On last month’s RTÉ Prime Time, Wexford fisherman Seamus O’Flaherty, who operates a fleet of 22 commercial boats, had a few choice words about the Government’s plan to legally protect 30 per cent of Ireland’s maritime waters by 2030. “People have lived here in Kilmore and prospered since the 1840s on fish that they caught. You can’t wipe that out ... People around here don’t want to be just tour guides taking people out to see the whales.”
Except, of course, it can be wiped out – and it almost has been. Decades of overfishing, removing more fish than scientists consider sustainable, have drained life from the ocean. Just this week, the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES), of which Ireland is a member, issued its latest advice, and it’s shocking: a 70 per cent cut to the EU’s mackerel quota next year, along with a 41 per cent reduction in blue whiting and a 22 per cent cut to the boarfish quota.
The mackerel in the northeast Atlantic – which ICES scientists describe as having “plummeted to a level from which it will struggle to recover” – is now at its lowest level for more than 20 years. Catastrophic? Absolutely. Surprising? No, not really. Years of overfishing have taken their toll, with governments repeatedly allowing the industry to exceed scientific advice by an average of 39 per cent since 2010. In short, the fishing industry, aided by politicians, is killing its future.
Here’s what the industry needs: big old fat fecund female fish – BOFFFFs, they’re called – and as many of them as possible. This science-backed idea is straightforward but crucial: larger, older females are the secret to keeping fish populations healthy and thriving. They lay far more eggs than their smaller, younger counterparts, spawn over longer stretches of time and in more places, and their eggs are healthier and more likely to survive. One female cod weighing 66lb can produce more eggs than 28 female cod weighing 4lb each. And a 31-inch female rockfish? She’ll churn out nearly 10 times as many eggs every year as a female half her size.
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But because fishing goes after the biggest fish allowed, the industry is killing these big ladies before they’re able to do the thing they do best: endlessly reproduce. The result? A less stable population that’s far more vulnerable to collapse under continued pressure. It’s a system that doesn’t acknowledge the basic facts: not all fish are created equal. The ones that matter – the cream of the crop – are the matriarchs of the sea.
So, how do we get more of these larger ladies? The evidence is clear: set aside areas of the sea where fishing and other extractive activities are off limits. These marine protected areas (MPAs), which operate as “no-take zones”, are the maternity wards of the ocean – the Holles Street, Coombe and Rotunda hospitals combined. The fishing industry doesn’t need to spend a single euro to rebuild stocks; the BOFFFFs will do the job for them. All they need is space and time (don’t we all, ladies?).
Instead of seeing protection as something conservationists wang on about, the Government and industry should treat MPAs as a form of fisheries management, like quotas and gear size. It has worked in Sweden, which has a large share of Europe’s no-take zones, many of which have been in place for more than a decade. Fish and crustacean populations have grown in number and size – and yes, it’s thanks to those BOFFFFs.
Even if you couldn’t care less about biodiversity, only a fool would ignore the strong economic case for MPAs. In the most extensive study of its kind, Irish scientist Mark John Costello at Nord University in Norway examined 50 MPAs across 31 countries. In every case, these protected zones boosted fishing and tourism. Protection leads to profits, and in letting fish populations rebound, the MPAs didn’t just help restoration; they gave local and national economies a tangible lift.
Most importantly for the fishing industry – and for any Irish politician who measures success in euro rather than biodiversity – there is, as Costello puts it, “unequivocal” evidence that restricting fishing in one area leads to more fish elsewhere, thanks to what scientists call the “spillover effect”. When fish have a safe haven to live without disturbance or killing, they can grow old and large (MPAs increase fish size by an average of 28 per cent). They’ll produce a disproportionately high number of offspring, many of whom will swim out of the protected area into new parts of the ocean. In fisheries just outside the protected areas, Costello found catches up to 40 times higher, and the fish were bigger (in one case, up to 34 per cent larger).
[ Whales in Irish waters face a new threatOpens in new window ]
MPAs are the ocean’s equivalent of “Netflix and chill”, where fish can get down to it. For example, a small MPA in New Zealand contributed more than 10 per cent of juveniles to the surrounding waters. Of the 50 MPAs Costello studied, not one showed any losses to fisheries. For the fishing industry, MPAs are their future profits.
Tourism – and yes, that includes lucrative whale-watching – is another winner. Take Palau in the western Pacific, which declared its waters a no-fishing sanctuary in 2009. Today, the shark-diving industry there brings in $18 million a year. The value of killing sharks? Just $10,800. In Australia, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park adds $6.4 billion to the economy each year and supports 64,000 full-time jobs.
The appalling state of mackerel stocks is a stark warning to our politicians and the industry: the future is bleak unless there’s a rapid change of course. Our Government is hopelessly behind; it hasn’t even passed the legislation to create MPAs. The smarter, economically successful vision is one of abundance from MPAs. If the industry doesn’t wake up to this reality, it risks the same fate as the mackerel in our seas: collapse.
