Atlantic Dawn to cast nets in African venture

The Donegal-based Atlantic Dawncompany is planning to send an Irish-registered freezer trawler to fish off west Africa in a joint venture with a Dutch fishing company. Pieter Teschand Lorna Siggins, Marine Correspondent, report.

The 119-metre Johanna Mariaowned by the Dutch firm Jaczon of Scheveningen is being reflagged in the Republic.

This will allow it to use the quota held by the McHugh family's former supertrawler, Atlantic Dawn. The quota covered both Irish/EU waters and the north-east Atlantic.

However, the partners plan to send the vessel to the west African state of Mauritania - two years after the Atlantic Dawnwas banned from fishing there. The vessel may also fish off Chile with the Dutch Pelagic Freezer Trawler Association (PFA), of which the Jaczon firm is a member.

The move by the McHugh family is part of Atlantic Dawn Ltd's development plans, aimed at retaining the quota held by the Atlantic Dawnbefore its purchase by the Dutch Parlevliet and van der Plas company of Katwijk a year ago.

Last year, the company bought the 58-metre Atlantean, and renamed it the Veronica- a similar name to Atlantic Dawn'ssister ship which is still partly owned by the group and is working as a survey vessel.

The company has also acquired another tankboat, the 64-metre Father McKeefrom Greencastle, Co Donegal which it has renamed Felucca.Atlantic Dawn Ltd says it had two years to find other vessels to avail of the Atlantic Dawn'skilowatt and gross tonnage allowances to ensure it retained the vessel's licence and quota.

Karl McHugh told The Irish Timesthat both the Atlanteanand Father McKeehad come with their own quota. The Johanna Mariawas smaller than the Atlantic Dawn, and so the company still had excess capacity.

Niall O'Gorman, Atlantic Dawn Ltd's finance director, said that the firm was "still looking out for other trawlers" to which it could distribute all of Atlantic Dawn'sallowances.

The company expects the licensing of the Johanna Mariato fish off Mauritania to be handled by the Dutch PFA. Mr McHugh said that both the EU and the Government were anxious for member states to participate in third-country fishing agreements. The EU plays €86 million to Mauritania for these rights.

Under the 2006 EU deal with Mauritania, the Atlantic Dawnwas excluded because of size. Having previously negotiated its own deal, it was eventually forced to quit after it was detained for alleged fisheries offences. A new EU-Mauritania agreement is under negotiation.

The Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food said that the Atlantic Dawncompany was given two years to retain the capacity of the Atlantic Dawn or lose it altogether.

There was quota for 23 vessels in the Irish pelagic (mackerel/herring/horse mackerel) fleet, and to date 22 vessels have been using this quota, said the department. "There is provision for another vessel," a department spokesman said.

The department contends that the arrangement does not set a precedent for introduction of individual transferable quotas (ITQs) - or privatisation of annual fish allocations - and does "not represent a change in established policy or practice".

This has been disputed by fishing industry sources, who said the original deal between the European Commission and the Government permitted the Atlantic Dawn to be registered in the Republic and fish in Irish/EU waters, at a time of EU pressure to reduce capacity.

The EU had initiated infringement proceedings against the Republic over the Atlantic Dawn, but dropped these after the intervention of Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and former EU Commissioner David Byrne. The Government's €600 million Cawley seafood strategy published last year stated that "any new quota management system should provide for limited transferability of quota", but "should not amount to or lead to a system of ITQ and should not be characterised by individual permanent ownership or transferability of quota".