THE DEENISH
SALMON FARM & THE BLUE AREA OF SOUTH WEST KERRY
Ladies and gentlemen, friends of South West Kerry, I stand before you tonight
with one simple message: Our Blue Area is under pressure, and it’s time we said
so plainly.
Out there, just off Deenish Island, sits a salmon farm that has been doing more
damage than a bull let loose in a China shop. And for far too long, we’ve been
expected to pretend it’s all grand. Well, it’s not grand. It’s not harmless.
And it’s certainly not compatible with a protected Blue Area.
Let’s start with the shellfish, the quiet workers of our bay. Our mussels,
oysters, and scallops are being smothered under a blanket of muck that falls
from those cages’ day in, day out. Waste dropping like dirty snow, turning the
seabed into black, oxygen starved mud. In a Blue Area, that’s not just wrong,
it’s environmental vandalism.
And what about the water itself? The farm pumps out nutrients and organic waste
like a broken septic tank. The result? Murky water. Algal blooms. Oxygen
crashes. A bay that looks more like broth than sea. If the Blue Area could
talk, it’d be roaring: “Stop feeding the cages and start minding the coast!”
Now, let’s talk about the great “organic” myth. We’re told these salmon are
organic, but behind the marketing curtain you’ll find sea lice treatments,
antifoulants, and chemical residues drifting through the water. If that’s
organic, then I’m the Archbishop of Tuam.
And who pays the price? Our wild fish. Sea trout and salmon passing Deenish get
hit with sea lice so thick they’d need a comb and conditioner to get home.
Smolts turning back early, covered in sores. Wild salmon running the gauntlet
like prisoners escaping a fortress. The farm acts like a parasite factory, and
the wild fish suffer for it.
Under the cages, the seabed is a graveyard. A black, stinking carpet of waste
where only the most miserable worms survive. In a Blue Area, a protected area,
that’s like spray painting graffiti on a national monument.
And remember, this isn’t a one off. This is cumulative damage — year after
year. More waste. More chemicals. More lice. More pressure on protected
habitats. It’s like watching someone slowly drain the battery of South West
Kerry’s marine ecosystem, and then blaming the charger.
And to top it all off, the farm has been operating on an expired licence, with
breaches noted and modern environmental safeguards never applied. If any
Currane angler tried that, they’d be hauled out of the lake by the ear. But the
farm? Ah sure, let it run another decade, what harm could it do?
Well, plenty. And the Blue Area is paying the bill.
So let me finish with this: The Blue Area demands clean water, healthy
shellfish beds, thriving wild fish, protected seabed habitats, and strict
environmental protection. The Deenish salmon farm delivers the opposite.
It is the wrong farm, in the wrong place, doing the wrong things for far too
long.
And tonight, we say it clearly: South West Kerry deserves better. Our Blue Area
deserves better. And the time for silence is over.
Thank you.
