejournal.ie/super-trawler-margiris-west-coast…/

BERNARD MOFFATT

Issued by: The Celtic News

11/11/15

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