Protected species now seen by many as the enemy

THEY don't speak Spanish. They don't have fishing quotas. They don't even have gear or boats. Yet they may threaten the very survival of inshore fishing communities on the western seaboard.

They are even having an impact on Anglo Irish relations. Last year, the British Irish Inter Parliamentary Body identified the extent of their migration between the two islands as a serious problem.

While it was aware of the "general public fondness" for them, their population was "out of control", causing "significant damage", and an assessment should be undertaken with a view to a cull by both countries.

Hysteria, or hard, cold fact? Micheal O bEalaithe, a secondary school principal in north Mayo, is not given to hyperbole. "Time was when man hunted the seal. Now the seal is hunting man and winning over here."

The principal of Colaiste Chomain in Rossport, bordering on the Mullet peninsula, chooses his words carefully. Fourteen years may have passed, but the wounds left by the 1982 seal clubbing incident on the neighbouring Inishkea islands have still not healed.

That a whole community should have been condemned for the actions of a few still rankles, particularly when so little attempt was made to understand the motives, fuelled by pure frustration.

For even on a summer's day, this part of the west is a wild, bleak, if beautiful, place. Surrounded by some of the richest fishing grounds in Europe, it is a treacherous coastline for small boats.

Emigration is still the most sensible option for most. Such is the dependence on social welfare for those who stay that there is a genuine fear of speaking out even now, in 1996, about any controversial issue.

Which makes it all the more surprising that some 60 people turned up for a public meeting in Mr O hEalaithe's school recently to discuss the seal issue. Addressing the gathering were two scientists, Mr Ciaran Crummey of Bord Iascaigh Mhara (BIM) and Mr Oliver Kiely of University College Cork (UCC), who have been researching seal populations.

One survey found that over 2,000 seals were living in northwestern waters, and the average daily diet of the grey seal is almost 10 kilograms of fish.

The chief executive of the North Western Regional Fisheries Board, Mr Vincent Roche, had said that a number of fishermen had given up altogether because of problems caused by seals. Of 105 commercial salmon fishing licences available in the Ballina area, only 70 had been taken up this year.

Fish farms have also been affected. One local farm had reported losses of up to £300 worth of salmon a week, due to raids by seals.

That no elected politician attended the Rossport meeting was testimony to the sensitivity of the issue, or to a general lack of interest. Under the 1976 Wildlife Act, the seal is a protected species, and only eight shooting licences were issued last year by the Office of Public Works.

The Irish Fishermen's Organisation (IFO) has long argued that Irish legislation should be brought into line with that in Britain, which allows a fisherman or fish farmer to shoot seals interfering with their operations at any time except during the breeding season.

The environmental lobby, as represented by Mr Brendan Price of the Irish Seal Sanctuary in north Dublin, says it is fully supportive of coastal communities, and believes that the political response to date is "Euro driven".

Scapegoating seals, while starving the smaller ports and communities of investment and fair market share or price is grave misrepresentation," the sanctuary said recently. Fishing communities are not "anti seal", but it suits "faceless Eurocrats in Brussels and Dublin" to have "coastal communities clamouring over seals and crumbs, while systematic depopulation continues".

Mr Vincent Sweeney, who charters boats from Blacksod on north Mayo's tip, believes that there is not only a need for more research, but a more committed approach from the State authorities to the findings than heretofore.

He has participated in many counts, including the current project jointly funded by the Department of the Marine, BIM and the Wildlife Service. But he is critical of successive governments' lack of appetite for addressing the results.

He is prepared to give seals the benefit of the doubt. His father, Ted, a lighthouse keeper, was once asked to send seal heads to the Royal College of Surgeons in London, to replace specimens it had lost in the second World War blitz. He shot one, put its head in a tin, covered it in methylated spirits and sent it off in the post.

Afterwards, as Teed Sweeney recalled, two to three seals hung about day after day at the head of Blacksod pier. They kept coming over a period of six weeks. He could hear them "weening", crying like children. He resolved that he would never shoot one again.

Relatively silent amid all the controversy is the one group that stands to benefit from the decline of fishing communities, particularly those still driftnetting for salmon.

Seals have been seen up as far as the Ridge Pool on Mayo's river Moy, and on other freshwater stretches. Some scientists believe they are a significant, if largely ignored, factor in the sea trout decline. Yet the angling lobby has made no comment; perhaps because seals have become agents in their own campaign.