Currane Angler has his say

 Hi Vincent, I just sent this to the minister for the marine. Thought you might like to publicise the issue on your blog and invite more submissions on fish farms to charlie.mcconalogue@oireachtas.ie

Thanks, Colin Lynam:

Dear minister, 

I was disgusted to learn of the application to place a vast fish farm in the West Connacht Coast Special Area of Conservation Ref: No. 002998 (SAC) in Ballinakill bay. I have recently moved to Letterfrack.

Personally I’m sick of the way we treat the environment in this country. Most of the seatrout fisheries of south Connemara are extinct due to aquaculture. Deenish fish farm has destroyed Lough Currane (previously the greatest seatrout fishery in this country). It continues to produce manky farmed salmon and pump out sealice despite a court order to halt. How can this be? The current proposal to now destroy the migratory fish stocks of north Connemara is disgusting and needs to be stopped.

I brought my children fishing on the Dawros river this summer and we caught one of the deformed salmon that had escaped from the existing fish farm. This fish could have introduced disease or bred with the wild stock of fish in the river, dooming it’s mutant offspring to failure.

It wasn’t alone. There were multiple captures of these fish in the river this summer.

I feel it is time for us to make a stand and protect our environment. All salmon aquaculture in bays should be halted and moved far out to sea or better again onshore.

It’s the right thing to do to protect the tens of thousands of jobs that benefit from angling in the poorest parts of this country: a number that dwarfs the tiny number of jobs in the foreign multinational fish farm sector. It’s the right thing to do for our environment. And it’s the right thing to do for our children before wild salmon and seatrout have been wiped out by human greed and the complicity of your government.  It’s up to you. History is kind to politicians who make brave decisions for the right reasons.

Yours sincerely 

Colin Lynam