Two recent tragedies have compounded pressures on the fishing community, which is looking to immigrants to crew trawlers, writes Lorna Siggins, Marine Correspondent
Glen Cott, Krzysztof Pawtowski and Jan Sankowski weren't planning to stay at sea for long when they set out in the 15-metre Maggie B off the south-east coast a week ago. The trio had been fishing together for a couple of months, and this was their first exploratory trip on the vessel which had been purchased by colleagues of Cott, the Walsh brothers, in east Cork's Ballycotton.
The vessel was fitted with beam trawl gear. Dutch and Belgian fleets pioneered the technique using trawls suspended from a vessel's beam, rather than stern. Although beaming is regarded as both hazardous and environmentally insensitive, due to the risk of snagging trawls on the seabed, the method is very effective in catching highly priced flatfish.
However Cott, the son of a fisherman, would have known that it takes some practice, and his main focus would have been on testing the gear when he and his Polish crew ran into trouble late on Wednesday night. South-west winds veering south-east and spring tides had whipped up considerable turbulence in the Waterford estuary.
Krzysztof Pawtowski, who survived without a life jacket or survival suit in six-degree temperatures by inflating the boat's life raft and clinging to it, was reported to have said that the vessel sank in minutes some 8.6 km south of Hook Head. He was plucked from the water by the Dunmore East lifeboat just 51 minutes after the emergency was raised by the boat's skipper. Neither Cott nor Sankowski were so fortunate.
The Maggie B was a 17-year old Dutch-built steel vessel which capsized off the British coast in 1993 when then registered as Gilsea. It was refurbished when brought into Ireland several years ago. However, it is understood that the registration and safety equipment checks undertaken on the vessel in February did not include a full survey.
The sinking occurred on one of the most hazardous areas of the Irish coastline, just four months after the loss of the eight-metre lobster boat, Rising Sun, off the Saltee islands. Like the Maggie B, the Rising Sun lost two crew - skipper Pat Colfer and Jimmy Meyler. Both vessels went down in some 50 metres of water.
The Rising Sun tragedy claimed a third life when New Ross diver Billy O'Connor, a former vice-president of the Irish Underwater Council, died on his return from a dive on the wreck of the boat. The vessel was subsequently salvaged but damaged during the lift, and there was no sign of the skipper's body on board.
There is, as Irish Fishermen's Organisation Joe Maddock says, a combination of "both sorrow and anger" prevailing in the south-east region. He is aware of the depth of that anger in relation to the Rising Sun, sparked off by a delay in despatching Naval Service divers to the wreck. This delay influenced O'Connor's decision to dive with partner Harry Hannon to search for Colfer.
Questions relating to the State's response and relating also to the subsequent salvage of the Rising Sun may be addressed only in part by the Marine Casualty Investigation Board. However, Maddock believes that "people appreciated the work done by the State agencies", and notes that "the State can be easily picked on when one doesn't see instant action".
Compounding that sense of grief and hurt has been the pressure on the fishing industry at a time of reduced quotas and rising fuel prices - the sort of economic pressures which force many skippers of smaller, older vessels to stay out fishing long after forecasts tell them it is time to return to port.
Some eight years after initiating a €100 million whitefish renewal programme, the Government has introduced a €45 million decommissioning scheme this year to remove some 25 per cent of the whitefish fleet, albeit applicable only to vessels of a certain age.
A recent case study of west Kerry noted that a significant portion of fish landings to Kerry ports are now made by non-Irish vessels. Under the revised Common Fisheries Policy (CFP), the Naval Service has little information to allow for adequate monitoring of non-Irish vessels.
The increasing number of "new Irish" employed in the industry is also symptomatic of shrinking margins, and the perceived lack of any real future in the sector for the sons and daughters of traditional fishing families. Bord Iascaigh Mhara has no figures for the number of non-nationals working as crew, but recruitment from eastern European states became a significant trend several years before EU enlargement.
Jason Whooley of the Irish South and West Fishermen's Organisation believes that Ireland's failure to make the most of some of Europe's richest fishing grounds, the recent rows over new illegal fishing legislation and what he sees as "negative spin" about the sector propagated by Minister for Marine Noel Dempsey, are all due to a lack of any Government policy. Such a "long-term strategic" policy was promised in the Fianna Fáil/Progressive Democrats programme for government after the 2002 general election.
Industry representatives say that Dempsey's comments in the Dáil and Seanad on the recent Sea Fisheries and Maritime Jurisdiction Bill have revealed a fundamental misunderstanding of the flawed nature of the CFP - and amnesia about the coalition's lobbying of the European Commission over the supertrawler, Atlantic Dawn.
The recent report to Government on decommissioning by former IDA chief executive Padraic White had pointed to a "volatile economic and financial environment" in which the industry was operating, and "an underlying temptation" therefore to "exceed fishing restrictions". All that in an unrelentingly harsh environment which few politicians have any real experience of, or empathy with.
