Drift-netting: what it is and how it works

Drift-nets comprise a sheet of netting suspended from a floating head rope to a weighted foot rope which "drifts" with the tide.

However, there are up to 40 ways to kill a salmon, ranging from estuary practices of draftnetting, loopnetting, bag netting, snap netting and head weir fishing, to seal predation and pollution.

On September 19th, 1996, a report published by the Fianna Fáil-Labour coalition found that legal driftnetting was not the only - and might not even be the main - cause for stock decline and set out an action plan which curtailed a 24-hour, five-day-a-week fishery in the summer months to one within six miles over two months of the year.

The introduction of a commercial annual, and gradually reduced, quota as one of a series of measures was intended to increase runs of salmon up rivers, but there has been continued international pressure led by riparian interests to ban the practice altogether.

Promises to increase river counters to assess stocks accurately have not been delivered, which is one of the reasons for the bitter response of the commercial sector to the new review - while anglers are not happy about the advice on river closures in the south and east.

Drift-netting continues on a small scale in Sweden, and is the subject of a phased £3.4 million sterling buy-out in the northeast of England, half of which is being paid for by the British government and half by private interests. ...