Use of drift nets to catch tuna banned from 2002

EU fisheries ministers last night banned the use of drift nets to catch tuna from January 2002, responding to widespread environmentalists' concerns for dolphins and other species caught and killed in the nets.

The decision comes as a blow to the Minister for the Marine, Dr Woods, who opposed the ban, arguing that Irish fishermen do not represent a significant threat to dolphins. He won only the most unspecific promise of compensation from structural funds.

Earlier, Irish fishermen who travelled here to protest against the decision were involved in a minor scuffle with Greenpeace activists when they tried unsuccessfully to pull down one of the latter's banners outside the meeting room. Greenpeace was demanding an immediate ban. The drift-net ban will particularly hit fishermen from Dingle, Co Kerry, and Castletownbere and Union Hall, Co Cork, Ireland's only tuna fleets. Some 20 boats currently land a catch worth £4 million a year.

The fishermen argue that curbs on their fishing will not only affect their livelihoods but put pressure on other fisheries by increasing demand for stocks already controlled by quota. The Fine Gael spokesman on the marine, Mr Michael Finucane, last night accused Mr Woods of conceding "game, set and match" by allowing the drift-net ban be introduced. "It is incomprehensible that Minister Woods has conceded to environmental bodies and Spanish fishermen."

The ban was strongly supported by Spain, also a tuna-fishing nation, but whose fishermen use less efficient long, hooked lines. It was opposed by Italy and France, major drift-netters in both the Atlantic and Mediterranean.

Dr Woods admitted that the decision was a setback but claimed that in pushing the phase-out period back from two to four years against a majority in the Council, Ireland had had a significant negotiating success which would allow it access to the next tranche of structural funds from 2000. Ireland's current allocation has been used up. The Minister said he was confident that the four years would give the industry the time to adapt to alternative fishing methods and transfer the technology required to the fleet. That process would be assisted by research money that, he said, the Commission had promised to make available.

A spokesman for the Dingle Fishermen's Organisation, Mr Lorcan O Cinneide, insisted that the ban was not based on scientific evidence but on a political decision to placate the Green lobby and a Spanish desire to get a monopoly of the tuna trade. "There is no talk of the impact on our livelihoods," he said.

He insisted that dolphin kills were below the UN-accepted biologically acceptable limits and that the alternative methods of fishing had been tried but were not a success in colder Irish waters.

Mr Jason Whooley, of the South and West Fishermen's Organisation, said Irish boats were fishing for tuna only 21 days out of 365 and "no one can suggest we are doing damage to the dolphin population."

The decision was "highly disappointing", the Connacht-Ulster MEP, Mr Pat the Cope Gallagher said, accusing the Spanish "who demand access to all fishing grounds" of cynically trying to corner the market.

A spokesman for Greenpeace, Mr Peter Puschel, said that a survey of dolphins in the Atlantic had shown a mortality rate of 1.5 per cent associated with drift-net fishing, a high rate for a species that did not reproduce fast.

Further species were also under serious threat, he said, contending that the French had in recent years caught as many as 82,000 blue sharks in one year in the same nets, and the swordfish stocks in the Mediterranean are in danger of extinction.

He said, however, that if the Irish fishermen's contention that they used only nets 2.5-km long was true, "they are victims to some extent of the black sheep of the fisheries, the French and Italians." The latter's nets are often 10 times that length.

He argued that the EU should not be subsidising what were effectively factory methods of production. The drift-net ban was also welcomed by the Green MEP, Ms Patricia McKenna, who said that the ban would not prevent fishing for tuna by ecologically acceptable alternative means.