Save 6 Miles of Sea

The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine is looking for your views on trawling within the 6 nautical mile coastal zone. The IWT would like to see all trawling banned in this area and is encouraging everybody who cares for our seas to make their views known. We have prepared a sample template and people are free to cut and paste this if they wish. You are also urged to add your own thoughts and the more personalised the submission the more weight it is likely to carry! The important thing is that you mail FisheriesConsultation@agriculture.gov.ie by the deadline of next Monday June 11th! Thank you

“Email to: FisheriesConsultation@agriculture.gov.ie

Or post to:

Public consultation on Trawling Activity Inside 6nm

Sea Fisheries Policy and Management Division

Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine

National Seafood Centre

Clonakilty,

Co. Cork P85 TX47

Re: Public Consultation on Minister’s Review of trawling activity inside the 6 nautical mile zone

Dear Minister Creed,

I would like to make a submission to the above-mentioned consultation.

The seas around Ireland are the common heritage of the people of this country, as well as future generations, and belong to no individual or industrial sector. Our seas are our history, our landscape and are vital to coastal communities which, thorough tourism or small-scale fishing, depend on it for a living. Our ocean wildlife is among the most spectacular in the world however it is gravely threatened from poorly-regulated fishing, pollution and fossil fuel exploration. Indeed, much marine life has already deserted our coastal zone from overfishing and harmful activities – inshore fishing for herring, cod and mackerel are a thing of the past, commercial fishing for salmon, eels and sea bass have shut down completely, while 62% of species of sharks and ray face extinction. Many of these problems can be blamed on trawling – an indiscriminate method of fishing that results in enormous waste and habitat destruction.

It is very welcome that restrictions on trawling within the 6 nautical mile zone are being considered and I would like to use this opportunity to call for all bottom and mid-water pair trawling to be prohibited as a matter of urgency. Such a move provides an enormous opportunity to allow for the recovery of marine life, the celebration of a healthy ocean and truly sustainable coastal communities.

I hope that this bold move will be passed but on its own it will not be enough to provide the protection needed for healthy seas. Only good management of marine resources will do that, something which should include the prohibition of other damaging fishing practices such as dredging and tangle netting, better regulation of supertrawlers, the designation of robust Marine Protected Areas, the banning of exploration of fossil fuels, and the legal protection of threatened marine species. Prohibiting trawling within the 6nm zone however would be a major step in the right direction.

Yours sincerely,”