Village's fortunes sink or swim with mackerel

Dallas, say some. Others have compared its feverish industrial spirit to the atmosphere in the Californian sardine port of Monterey. It was on the back of the migratory North Atlantic mackerel, roaming between St George's Channel and the Norwegian coast, that Killybegs built its fortune in the last 15 years.

Although still a village, its fleet of modern trawlers fuels employment for almost 2,000 people in more than 60 shore-based companies and organisations. Donegal is 25 per cent dependent on the fishing industry, which now employs 16,500 people nationally and exporting a total of £250 million in fish products according to current statistics.

The Killybegs £100 million pelagic (midwater) fleet has been built up with little or no State aid, but many owners bought their first hulls with assistance from the EU and Exchequer funds.

A recent multi-million-pound refurbishment of existing vessels received up to 30 per cent finance from the EU and Bord Iascaigh Mhara (BIM).

Landings in the port have risen rapidly over the last 40 years from a value of £58,000 in 1954 to £32 million, representing 25 per cent of the national total.

Mackerel are pelagic fish, found typically in midwater rather than close to the seabed. In common with other pelagic species, like herring, the mackerel moves in shoals which can be both big and dense. The larger members of the family include the giant and most lucrative bluefin tuna or tunny.

While herring fisheries funded the development of European capitals over centuries, it was not until the late-1960s that north-east Atlantic mackerel landings began to expand. The restless fish, with its high-protein content, has no air sac, and can never remain stationary. In the early years of the Common Fisheries Policy, it was not subject to quota.

Touching almost 50km an hour, its speed is such that it could not be chased until technology caught up with biology, and a Norwegian company invented an echo sounder that could identify it.

Killybegs developed the midwater trawl to snare it, and this type of gear is so successful that it has a ready export market worldwide.

Before 1995, three separate mackerel stocks were believed to exist in the north-east Atlantic - the North Sea, Western and Southern stocks. Due to mixing and migratory changes, stock assessment has become increasingly difficult. The Killybegs Fishermen's Organisation (KFO) participated in a tagging programme last year.

Whatever about mackerel, scientific knowledge on scad movements is said to be limited. The slow-growing fish is hard to age and to tag, and the stock is declining - a fact ignored by the EU when it set a generous total allowable catch on the species for the first time in 1997, with the lion's share going to Holland.

It is a classic example of confusing enforcement with management, according to scientists who believe that Ireland should be more pro-active in initiating conservation and management proposals at EU level.

Mr Joey Murrin of the Killybegs Fishermen's Organisation echoes this view; as a first step, the organisation intends to monitor closely the workings of the massive Dutch pelagic fleet this year.