Gentle fishing practices become law to safeguard the bay & the future

January 9, 2024 7:33 PM

How a fishermen's pact 30 years ago to protect this bay is now creating a future for their children. At the southern-most tip of the mainland, Corner Inlet fishermen have turned their gentle fishing practices into law to safeguard the bay and the livelihoods of future generations.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries (1 comment total)

One of my besties was born in the 196os and grew up in a fishing village with every expectation (from his community if not himself) that he would spend the rest of his life fishing. His community carried out their trade in and around Waterford Harbour down-tide from where The Three Sisters - the Rivers Barrow, Nore and Suir - finally come together after rising in the same range of hills far off to the North.
The way they fished would have been entirely recognisable to people who lived in the area 1,000 years ago. They managed the stocks of fish to generate income and put food on table for all that time, each generation succeeding the last. Other people, more eager for money, less careful of consequences, adopted rapacious modern techniques for scooping thousands of tonnes of animal protein from just offshore . . . to feed to cats. Ireland joined the EEC, later the EU, in 1973 and within a short generation the commercial fishery in Waterford Harbour - first the salmon, then the eels, then everything - was legislated out of existence, to protect the few remaining fish for fly-fishing tourists.

Good luck to the community in Corner Inlet, but to paraphrase John Donne No bay is an island, entire of itself; every bay is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.
posted by BobTheScientist at 6:10 AM on January 10 [2 favorites]