Opponents to salmon farm to stage major rally

THOUSANDS of people are expected to hit the streets of Galway in March in protest against the proposed development of a massive fish farm off the North Clare coast.

 

The protest is being organised by groups opposed to the deep-sea salmon farm and will begin in Eyre Square at midday on Saturday, March 2 and finish at a maritime exposition sponsored by Bord Iascaigh Mhara (BIM)in Salthill. BIM is applying for a licence for the development of the farm in Galway Bay, at two sites north of Inis Oírr.

Clare man and spokesperson from the Mulcair and Limerick District Anglers, Eddie Corry, is calling on as many people as possible to attend the protest. He believes at least 2,000 people will attend but the figure could reach 5,000.

“I would call on anyone with any sense of environmental awareness at all, anyone who values their beaches, anyone who values their clean water, anyone who values their marine environment and especially, those who have an appetite for fish, to go to this protest,” he said.

Mr Corry, an avid angler, is totally opposed to the proposed fish farm, which is expected to produce up to 15,000 tonnes of organic salmon per year. He described the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), carried out as part of the licence application, as “a total fob-off”.  He refutes claims by Jason Whooley, CEO, BIM, that his concerns, and those of many other bodies representing sea and inshore anglers, “are unfounded”.

“The scientific studies have shown that 39% of wild salmon are affected by sea lice. That has been proven. That is a scientific fact and those results only came out at the back end of 2012. Sea lice, as everyone knows, proliferate around salmon farms and what is really evident to us is that in the EIS, which BIM conducted, there was no consideration given to the routes taken by smolt [juvenile fish] when they are leaving the rivers to head for the seas. That was totally neglected in the EIS, which was a total fob-off. It was a wishy-washy report and to leave out details of such importance like that gives an idea of the depth of work that they put into it. They didn’t include it. That is a real concern for the angling clubs,” he said.

A further worry for Mr Corry, and many others who are against the proposed salmon farm, relates to escapes.

“Angling groups around the country are very concerned about the risk of escapes from the fish pens. These escapes are inevitable. Farmed salmon will escape from the pens through natural causes, like, for example, storms or seal damage,” he said.

“The salmon will escape into the wild and will breed and mix with the wild stock, causing chaos within the wild salmon gene pool. If 1% of what they intend to be caged in Galway, if 1% of that stock escape, that would far exceed the total number of wild fish in the Corrib Catchment area, which stands at something in the region of 15,000 fish. One per cent of seven million is 70,000 fish,” he added.

According to Mr Corry, BIM’s estimated jobs’ windfall is unrealistic and the organisation is putting employment before the environment.

“We are saying that these promises of jobs are totally false. They reckon the farm in Galway Bay will employ up to 500 people at its peak. On a pro-rata basis, with regard to the existing farms that are there at the moment, that is not possible. We are actually looking at less than half those jobs if you were to take the existing farms as a model and with increasing technology, as time progresses, that number will lessen,” he said.

Mr Whooley, in his comment piece in this week’s ’Clare Champion, said, “The exposed nature of the proposed site and high levels of water exchange ensures there will be little or no build-up of wastes. In addition, any nutrients released into the water will very quickly be dispersed and diluted.” Mr Corry does not accept this.

“He is saying there will be no impact on the marine environment per se and that is absolutely ridiculous. We all know what the impact is going to be with regard to the open pens that are proposed by BIM. We have approximately 15,000 tonnes of fish, six to seven million farmed fish in open pens at any one time. They have to be fed with anti-bacterial feed and sanitised with pesticides, this is not organic. This thing, this organic business, I don’t know how they are able to get away with it. These fish have to be kept disease-free in these open pens. When they are fed openly like that in open pens, about 20% escape to the bottom, all this is building up plus the waste from the fish is building up under these pens, eventually leading to an environmental disaster where nothing grows and nothing survives,” he claimed.