Moy set for double boost

MOVES are afoot to immediately address the depletion of salmon stocks on the River Moy and eradicate poaching in its estuaries, The Connaught Telegraph has learned.

Inland Fisheries Ireland (IFI) has conceded that while ‘the salmon capital’ still has a lot of fish, it did not perform as well during the 2014 tourism season as other years.

Dr. Greg Forde, who is attached to the agency, stated: “In years like the last one when people upstream have not been catching fish, they believe everything is going on downstream from them and they blame everybody else for taking too many fish.

“There was a bit of a reality check in the Moy in 2014. We have been working on the counters at the cribs in Ballina. We have put a counter into another of the gaps so that we might get a better handle on the number of fish going upstream, but last year was disappointing.”

One of the reasons for the depletion of stocks is understood to relate to the termination of drift netting, which has driven illegal fishing into the estuaries. Now Mayo Fine Gael Deputy John O’Mahony has called for the lifting of the moratorium on public service recruitment to allow for the reappointment of fishery officers along the River Moy on short-term contracts to combat poaching.

He elaborated: “Tourist numbers for the Ballina region have increased by 13 per cent over the past year and fishing is a significant reason for that. I am sure the protection officers, who were let go when the moratorium was introduced in 2010, would more than pay for themselves if reinstated.”

IFI is now using a range of high-tech equipment to target specific ‘hot spot’ areas and increase operational efficiency, and has a 24-hour hotline for the reporting of any illegal activity. It has also had significant success in the use of other technologies such as night vision scopes, thermal imaging equipment and long-range spotting scopes.