20 years on, technology now guards the seas

THE skipper spoke Dutch, the ship's name was Monica. It was after 7 p.m. when a naval and Garda party from the Deirdre hoarded the 150 foot vessel some 28 miles off the Old Head of Kin sale.

By 2.30 the following morning, 10 Dutch vessels had been inspected, arrested, and brought to port ... the largest catch for one of the smallest navies to patrol a new 200 mile limit.

It is almost 20 years now since the foreign herring skippers were charged with illegal fishing at Union Quay Garda station. They were so amused at the situation that they posed for photographs, while the Dutch ambassador delivered a sharp protest. Two decades later, the 200 mile limit has become a State institution, fishery offences are no longer committed by unidentified locals, and sea and air fishery patrols now communicate by modem, rather than morse.

"All this has been secured without our having to concede one iota of our claim to a coastal band of up to 50 miles - but in a way that greatly strengthens our claim to such a band," Garret FitzGerald, the then Minister for Foreign Affairs, wrote in The Irish Skipper, referring to Ireland's unilateral declaration of a 50 mile limit as part of the tortuous negotiations with the EEC on 200 mile zones in 1976. There was also an acceptance, he said, that "a country catching such a small proportion of the fish in the Community ... should not be expected to protect almost a quarter of this zone ..."

In fact, the Naval Service couldn't even patrol a 50 mile limit, never mind one out to 200 miles, the then Minister for Defence, Paddy Donegan, said at the time. To do this would require 15 vessels, each costing £4 million each, and fish lost to Ireland wasn't worth it.

Some two decades later, with an estimated £2 billion worth of fish being caught legally and illegally by other EU vessels in Irish waters, and Irish seafish exports valued at £213 million annually, the Naval Service still has only half Mr Donegan's required fleet to patrol the second largest, and fish richest, sea area in the EU.

It does so on a budget of a mere £30 million a year, supported by two Air Corps Casa planes, and application of new technology.

In 1989, an Oracle based application for data handling and processing was introduced, and patrol ships were fitted with technology linked to the National Supervisory Centre (NSC) at the Naval Base, via the INMARSAT satellite communications system. EU fishery legislation was transferred on to computer.

The next stage was development of the visual element - digitalised charts showing the Irish Box, national fishing limits, spawning areas, depth contours, and fishing areas such as Rockall, the Porcupine Basin, the Great Sole and Coral grounds. The database now has records for some 6,500 vessels, and has handled over 40,000 entries to date in 1996. The geographical information system (GIS), as it is known, indicates changing patterns of fishing activity.

In 1991, for instance, Irish vessels hugged the coast, while Spanish vessels were dense off Rockall and on the Porcupine. By 1993, there was less activity on the Porcupine, because the Spanish had moved to fresh fishing grounds, and a significant increase in British registered Spanish, or "flagship", activity inside the 200 mile limit.

This year, to date, Rockall is far less popular, the Spanish have been replaced by French seeking deep water species off the Porcupine, and the Irish fleet, largely comprised of vessels too small to venture further out, is still pinned to the coast.

The GIS can even call up an individual vessel's fishing techniques. Each patrol ship carries a PC version, and can track vessel movements from Cape Horn to Greenland to the Lebanon.

All of the systems have been designed and built by the Naval Service in association with the computer software industry, according to Lieut Pat Allen, project user analyst. A major redesign is now being conducted in association with the Department of the Marine, he says, to satisfy new EU regulatory measures, including fishing effort, catch reporting and vessel monitoring.

Described by GIS Europe, the international trade journal, as one of the most effective in the world, the Fisheries Protection Information System has attracted visitors from all over Europe and beyond. It has other applications, including drug surveillance, search and rescue and pollution control.

"It is a management tool," says Capt Peadar McElhinney, commander of the Naval Base at Haulbowline.

Dispatched to sea on the Cu Feasa in the early 1970s with a revolver in his pocket, as the nation's sole fishery protector, he has witnessed at first hand the rapid technological developments, while still recalling the shock, at the introduction of the 200 mile zone in the first place.