Rockpooling Event - Sept 2nd

There was a great turnout for the IWT Dublin Branch's rockpooling event in Portmarnock. The weather was sunny and the kids (and adults too) saw lots of little sea creatures, including lion's mane jellyfish, barnacles, limpets, winkles and whelks, shrimps, crabs and brittle stars. A lovely day out!

Lions Mane jellyfish

April 3rd Green Drinks - Sustainable Fisheries

This month Dublin Green Drinks heard Debbi Pedreschi of the Marine Institute talk about 'Real-time incentives fisheries management' . Debbi is working to develop a new way of managing fisheries, that takes the ecosystem into account, and would use smart technologies to improve the information coming from fishing activity to help make the science more accurate, while keeping the system simple to use and understand and provide incentives for sustainable activities and methods.Providing real time information to fishermen on where they can catch the correct species of fish should help to reduce wasteful by catch, and help fishermen fill all their more effectively.

In this project the team are working together with fishermen to co-design the system, to make it work practically for them, and to gain their insights, opinions and ideas. They have also started to work with eNGOs to incorporate their ideas and gather their thoughts. For more information on this very useful and potentially 'game-changing' initiative see https://www.facebook.com/RTICelticSea/
or
http://rti-for-fisheries.info/

August 26th - rockpooling in Portmarnock

On Saturday August 26th Dublin Branch member Kevin Delahunty led a rockpooling expedition along the coast at Portmarnock, north Co. Dublin to see what kind of creatures could be found. Lots of starfish, shellfish and 'pinkeens' were discovered, and another generation of kids got hooked on the wonders of nature!

Photos courtesy of Brendan

February 7th Green Drinks - Common Sense and the Common Fisheries Policy

In February Green Drinks Dublin heard Edward Fahy of www.eatenfishsoonforgotten.com talk about the EU's Common Fisheries Policy and the effect it is having on our Fish Stocks. Edward explained to us how fish quotas are regularly being assigned at higher than sustainable levels for political reasons. This is to suit the big fishing interests who dominate the fishing industry, and squeezes out smaller fishermen. As a result fish stocks are falling all across Europe.

However, creating sustainable fishing is complicated and not an easy matter to achieve. For instance, the well meaning policy of banning fishing discards now means that there is a market for non quota fish, and is actually encouraging the production of more 'discards' than previously existed. The current model of fisheries in Europe cannot continue, and will result in collapse in fish stocks, like cod in Newfoundland, if change does not occur. Ed was pessimistic that change will happen in time to prevent this, as progress is too slow. Altogether a sobering talk that brought home how short sighted our society is when it comes to managing nature.

    

5th September - Rockpooling in Portmarnock

On Saturday 5th September 2015 IWT's Dublin Branch went on a rock pooling session in Portmarnock, to find out more about the marine ecosystem along our coasts and the animals that live in them. There was a good turnout, and glorious weather. Lots of seashore creatures were seen, such as anemones, sea snails and shellfish like mussels, and a great morning for all the family was had.

5th March Green Drinks - Sustainable Seas and Badgers

This month Irish Wildlife Trust Dublin Branch heard about the Irish Wildlife Trust's key campaigns for sustainable seas and an end to the cull of Irish badgers.

Sustainable Seas – a lot done more to do
Pádraic Fogarty, IWT Campaigns Officer, outlined the situation so far. The good news is that European fisheries ministers have agreed to end the practice of discards, the wasteful practice of fishermen being forced to throw away any fish they catch for which they do not have a quota. As much as 80% of what a fisherman can catch has to be discarded this way, so banning discards is a big step forward.

The devil is in the detail however, as there are still issues to be worked out. For example, paying fishermen for the discarded catch would create a market, leading to even more overfishing, so the best (or least worst) option is for the fisherman to simply 'donate' the fish free to the state for research. Also, a blanket ban on discards in all circumstances means that a fisherman would have to bring ashore protected species of fish that were still alive, instead of returning them to the sea.

Already the impact of the decision is being limited by the proposed ban only focussing on edible fish species, even though inedible marine life caught up in trawling can be equally important to a healthy marine environment. There has been significant progress towards ending overfishing since the IWT first started our Sustainable Seas campaign in 2010 – but we’re not there yet.

Typical net of a prawn fisherman -
everything that is not prawn has to be discarded
- even though it is most of the catch

Ireland's Badgers - fighting a losing battle?
Fintan Kelly explained the IWT's campaign to end the culling of badger in Ireland, which is meant to prevent BovineTb (Btb). Despite almost continuous culling of badgers for many years, the level of bovine Tb remains stubbornly high. Fintan explained how the level fluctuated more with the intensity of farm inspections than with any change in badger culling, yet despite this the IWT faces an uphill struggle to convince the government to change course in favour of a vaccination programme.

Government lack of action is partly due to hostility from farmers, who are firmly in favour of culling, and partly because trying to achieve pressure at EU level has so far proven to be ineffective.This is despite  Ireland's total disregard for the Bern convention, the failure of the Bern Standing Committee to carry out its mandate to protect the badger, and how the issue is being tackled by our nearest neighbours.

Fintan gave an example of how the Bern convention is being disregarded. While the convention does allow a protected species to be culled if it is a threat to agriculture, it specifies that this must be done with the minimum disturbance to the species. Yet despite this badger culling in Ireland continues all year round, even in breeding season, meaning that adult badgers are being caught, leaving their young to die of starvation underground.

At present 6,000 snares are set for badgers every night. The snares are legal because they do not kill the badger (usually), but they can cause injuries and do cause distress. Hours later in the morning the trapper then comes and shoots the badger. The war on Btb and badgers has always been an emotive issue. It has pitted farmers and conservationists against each other since Btb was first discovered in badgers in the early seventies and no early resolution is in sight.

Badger by Jaroslav Vogeltanz
www.worldnaturephoto.com

28th July - Bray Beach Clean-up

On 28th July the national SEA LIFE Centre and IWT Dublin Branch held a Beach Clean on Bray Beach to raise awareness of marine pollution and the detrimental effects it can have on marine animals and raise awareness for OCEAN 2012. There was a good turnout of least 40 people and a lot of good work was done cleaning the beach - at least judging by the many plastic sacks that were collected afterwards. Important work was done too in recording the type of material washed up on the beach, which will help conservationists to understand the problem of pollution better.   After the beach clean, volunteers were invited into SEA LIFE for a tour of the aquarium for a small donation to our conservation fund and then gathered on the beach to make another FISH SHAPE for OCEAN2012 Fish Weeks. A fun packed day was had by all!

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3rd July Green Drinks Ocean 2012

IWT's summer of sustainable seas continued on 3rd July at its monthly meeting of Green Drinks with Mike Walker from OCEAN2012 (http://www.ocean2012.eu/) coming to speak about overfishing and the OCEAN2012 campaign. OCEAN2012 is an alliance of organisations dedicated to stopping overfishing, ending destructive fishing practices and and delivering fair and equitable use of healthy fish stocks.

Mike outlined to the meeting some of the shocking facts and figures associated with overfishing. Currently, 63% of fish stocks in the Atlantic are overfished, 82% in the Mediterranean, and four out of the six stocks for which scientific advice is available in the Baltic. Over 20% of fish stocks are being fished beyond safe biological limits, meaning their very future is threatened. North Sea fish catches have declined from 3.5 million tonnes a year in 1995 to 1.5 million tonnes in 2007, and the larger fish at the top of the food chain are dying out as we literally eat our way through them. For example, North Sea cod reach spawning age at four years old, while the average age of cod caught in the North Sea is 1.6 years, meaning that 93% of cod are caught before they can reproduce. This means that there are virtually no large mature cod left. The difference between the cod caught in the past and the cod caught today can be seen in the two images below

At present, not only is the EU fleet is estimated to have the capacity to fish two to three times the sustainable level, but much of the fishing fleet is sustained by subsidies, meaning we are paying twice for our fish. The EU's Common Fisheries Policy needs to be changed urgently to bring about a sustainable fishing industry. Review of the Policy is underway at present, but vested interests opposing change mean it is vital to keep the pressure on policy makers.

Cod in the past

Cod today

Fish Shape outside Messr Maguires

23rd June Visit to SEALIFE Bray and fish shape

The Dublin Branch went on a tour of the National SEA LIFE Centre in Bray on Saturday June 23rd. This special guided tour of the aquarium with a dedicated SEA LIFE expert brought the group face to face with a Giant Pacific Octopus, sharks and many other creatures. This year’s new feature of the aquarium is a trail of rays featuring Ireland's only Cownose Rays. The tour took about an hour and afterwards IWT members and members of BirdWatch Ireland gathered on the beach for an Oceans 2012 campaign fish-shape photograph!  

12th June EU Fisheries Meeting a "failure"

The coalition Ocean 2012 consider last Tuesday's agreement reached by the Minister of Fisheries of the European Union (EU) was a "failure". The agreement delays the end of fishing discards and defers the goal of maximum sustainable yield (MSY) of resources beyond 2015. Below is a link for a live blogging update and webcast of the meeting:

http://polscieu.ideasoneurope.eu/2012/06/12/live-blogging-eu-council-meeting-on-fisheries-of-12-june-2012-morning-session/

http://video.consilium.europa.eu/

In the EC's own words: 'Europe’s fisheries policy is in urgent need of reform. Vessels are catching more fish than can be safely reproduced, thus exhausting individual fish stocks and threatening the marine ecosystem'. In many cases, fisheries rules, regulations and enforcement measures are not efficient; fishing capacity and efforts are not sufficiently limited or controlled and scientists’ recommendations for catch quotas that would allow fish stocks to recover are routinely ignored. There is a lack of transparency and traceability, and a lack of implementation/enforcement - the Common Fisheries Policy Reform aims to remedy this but the road ahead is long.

The OCEAN2012 coalition, including representatives from IWT, had formed this fish shape 4 days in advance of the meeting to highlight the need for change in fishing policy

You can see more photos and learn more about it from the following link: 

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150875144297734.408311.85850197733&type=1

Fish Weeks 2012 Video

OCEAN 2012 the Europe- wide coalition of conservation groups dedicated to ending overfishing and of which the IWT is a member has launched Fish Weeks 2012 with this nifty Video. it succinctly explains the problem we face.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6nwZUkBeas&feature=player_embedded