Comment: The shameful state of Mayo's Black Oak River
COUNTRY FILE COLUMN
FOR so long, salmon anglers and angling tourist operators have been concerned at the dwindling numbers of Atlantic salmon returning to Irish rivers each year.
A couple of years back we even discussed the possibility that the mighty River Moy, long the home of almost unquantifiable numbers of these valuable fish, might one day be closed to recreational angling. 'That would never happen!' That's what was said.
Well, following this disastrous last year, through which salmon numbers have declined to an all-time low, that very thing has almost, though not quite, taken place.
Anglers' harvest of their favourite fish are due to be strictly curtailed, with 'catch and release' due to become the order of the day.
But surely, if things are as bad as they seem, it would make more sense to leave the fish alone for a year or two, and give them a chance to recover while we sort out some of the very evident problems that are driving this current decline.
One of these is water quality. Let's shift our attention south and west, to the Newport River.
The estuary of this once prolific salmon fishery continues to run as an open sewer.
Does swimming through clouds of human sewage affect the juvenile salmon as they head seaward on their great journey north, to the Faroe Islands and beyond?
You can bet your bottom dollar that it does.
The Black Oak River, to use the proper name, drains the once world-famous Lough Beltra.
While both lake and river are affected by an unwelcome level of nutrient pollution, it is only on passing through Newport that the water becomes toxic, loaded with sewage.
Uisce Éireann, Irish Water, have it within their power to make the necessary changes to prevent this situation continuing.
Perhaps you have seen their adverts, or heard them, and marvelled at the proclamation they make, how they act as guardians of one of our most valuable resources (as well as the thing we should have more of, per capita, than any other place in Europe), clean, fresh water.
Who is driving Irish Water? Surely they are aware of the shameful state of the Black Oak?
Have they not heard of such deterioration there, as well as on the Moy, and on just about every other waterway that runs through the state?
They will say that salmon are being lost at sea, that the degrading conditions prevalent in almost all our lakes and rivers have little to do with the decline in fish stocks.
And yes, it is true that something major is happening on the salmon's feeding grounds, whether it be overfishing of the salmon themselves or of their food items, such as sandeel, sprat and shrimp, or changing ocean currents that hinder fish migration, or some other blinkered, blindfold reason that holds us back from properly examining the role of those charged with a duty of care.
We can only hope our own eyes will, one day, see spawning gravels reintroduced to rivers, that juvenile fish recruitment is given the boost sorely needed through the responsible function of fish hatcheries, and that the 'Polluter Pays' principle is finally be upheld, at least in some small way.
There is little point in trying to restore habitat while the water it holds remains so dirty. Yet who of us could take Irish Water to task for their failure to keep our waters clean enough that fish might swim untroubled therein?
But do you know, nobody really cares. At least, the few that do are outnumbered and disenfranchised by the overwhelming majority happy, for the time being, with the appalling status quo.
How many millions of euros is (was) the Atlantic salmon worth to rural economies up and down the country?
What price clean water anyway? And now we mourn our once wonderful, now increasingly sullied, King of Irish Rivers, the Mighty Moy.