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AN TAISCE HAS criticised a study by the Marine Institute into the Aran fish farm stating that the study has been “panned” by international scientists and raises questions as to why they are supportive of controversial plans for the fish farm in Galway.
In a statement, An Taisce say that the Marine Institute’s report which was produced earlier this year “sought to downplay” the role of sea lice in compromising salmon populations, particularly the survival of wild salmon.
Report’s findings
An Taisce stated that a newly-released paper from the University of Toronto’s Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology discredits the institutes findings saying there are at least three fundamental errors in the report.
They state that the data differences from year to year were not treated appropriately, the averages regarding the survival of fish were used incorrectly and that the Marine Institute study contains grave mistakes in measuring control and treatment groups, leading to wide inaccuracies.
They state that the Marine Institute’s defence of the Aran fish farm is now “in shreds”.
An Taisce notes that as “authoritative scientific voices have weighed into the debate regarding fish farming, the plans for a giant 1,130-acre caged-fish installation between the Aran Islands and Clare, along with similar proposals elsewhere along the coast, appear increasingly ill-advised”.
Aran fish farm
The Galway fish farm would be the largest of its kind in Europe and would double the state’s production of raw organic salmon. However, there has been strong opposition to the proposals with some fishery groups and locals fearing it will do damage to the area and would be a threat to tourism in the area.
An Taisce said it was “disappointing” to see that the Marine Institute discredited adding that it raises questions and “strengthens the argument that the Marine Institute is propping up Bord Iascaigh Mhara’s (BIM) controversial plans for these vast and intensive fish farms off the coast”.
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‘…double the state’s production of raw organic salmon’
How in the name of God can fish who are covered in lice and live in their own shit be called organic?
Seen the state of some of the poultry you consume?
matt,
I only eat organic chicken and fish and no red meat and definitely no farmed fish but I see what you mean.
It is hard to match the taste of freshly caught mackerel from the sea around Kinsale,WOW!!!
Duke, I can’t see how you could have eaten organic fish unless it was farmed. You can only call it as such if you can monitor the feed as organic and maintain that, otherwise you’ve been eating wild fish.
Very true bobby.the most underrated of fish.when fresh it is unbeatable
bobby,
mackerel is awesome.
liz
I eat wild salmom.
I should have put wild before fish in the following sentence. “I only eat organic chicken and WILD fish”.
sORRY FOR THE MIX UP.
I’d love to know where you’re getting your wild salmon from as fishing of wild salmon has been banned for a few years now.
sock eye salmon from Alaska…………..in a tin, I admit but it’s the next best thing.
Aldi have good tinned wild salmon.
Wild Pacific salmon? And the Norwegians can still fish – they weren’t stupid enough to bargain away their rich fishing grounds to the EU, and have managed them superbly so they’re still rich, while ours are a ravaged ghost after constant harvesting by giant superships that throw three-quarters of their catch back dead into the sea.
Wild salmon netting still goes on here in Kerry in fact it’s slowly killing the tourism industry and rivers alike so it’s not finished at all and don’t even start me on the poaching .
There’s a shock a study taken out by the government isn’t worth a shit deja vu
Farmed salmon is dirt,
And it tastes like dirt!
This will destroy the wild salmon population.
There is a big misconception regarding Sea lice killing wild fish stocks. Sea lice are found in very dense populations around fish farms – Hence passing shoals of wild fish pick them up. But the sea lice are just an indicator organism (similar to the way Salmonella is used to detect the presence of fecal contamination in water). Fish diseases are also found in fish farms. Fish farm can be compared to a large hospital (farmed fish have weaker immune systems than wild fish due to the fact that natural selection has been removed and runts have been allowed to survive to adulthood) where substandard fish are extremely vulnerable to diseases and receive treatments on a regular basis to cure these diseases. The problem is, wild fish pass these fish farms, catch these diseases before continuing on their journey. But they don’t hang around long enough to receive the treatments, instead they meet up with their friends and pass on the diseases to them too before dying. This is what happened the sea trout.
The other problem with these breeding grounds for disease is the fact that new diseases are found every day. Last years diseases evolve into something more sinister the following year – similar to the way the flu vaccine needs to be updated every year to cater for ever evolving diseases. While we have been lucky so far, it is just a matter of time until a fish disease appears that may be transferred onto humans, similar to BSE (Mad Cow Disease), or worse still, some form of Aids, something we still cant control.
To even consider providing a potential breeding ground on a scale this size is utter madness. The other major argument against fish farms is the fact that an estimated 2 million farmed salmon escape from cages every year in the north Atlantic. If a storm were to damage these cages and salmon were to escape into the lakes and rivers, they would have a very serious detrimental effect on the native stocks. Farmed fish are a fast growing Norwegian strain of fish. They outcompete native fish for resources in fresh water and have poorer survivorship at sea (the Marine Institute already published papers supporting this fact). This combination of poor genetics will ensure that a rivers native population will effectively be bred out completely within a few years if these fish escape.
The tourism industry has been marketing many of the west of Ireland’s Lakes and rivers as “Wild Fish Stocks” and attract many tourists annually specifically for this reason. If escaped farmed fish are to be found in these rivers, the fish farms are leaving themselves wide open to litigation claims from angling groups and other stakeholders in the angling industry. Contaminating a rivers fish stock is no different to any other form of pollution.
Regarding Sea Lice, I am a shore Angler, I have found Salmon sea lice on other species (as Many Shore Angler have found) these include and are NOT restricted to, Flounder Dab and Plaice, found them on Bass and Wrasse as well in recent times :( Im against Fish Farms for what they do to the environment, and those that need an education in the destruction they cause I implore you to get up and DRIVE to your nearest Fish Farm.. talk with local anglers etc .. see for yourself rather then relying on the internet
An Taisce object to everything! They have cost countless of millions in planning objections and developments. Their rapped up in so much bsh*t! What on earth do they even exist for??
Whatever you may think of An Taisce, they are right. These types of fish farms have decimated wild salmon populations in Scotland. And I give a lot more credibility to UofT than to BIM’s study as they are internationally accepted experts and are independent with no stake in the development.
And corrupt
About 3/4 of their objections are upheld , so maybe it’s someone else that is making wrong decisions?
The whole banning wild salmon fishing a few years back was a load of crap, I know a few guys in the industry and they say the year before it was banned the sea was full of them and pretty much the same since. Stupid law to make the fatcats with the farms a quick buck.
An taisce appeals about 4 out of every 1000 applications
An Taisce opposed the wild overdevelopment of the boom and got at least some of the crazier proposals stopped. Without people like them we’d be in an even bigger hole than we are.
You really don’t know what you are talking about
Salmon numbers are down prob 80%-90% in 60 years! What the hell are you on about man? You can’t actually seriously believe that salmon were making a comeback before the ban? I mean do you seriously believe that?
@Noel well said
I think Daniel is living in some form of surreal parrallel universe. You are aware that we had one of the biggest property bubbles in the history of the world here just recently? – 44,000 hectares of overzoned land, ghost estates, zombie hotels, NAMA, houses and housing estates flung all over the country, town centres decimated by out of town big-boxes – costs running to hundreds of billions, emigration, mass unemployment – as far as I am aware it was the likes of An Taisce who were the only organisation who opposed this – and were villified for doing so. The only regret that we can have is that they were not able to object to more and someone might of actually listened to them
Anybody see the bbc documentary of the lad touring australia? Was a great segment on tuna fish farming. At the rate china alone is consuming, there’s note enough fish in the sea. Aquaculture is the only long term solution, it may also be the saviour of wild stocks.
In the appropriate locations maybe??
Appropriate locations, yeah, in sea water
Sure why note just continue to surrender rights to our waters until such time as they’re wholly under the control of europe, then they’ll set up the farms, and nobody on this island will benefit.
Matt, I love a decent discussion / debate…. But really? Intensive farming is the way forward for wild salmon stocks! You’re joking ….right?
Better than intensive trawling, there’s a reason there are armadas of european owned super-trawlers emptying the indian ocean right now….they’ve already emptied the north-atlantic
How about restocking the rivers and let nature do the rest?
‘Restocking the rivers’ sounds good, but wild salmon have a genetic map that leads them back to their own rivers where their ancestors have returned for thousands of years. You can’t just put any fish in and hope its children will return, as you can tadpoles, say.
One of the big fears about farmed salmon is that farmed salmon can escape during storms, drunkenness, etc, and breed with the wild salmon, diluting their genetic memory of their route through many thousands of miles of sea to their home river.
If we’re going to farm salmon, we should do it inland, in tanks well away from any river, lake or inlet, to negate the risk of contamination of wild stocks.
It has been done and they do return, unfortunately its normally a fast growing Norwegian strain of fish that is farmed, these are genetically different to Irish fish, and we are losing our genetic identity by introducing them.
The main problem with restocking is the restocked fish outcompete wild fish for resources in fresh water, they also reach smolt stage faster, but they have much poorer survivorship at sea. They have a very negative impact on naturally wild stocks. The leading scientists at the Marine institute in Newport released a paper in 2009 supporting this fact. It was based on years of research. They predict that a rivers wild population could become extinct within 20 generations. Read their paper (the one they forgot to mention when they supported the fish farm proposal). Its a very interesting read:
Impact of naturally spawning captive-bred Atlantic salmon on wild populations: depressed recruitment and increased risk of climate-mediated extinction
http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2009/07/29/rspb.2009.0799.full
Plenty of fishermen still landing salmon all down the west coast of Ireland
Not legally though, so only the local restaurants will be getting the odd one.
on nowhere near the same scale as they have been able to do so at a sustainable level in the past. If catching fish at sea was banned, and fish were only able to be harvested by smaller boat when they entered bays and estuaries, as they have been done for hundreds of years, all fish stocks would return to their former glory. Also, the size of fish being caught would increase. The feeding grounds are at sea. Leave the fish until they have finished growing before catching them. Less fish would then need to be caught to reach each fisherman’s quota. Super trawlers should be banned.
The perceptions of Aquaculture in Irish Society are wildly misguided.
Chicken farming and cattle farming get a carte blanche in Ireland.
Slurry and fertilizer in fresh water rivers does far more damage than sea lice ever could.
The Irish sea farming of Salmon would be best suited following the Norwegian model…as they are the largest Salmon producers in the world.
Shore based, salt water salmon farms would be a better model to pursue, though the cost is quite high.
For an island nation, the attitude towards aquaculture is very poor.
The public are widely misinformed.
If you spent time at a chicken farm or a slatted house for cattle, you would think twice about eating either of those, lest we forget pork.
The positioning of the cages allows several knots of current changing every tide to ensure clean water for the Salmon and excellent growing conditions.
The cattle in slatted houses don’t get that benefit. Neither do the chickens or pigs living in their own excrement.
Salmon farming at sea is the only source of continuous employment to provide jobs in the most rural parts of Ireland.
Those that think farmed Salmon tastes like dirt, really ought to explore new ways to cook and prepare fish.
Finally, the vast majority of Irish Salmon is for export, where it is well priced and in massive demand across Europe, The US and Asia.
I’ve eaten Clare Island Organic Salmon several times this year in South Florida.
7 knots of tide, come off it. They’re not putting it in the river Shannon!
Non organic salmon does taste like dirt, changing the way you cook the dirt doesn’t change the fact that it is dirt!
Organic farmed salmon is pretty close to wild salmon though.
Wow that’s a wildly misguided statement. Follow norways model? Are you fricking serious??? Norway barely have any wild fish left in their rivers. Their angling tourism is down BILLIONS of euros because there aren’t any salmon left! Why? Because of their salmon farms. Main cause of death is sea lice and disease. And you want to follow this system? It would be counter productive for Ireland to follow. If we protect our salmon we can make billions every year from tourism not a few salaries for a few aqua farm employees. So it’s billions for everyone to share or maybe 30-40 people getting salaries. Which would you prefer?
Nothing organic about farmed salmon in Ireland. How do you like fish treated with pesticides like cypermethrin(Wasp spray), deltamethrin and hydrogen peroxide served up to you. With the quantity(2500m3) been talked about per treatment in Galway this will almost certainly wipe out other marine life in the bay like oysters. Of course BIM neglected to explore this impact in their marketing propo… sorry Environmental Impact Statement..
The salmon in the cages are regularly treated with these when there is a lice infestation(Which has become rampant in farms across the country recently due to shoddy government regulation). The fact that the industry in Ireland has been allowed label itself as organic was a loophole exploited by the operators and backed by the government to bypass discharge limits and treatment limits and what they are allowed to feed the fish(Which is unsustainable by the way and depleting other oceans of fish) on the farms.
To add more insult to injury a moratorium on new salmon farm licences was brought in in the last National Development plan. Simon Coveney along with his friends in BIM and the aquaculture department of the marine institute are ignoring this and pushing on regardless without carrying out a Strategic assessment, which is required by European law. And all this to hand the profits to a Norwegian multinational and to keep our friends at BIM in a job,while in turn wiping out the angling industry in Ireland which was proven to bring in 750 million a year.
There is a good reason Renowned International scientists(Not just the ones in this article), Inland Fisheries Ireland, Failte Ireland, An Taisce, Galway City and County council, Every angling club in the country, various NGO’s and over 2000 people that turned out in protest in Galway are against this. Even Slow food Ireland who BIM sighted in their EIS as being in favour have since completely distanced themselves from the proposal and have denied ever supporting it.
You’re very misinformed. Fish aren’t chicken.
And there is very little difference in the way organic and non-organic farmed salmon are grown. If salmon are to be farmed and truly be allowed to call themselves “organically farmed” they should also be free range. Swimming around a cage doesn’t allow a fish to develop the same muscle texture that wild salmon have. Instead they have that jelly sludge flesh texture. And the medications demanded by a farm of this size would be considerably higher than previous smaller farms. EIA’s cant quantify the true damage being done because there is no model of this size in the North Atlantic to base their statistics on.
Free range organic salmon has already been achieved in some rivers around the country. The process involves releasing stocked smolts from a dead river (a river where there are no salmonids) and harvesting them when they return. The fish will still return to the river they were released in. Farming in this manner would not put pressure on the food fish demands proposed by the current setup.
I would also totally disagree with your point about salmon farming at sea to being the “only” source of employment to rural Ireland. Managing the current fish stocks properly so as to allow them to return to their former glory would allow coastal fishermen to continue a trade their forefathers have being successfully being doing for hundreds of years. No fishing at sea approach should be undertaken until fish stocks return and supertrawlers be banned indefinitely. Europe has already been allowed to decimate Ireland’s fish stocks when previous governments sold out our fishing rights so as to get better headage grants for farmers. Its bout time the Irish government grew some balls and said NO, we’re taking back our fishing rights. Europes idea of fish management when it comes to Irish stocks is rape them and move on. Why doesn’t Norway have super fish farms if its the way to go?
Instead of fish farm exploitation in rural Ireland, why not invest in condom manufacture for export. If countries need to import fish, they obviously don’t have enough stocks of their own – (too many people). Selling condoms to these countries may be a much more sustainable approach
@ Robert Conneely:
Several knots not 7.
Where did you pull Billions from?
Salmon stocks are down because the gravel beds in the rivers are being destroyed by agricultural run off.
Salmon farming also provides a restocking programming – something anglers cannot.
30-40 getting salaries?
Well done.
Aquaculture would sustain a community all year round.
Angling Tourism runs from February to September when the Salmon season ends.
Funny how farmers got away with Angel Dust for years and Chickens are not much better.
You are well aware that aquaculture has a lot of red tape associated with it.
Try not to confuse the much reported US Aquaculture standards for the Irish standard.
Jelly sludge texture.
Are you kidding?
Farmed salmon be it in cages or tanks are continually moving.
As I’m confident that you well aware – if they didnt move, they would die as the water would not be passing through their gills.
The volume of fish per cage or tank is well proportioned and as per above, the are continually moving.
Strong tidal conditions on Galway Bay only serves to reinforce that.
Organic is not wild, nor will it ever be.
Organic is a food standard that follows an ideal that the food grows in as close to a natural environment as possible.
As we part of the EU, we are judged by the strictest of standards for organic food.
Oyster stocks are not damaged by Aquaculture.
A few years ago, the level of human excrement in the river in Clarinbridge rendered the Oysters not safe for human consumption.
Sadly, the cost of exporting condoms from Ireland greatly reduces the profit margin, making them not an ideal product.
Exporting the narrow minded pr**ks that should be using them would be much better.
So you want to talk about the Irish standards.
The standards that allow Fish farm operators to label Pesticides as Medicines to allow them obtain an “Organic” certification(Not the same Organic certification as you see in traditional foods).
The standards that allow operators to be warned before an inspection so cages can be purified.
The standards that do not stipulate clearly any inspection program on the local marine environment, regardless of effluent from the site and is abused systematically by operators. The only records we have of Fish stock numbers adjacent to salmon farms are from anglers.
Standards that allow operators to not have to release details of the volume or nature of the chemicals used for treatments of sea lice as they are considered “Trade Secrets”.
Standards that allow operators who have been prosecuted to remain in operation without any re-examination of their operations.
When you have the same people operating and regulating the industry in this country you can throw your book of standards out the window. Kind of reminds you of the banking industry and its “Standards and Regulation” in recent past.
There was a Great Prime Time investigation done into salmon farming in Connemara in the early 00s. The man involved in upholding the regulation and standards of salmon farming was caught out on camera telling a bare faced lie to protect an operator dumping salmon illegally in a bog. Truly upholds your faith that we have the “Best Standards and Regulations of Salmon farming in the EU.” The same guy is now head of the IFA aquaculture department and one of the very few supporters of this proposal.
Only in Ireland….
Oyster stocks are harmed by the very pesticides that BIM have proposed to use in Galway bay by the very fact that they that the pesticides are labelled as toxic to the aquatic environment and especially crustaceans. Salmon barley exerting energy in a cage is not the same as swimming across an ocean. Ask any Chef to tell the difference in texture and taste between wild and farmed salmon, and by the way that pinky colour farmed salmon get is from chemicals that are added to their food. Without it their flesh is Gray, tasty!
What’s the difference?
Sorry Colm the above was aimed at the several knots of tide comment.
Colm you’re dead right. One thing that people are getting mixed up on is that the MI didn’t prepare the impact statement.
Their study was elsewhere around the coast and BMI quoted it in their EIS.
The Marine Institute does some brilliant research but their reputation is now at risk as a research body due to some very questionable characters in their Aquaculture department. A lot of very significant scientists and researchers in both the Marine Institute and Inland Fisheries Ireland are being told to keep quiet on this issue as it comes into direct conflict with Minster Coveney and his departments plans for Salmon farming here.
A recent freedom of information request from Friends of the Irish Environment into a EU investigation into salmon farming here found that Minister Coveneys department suppressed reports requested by the investigators from IFI. The investigation was subsequently dropped and the man in charge of it removed from his position.
http://www.villagemagazine.ie/index.php/2013/07/coveneys-department-deceived-eu-investigators/
Calls to explain this from the ministers department have fallen on deaf ears at both government and European level so far.
I don’t know much about that side of it tbh, however they didn’t find evidence of sea lice.
That doesn’t make the character questionable. If you have a look at the annual reports they are putting a lot of it down to pollution. They didn’t say what type of pollution it was.
As you said yourself, the fish farms are using a lot of chemicals to keep sea lice down. This is most likely working so of course they wouldn’t find sea lice.
Salmon stock deaths from sea lice only affect 1 in 1000.
There are other factor to consider when it comes to our salmon stocks, such as the over population of seals in this country, which has no natural predator to cull them. They take one bite out of a salmon and leave the rest.
Of course what you say has a basis in fact but there is some very important facts to consider here and this is what the article is highlighting in the MI research and its subsequent dismissal from international scientists. Most salmon smolts never survive the first year, you are talking about 90% of that 1000. This is down to many reasons not just pollution or sea lice. The important figure here is returning smolts and which the university of Toronto paper and other international papers highlight that as high as 40% of smolts that should be returning to Irish water are not due to sea lice mortality.
Statement on an taisce website;
Isn’t An Taisce a government department (semi state)?
No An Taisce is a charity and was set up over 60 years ago, we rely almost exclusively on private donations and membership to survive and do our valuable work.
Yet they receive about 2.5-3 million from government departments appear to only have a small staff but spend 3.5 million+ on “administration costs”
I know it’s slightly out of context but they are can be just a mouth piece or a way for planning objectors to dodge fees and hide their identities. Maybe Galway is right, maybe Boston is but really an taisce haven’t added anything to the discussion.
Please show us where you got those figures from
Page 9 & 10
Actually they get 3.5 million of their funding from government (restricted funding) and about 140k from donations so believe maybe 4% of what you read;
http://www.antaisce.ie/Portals/0/Documents/Accounts/2012_An%20Taisce%202012%20Full%20accounts%20(signed).pdf
government bodies do what government bodies do
There’s something fishy going on here.
It had to be said.
Sorry :-(
I smell a fish..
More local jobs could b created in Galway bay, by developing sustainable fishing and Eco tourism than this massive farm project that will only survive 5 years with the help of massive grants.
have your say