Acknowledgements.............................................................................
Summary........................................................................................
Chapter 1: Introduction
1.1: An overview......................................................................
1.2: The current position of commercial fisheries in human ecology............
1.3: The position of Traditional Knowledge Systems in Human Ecology......
Chapter 2: Study Areas
2.1: Introduction.......................................................................
2.2: Inishmore, Aran Islands, Ireland
2.2.1: Geographic and Geological Description...................
2.2.2: Demographic and Historical Perspectives.................
2.3: Inishbofin, County Galway, Ireland
2.3.1: Geographic and Geological Description.................
2.3.2: Demographic and Historical Perspectives................
2.4: The West Dingle Peninsula, County Kerry, Ireland
2.4.1: Geographic and Geological Description.................
2.4.2: Demographic and Historical Perspectives...............
2.5: Katwijk, Provincie Zuid-Holland, The Netherlands
2.5.1: Geographic and Geological Description.................
2.5.2: Demographic and Historical Perspectives...............
2.6: Urk, Provincie Flevoland, The Netherlands
2.6.1: Geographic and Geological Description.................
2.6.2: Demographic and Historical Perspectives...............
2.7: Goedereede, Provincie Zuid-Holland, The Netherlands
2.7.1: Geographic and Geological Description.................
2.7.2: Demographic and Historical Perspectives...............
Chapter 3: Research Methodology
3.1: Overview.........................................................................
3.2: Qualitative interviews...........................................................
3.3: Quantitative questionnaires.....................................................
3.4: Statistical analysis of questionnaire data......................................
Chapter 4: Results
4.1: Qualitative Interviews in Ireland
4.4.1: Qualitative Interviews on Inishmore, Aran Islands, County
Galway............................................
4.1.2: Qualitative Interviews on Inishbofin, County Galway............................................
4.1.3: Qualitative Interviews in Dingle region, County Kerry...............................................
4.2: Qualitative Interviews in The Netherlands
4.2.1: Qualitative Interviews in Katwijk, Provincie Zuid-Holland.................................................
4.2.2: Qualitative Interviews in Urk, Provincie Flevoland......
4.2.3: Qualitative Interviews on Goeree, Provincie Zuid-Holland.............................................
4.2.4: Comments on conducting Qualitative Interviews in Ireland
and The Netherlands...............................
4.3: Introduction of Quantitative Questionnaires....................................
4.4: Quantitative Questionnaire data from Dingle, Ireland
4.4.1: Overview of the questionnaire results from Dingle.......
4.4.2: Princals multivariate analysis of Predisposing System Variables
of the Dingle data.......................
4.4.3: Princals multivariate analysis of Predisposing Attitude
Variables of the Dingle data......................
4.4.4: Princals multivariate analysis of Predisposing Enabling
Variables of the Dingle data.....................
4.4.5: Princals multivariate analysis of Intervening Variables
of the Dingle data................................
4.4.6: Princals multivariate analysis of Dependent Variables of
the Dingle data.............................
4.4.7: Combined Princals and Overals multivariate analyses of
Traditionality Variables and Sustainability Variables of the Dingle
data.
4.5: Quantitative Questionnaire data from Goeree, The Netherlands
4.5.1: Overview of the questionnaire results from Goeree......
4.5.2: Princals multivariate analysis of Predisposing System Variables
of the Goeree data......................
4.5.3: Princals multivariate analysis of Predisposing Attitude
Variables of the Goeree data.....................
4.5.4: Princals multivariate analysis of Predisposing Enabling
Variables of the Goeree data................
4.5.5: Princals multivariate analysis of Intervening Variables
of the Goeree data............................
4.5.6: Princals multivariate analysis of Dependent Variables of
the Goeree data.........................
4.5.7: Combined Princals and Overals multivariate analyses of
Traditionality Variables and Sustainability Variables of the Goeree
data....
Chapter 5: Discussion of Results
5.1: The Ecological Relationship between the Fishing Communities
and their Marine Resources.........................
5.2: Decision Making Processes amongst Fishermen in Dingle and
Goeree
5.2.1: Traditional decision taking.................................
5.2.2: Effect of European Union membership on decisions taking.......................................................
5.2.3: Decision taking as interpreted from questionnaire results.......................................................
5.3: The Role of Traditional Knowledge in Sustainable Natural
Resource Utilisation amongst Fishermen in Dingle and Goeree
5.3.1: Role of traditionality in sustainable fishing practice....
5.3.2: Traditional fishery knowledge as recorded by qualitative
interviews................
Chapter 6: Conclusion
6.1: Marine Resources..............................................................
6.2: Biological Production and Geographical Area...............................
6.3: Cultural, Historical and Political Circumstances.............................
6.4: Unit of Social Cohesion on Local , National and International
Level....
6.5: Demand for Marine Resources: Nutrition, Market Demand and
Recreation....................................
6.6: Enabling Factors, Harbours, Boats, Fishing Gear..........................
Chapter 7: Recommendations................................................................
References.......................................................................................
Appendix I
Appendix II
Appendix III
This study was funded under the Commission of the European
Communities' Human Capital and Mobility Programme.
The author wishes to thank Professor P. O'Céidigh, Zoology
Department, University College, Galway, Ireland who supported
the proposal for the Home Institute.
The author also wishes to thank Dr. L.J Slikkerveer, Chairman
of the LEAD Programme, Department of Cultural Anthropology of
Non-Western Societies, Rijks Universiteit, Leiden, The Netherlands
for his support of the proposal for the Host Institute and for
his guidance and advice during the course of the study as well
as for the insight which he gave the author into the specialised
study area of Cultural Anthropology.
Thanks is also due the Dr. W.H.J.C. Dechering of the Department
of Cultural Anthropology and Drs. M. Starkenburg and Drs. J. Smak-Gregoor
of the LEAD Programme whose help and advice were greatly appreciated.
This is a Human Ecological Case Study of the relationship between
fishing communities and their marine resources in Ireland and
The Netherlands. It is interdisciplinary in nature, being carried
out from a background of Marine Zoological Ecology and Anthropology
and Sociology. The ecological relationship between the selected
fishing communities and their marine resources was studied by
examining traditional fisheries knowledge and practice. This approach
is based on Indigenous Knowledge Systems research. Three contrasting
study areas within each country were selected and their geographic,
geological, demographic and historical background discussed. The
traditional fisheries knowledge was recorded by means of a two
stage interviewing process, during which a total of 166 interviews
were held. 84 qualitative interviews were carried out; 15 in Inishmore,
nine in Inishbofin and 18 in Dingle comprising the Irish study
areas; seven in Katwijk, ten in Urk and five in Goeree comprising
the Dutch study areas. A further 11 and nine background interviews
were carried out in Ireland and The Netherlands respectively.
From the topics recorded in the qualitative interviews, a quantitative
questionnaire containing 119 questions was compiled of which 62
were completed, 31 each in Dingle and Goeree. The traditional
fishery knowledge recorded by the qualitative interviews was discussed
under similar subject groupings for each of the six study sites.
The results from the quantitative questionnaires were analysed
by means of multivariate statistical analyses for category data.
Main findings included that the principle of sea tenure, in combination
with appropriate social structures, forms an important basis for
sustainable marine resource exploitation. Regulation of fisheries
was desired in all six fishing communities, but equal enforcement
in all regions was stressed to be essential. Fisheries regulation
enforcement was perceived not to be equal within the European
Union. Markets were seen as the main driving force behind fishing
strategy decision making by fishermen. Communications between
the fishing communities and fishery authorities were felt to be
insufficient. Quantitative data indicated that within the fishing
communities of this study, traditionality was positively related
with sustainable opinion and practices. A cognitive model of Marine
Resources Exploitation, containing five main areas which influence
the relationship of fishing communities and their marine resources,
was presented. A list of 49 recommendations for future sustainable
marine resource management was drawn up.
1.1: An overview.
This study is a human ecological case study, examining the
traditional knowledge base and experience concerning the relationship
of selected fishing communities in Ireland and The Netherlands
with their marine resources. While statistics and official reports
are available on the state of these fisheries, the day to day
decisions about how and where the fishing is being carried out
are taken by the fishermen in the communities. The personal knowledge
of the fishermen, shaped by their own and the community's experience,
is fundamental to the decisions they make, and also to the type
and manner of fishing being carried out. It is the aim of this
study that, by recording and examining this knowledge and experience,
a greater understanding of the functioning of these fisheries
will be achieved.
By comparing six study areas in two different Northwestern European
countries, a perspective will be gained which will further clarify
the functioning of this human ecological system. As this study
is interdisciplinary in nature and is carried out from a background
of ecological marine zoology as well as anthropology and sociology,
the synergy between these areas will add significantly to a holistic
description of fishing communities and their relationship with
their marine resources.
1.2: The current position of commercial fisheries in human ecology.
Human ecology has shaped us to be the type of mammal and primate
that we are. The environment of our predecessors moulded their
genetic make-up through only allowing individuals who were adapted
to that environment to survive and produce offspring. Therefore,
the relationship between the environment and our evolutionary
ancestors, i.e.: their ecology, is the basic reason for our present
form and character.
Indications are that as our ancestors evolved, our species became
omnivorous hunter-gatherers (Bronowski 1981, Diamond 1992, Leakey
& Lewin 1993), and thereby took in a relatively high, if not
top, position in the food chain. Many theories have been formulated
in order to explain our present form, as well as the fossil, archaeological
and biochemical evidence from the past. From the fisheries point
of view one interesting theory is that our, in comparison to other
primates, relatively hairless and streamlined bodies indicate
that our evolution has been influenced by a period of wading,
swimming and diving for aquatic foods (Gribbin & Gribbin 1993).
Whether this is so or not, the general consensus is that we developed
as hunter-gatherers and that subsequently our knowledge evolved
to a such stage that we were able to practice agriculture (Thomas
1989, McNeill 1991).
The advent of agriculture was a fundamental change in our ecology,
as it resulted in a massive surge in the world's human population
(Thomas 1989, McNeill 1991, Harris 1993). As man's high position
in the food chain would indicate, an ecology based on hunting
and gathering could not support such large population numbers.
On the other hand an ecology based on agriculture depends on food
production and harvesting, which is a many times more efficient
technique for acquiring food than hunting and gathering.
Against this background of the very important shift in human ecology
to proactive food production rather than reactive hunting and
gathering, fishing has survived as the only form of hunting which
is still globally of major dietary and economic importance. While
aquaculture is widespread all over the world, approximately 93%
of the total world fish production is still from wild fisheries
(Konstabel & Noort 1995) or, expressed in other words, from
"hunting" fish.
The basic nature of hunting is that, while exploitation pressure
may be managed by varying it according to the circumstances of
the prey population, the production of the prey is not engaged
in but largely left to natural, non-human, processes (McGoodwin
1990). Even in those cases were management of fisheries does occur
to some extent, it is on a very much lower level than agriculture
(Berkes 1989). In fact in some cases fisheries are not even being
effectively monitored. In this type of exploitation system production
is under little or no control and the level of resources gained
by humans from fisheries tend to vary widely and unpredictably
(Cordell 1989a, Byron 1994). Yet for the moment, on a global level,
fishing is continuing to provide an important food and economic
resource to people the world over (McGoodwin 1990).
In addition to the fact that fishermen tend not to produce but
only exploit their natural resources, the matter of ownership
of fishing grounds is not always clear or effectively regulated
(Durrenberger & Pálsson 1987, Berkes 1989, Report of
Advisory Group in Ireland 1991, Euroteam 1994, Leijendekker 1995).
Sea tenure systems do exist in many locations around the world
(Cordell 1989a), but numerous important fisheries are based on
the common property of the seas' fishing areas, with the fish
only becoming a person's property once it is caught. This means
that if one fisherman does not catch the fish, others might, tending
to encourage fishermen to catch as much as they can at any one
time as preservation of fish stocks may only benefit his competitors
and put him at a relative disadvantage. Thus a tendency towards
overfishing has been and still is a problem associated with most
major world fisheries, as non-sustainable exploitation tends to
be with all common property resources (Hardin 1968, McCay &
Acheson 1987, Berkes 1989, The Ecologist 1995). The word sustainable
is used here in its purest form, which is that the exploitation
can be carried out for a long period of time. This implies in
the case of this study that the fish stocks will continue to produce
the fish, the markets for fish will be such that the exploitation
continues to be economic, the fishing community will continue
to want to be involved in marine resource exploitation and that
there are no deleterious side effects to other aspects of human
ecology or the environment at large.
The world's human population increased 3.5 times during the 20th
century from 1.6 billion in 1900 (Thio 1989) to 5.6 billion in
1994 (U.N. 1997). Mechanisation and technology has increased the
catching power of fishing gear dramatically and it has therefore
been possible to force up the exploitation rate and fishing pressure
to an all time high in order to satisfy the enormously increased
demand for fish. The world's fish production tripled between 1945
and 1960 to more than 60 million tonnes per annum, after which
it rose to near 100 million tonnes at the end of the 1980's (Konstapel
& Noort 1995) and 116 million tonnes in 1994 (Eurostat 1996).
The argument has been proffered whether this level of exploitation
has already passed the global threshold of sustainable yield of
the fish stocks. The Worldwatch Institute Report for 1996 states
that 13 of the 15 leading oceanic fisheries are in decline (Stark
1996).
In particular, the Atlantic and North Sea fisheries around the
shores of Northwestern Europe have never been fished as intensively
as they are at present. The European Community is the world's
largest market for fish products and catches approximately 6.2%
of the world's annual fish tonnage in 1994, which is 7.25 million
tonnes (Eurostat 1996). The EU population is approximately 370
million people (Eurostat 1995) and the world's human population
in 1994 was around 5.6 billion (U.N. 1997), so the EU contains
circa 6.6% of the world population which is only marginally bigger
than its percentage of the total world's fish catch in the same
year. However, the demand for fish products in the EU is proportionally
greater, because the EU is the world's largest importer of fish
and has to import 7.8 billion ECU worth of edible fish products
per year, which has been increasing every year from 1986 to 1994.
The EU does export fish product, but much less than its imports,
at 1.7 billion ECU per year, which have remained relatively stable
compared to the imports over the same years (Euroteam 1994, Eurostat
1996). This is against a background of complaints by fishermen
of having to constantly increase fishing effort in order to maintain
catch levels (Pasterkamp 1995) and violent conflict in European
waters between rival fishing fleets over shared fishing grounds
(Reijn 1994, Adolf 1995).
So fishing, a remnant of man's past hunting activity, is faltering
in its attempt to be able to provide for the current large human
population. This should not be surprising as a hunting ecology
could not produce nor support these population numbers in the
way the highly specialised system of agriculture, which was the
cause of the population rise in the first place, is able to. The
demands that are made of agriculture are now also being made of
fishing, which cannot sustain this level of exploitation.
Therefore, at the moment, there exists a type of time warp in
human ecology with regard to fishing. The increased level of specialisation
of our ecology allows us to live in much greater numbers on this
planet, but while the catching of fish has also become very specialised,
the production system of fish is still that of the old hunting
and gathering ecology. We are not yet specialised enough in the
area of fish ranching and/or aquaculture to be able to replace,
what is effectively, hunting for fish.
In the interim, while we explore suitable fish production systems,
there is a pressing need to manage fisheries in such a way as
to stay below the maximum sustainable yield of wild fish stocks
so that they are conserved. This study records traditional fishery
knowledge and fishermen's opinions of the development of fisheries
in order to learn from this knowledge and experience to make the
exploitation of current stocks more sustainable. This study also
aspires to shed some light on the long term strategy which is
needed to resolve the anomalous position of commercial fishing
in present-day human ecology.
1.3: The position of Traditional Knowledge Systems in Human Ecology.
The ecology of the human species has been a spectacular success
in an evolutionary very short time span. Towards the end of the
palaeolithic age, 35,000 to 10,000 years ago, when Homo sapiens
sapiens in the form of Cro-Magnon man lived, an estimated
3 (Klausewitz 1976) to 5 (Harris 1993) million people lived on
earth. Now there are approximately 5600 million people on earth
(U.N. 1997). This is an enormous 1120 fold increase, of which
91.1% happened in the last 400 years (Thio 1989) and a colossal
71.4% happened in the last 90 years.
Such an exponential growth rate of a population for any species
means that they have gained a major competitive advantage and
are using it to the full. In the case of humans it is quite obviously
the quality and capacity of our brain. Our ecological speciality
is knowledge, which we gather, process and store with our brain.
The first major advance, agriculture, was due to an increase in
knowledge, and our further more recent advance is our development
of technology which is completely based on knowledge. Our conquest
on earth is largely due to the fact that we can accumulate, store
and process knowledge information.
As all other biological beings, we also have genetic information
which in turn is the basis of our brain which stores knowledge
information. While genetic information is the basis of life, it
can only be changed slowly, once per generation, and even then
the change occurs in a completely random way. The advent of recent
techniques for genetic manipulation can be ignored for the sake
of the present argument as they did not influence human evolution
and ecology in the past.
Knowledge information is many times more flexible, being able
to change and grow an unimaginable number of times in one life
time, and as well as that it can be guided in a particular direction
which increases efficiency. The disadvantage which knowledge information
has is that it can be lost if people forget it and if other means
of storing knowledge, such as books, are either destroyed or uninterpretable.
Genetic information is only lost if the entire species goes extinct,
and even then it is often the case that a closely related species
will have part of that genetic information.
Both knowledge information and genetic information has to be transmitted
from one generation to the next. With genetic information this
happens automatically on creating a next generation, but knowledge
information has to be learned by each individual during the course
of his or her life time. The knowledge of the parents is not automatically
transmitted before or at birth to the children. The transmission
of knowledge information, in other words education, can take many
forms such as books or via the electronic media which carries
the information revolution which we are going through at present.
However, all cultures and societies depend on oral transmission
of knowledge either to enable people to interpret encoded knowledge,
such as writing and electronic media, or the entire education
process can be in the oral tradition, in which case knowledge
information only exist in the brains of people. The latter was
the case in the Celtic culture of mid-Europe of the fourth to
first centuries B.C., which had a complex system of centres of
learning, stretching from European Atlantic shores to Turkey,
with druids who transmitted knowledge by oral means only. The
reason we know about this is that the Romans and the Irish early
christian civilisation wrote it down, but we don't have this information
directly from the Celts because, being an exclusively oral tradition,
all the knowledge which they had and did not pass on outside their
culture is now lost (McNeill 1991).
At present in the world a dichotomy exists between technology-based
cultures with their technological knowledge systems and those
that are not technology-based and rely primarily on oral transmission
of ideas. Example of cultures using oral transmission can be found
in the underdeveloped regions of the third world, but also certain
subgroups within more technology-based societies.
Two aspects of this dichotomy need to be considered and they are,
firstly, that because of the power of technology the older orally
transmitted knowledge systems are often seen as inefficient, primitive
and backward, and secondly, as mentioned previously, that the
knowledge enshrined in the oral traditions runs the risk of being
lost, especially if it is seen as being primitive and backward.
These older "Indigenous Knowledge Systems" were quite
often looked down on by high technology-based societies as well
as that their own culture being initially in awe of western science
frequently tended to perceive their own knowledge as inferior
(Alcorn 1995), though this second situation did not happen in
every instance (Slikkerveer & Slikkerveer 1995).
Knowledge is the mainstay of our ecology and therefore should
be guarded and preserved, as it is the result of often hundreds,
or even thousands, of years of experience and trial and error.
For this reason "Indigenous and Traditional Knowledge Systems"
research is very important as this type of knowledge has survived
the test of time and has therefore had the chance to develop a
high level of adaptation and reliability.
There has been a tendency to disregarded, underestimate and dismiss
indigenous and traditional knowledge in many instances (Slikkerveer
1989, Hobart 1993, Hudson & Cheatle 1993, Yano 1993, Warren
et al. 1995). This has also been found to be the case with indigenous
and traditional fishery knowledge systems in many regions of the
world (Davis 1984, Pinkerton 1987, Ruddle 1988, McGoodwin 1990,
Hviding 1991, Dyer & Goodwin 1994, Felt 1994) including in
the Northwestern Europe (Durrenberger & Pálsson 1987,
Nielsen 1994, Smith 1995, Pálsson 1997).
Apart from the basic principle that, considering how heavily our
whole ecology relies on knowledge, losing human knowledge information
is dangerous, indigenous knowledge pertaining to natural resources
exploitation, being tried and tested, quite often promotes a more
sustainable use of these resources. For this reason special interest
has awakened for traditional and indigenous knowledge systems
so that their potential in natural resource management can be
fully realised.
However, indigenous knowledge and traditional practices need to
be put in perspective. The history of human ecology is littered
with extinctions of whole communities of animal species associated
with the arrival of man in the area. Oceania, Madagascar, North
America and relatively recently, in 1000 A.D., New Zeeland have
experienced the loss of a host of indigenous species subsequent
to man's arrival on the scene (Wilson 1992). These human cultures
would not generally be viewed as technologically advanced, yet
their natural resource exploitation was not sustainable having
a seriously detrimental impact on biodiversity. This does not
mean that we should assume that indigenous knowledge is without
merit compared to recent scientific and technical knowledge, because
modern scientific knowledge systems have also been, and still
are, responsible for reducing biodiversity.
If this situation is viewed from a human ecological point of view,
we see that a new invasion of people in an area seems to have
had the effect of reducing biodiversity, whether these were "indigenous"
or "technological" people. This is not surprising as
the same tends to happen when other species enter a new habitat,
interact with it to obtain food and other resources and affecting
the balance of the whole ecosystem (Goldschmidt 1994). Subsequently
the relationships making up this ecosystem will fluctuate for
a period of time to reach a new balance, of which the new species
has now become a part. These fluctuations caused by the increase
in competition often result in the loss of biodiversity in the
short and medium term, but can in some cases regain and even surpass
its previous level in the long term (Krebs 1994).
Similarly, knowledge, if it is new to a situation, may not promote
sustainability, but if it is the result of long term experience,
having been tried and tested in a certain set of circumstances,
then it is more likely to be sustainable. So the important factor
with indigenous and traditional knowledge systems is that they
have undergone vigorous testing over a period of time in circumstances
which have not changed dramatically during this time.
Another proviso with regards to the suitability of traditional
and indigenous knowledge systems for natural resource management
is that it simply is not always adequate (DeWalt 1994). This may
happen in particular when modern techniques have made an impact
on such areas as agriculture or fishing and thus circumstances
have changed, with the result that the traditional knowledge may
become partially or completely obsolete. Indigenous knowledge
should of course not be automatically inserted in present day
natural resource management techniques, but the new and the old
knowledge systems should be sensibly dovetailed together (Slikkerveer
1983, Roling & Engel 1989, Pálsson 1996) to achieve
an evolution of knowledge, rather than a take-over. As our ecology
changes, so should our knowledge and usage of natural resources
in order to achieve and maintain a sustainable ecological balance
with our environment.
2.1: Introduction.
The study was carried out in three fishing communities both
in Ireland and in The Netherlands. The Irish study areas are located
on two islands off the west coast, and one on a peninsula on southwest
coast of the Ireland, all bordered by the Atlantic Ocean. Two
of the Dutch study areas are located on The Netherlands's west
coast with the North Sea and one is situated on what used to be
an island in the old Zuiderzee in the centre of The Netherlands,
but which now forms a corner of a new polder. This polder, named
the Noordoostpolder, is an embanked and drained section of the
IJsselmeer which is a freshwater lake formed when the saltwater
bay, the Zuiderzee, was closed off by a dyke in 1932.
In all six study areas the fishing tradition arose from their
close association with the sea and therefore the basic reason
for the existence of these fishing communities is the geographic
position and geological characteristics of their location. As
the human ecological relationship between the fishermen and their
coastal marine environment is so central to the development of
their fishing activities, a brief description of the geography,
geology and history of each study area now follows.
2.2 : Inishmore, Aran Islands, Ireland.
2.2.1: Geographic and Geological Description.
The Aran Islands are located in the mouth of Galway Bay in the
mid-western seaboard of Ireland. This small archipelago consists
of three main islands of which Inishmore is the largest, as its
popularly used Irish name "Inis Mór - the big island"
suggests. In addition there are a number of smaller islets, four
of which lie off the northwestern point of Inishmore and one in
the mouth of Killeany Bay (Fig. 2.1). Inishmore is relatively
elongated, being approximately 14 km long and varying between
0.75 to 3.25 km in width (Feehan 1994). The island is surrounded
by the Atlantic Ocean which is less than 50 meters deep in Galway
Bay, on the eastern side of the island, and varies between 50
and 100 meters on the exposed western side close to the island,
with depths ranging between 100 and 200 meters further out on
the Continental Shelf. At its widest the Continental Shelf stretches
up to 400 km west of the Aran Islands. Inishmore is therefore
surrounded on all sides by an enormous area of relatively shallow
highly biologically productive sea.
The entire island of Inishmore is made up of beds of limestone
rock which are at or very near the surface and slope at slight
angle of 3 to 5 degrees towards the southwest. This weathered
limestone landscape is similar to that of the Burren, which is
the karst limestone region of County Clare on the mainland of
Ireland to the southeast of the Aran Islands and to which the
islands most likely were connected during the Pleistocene Period
(which started 2.5 millions years ago). Seven terraces of limestone
can be discerned stepping down from near the summit and centre
of the island to the northeastern Galway Bay shore (Fig 2.1).
In contrast to the more gradual stepped slope to the northeastern
coast of the island, the southwest coast facing the Atlantic are
dominated by spectacular cliffs formed by the unimpeded onslaught
of the Atlantic waves undermining the terraces of limestone. The
maximum height of these cliffs is 92 m (Feehan 1994). The highest
altitude of 124 m above sea level is found approximately in the
middle of the island (O'Sullivan & Godwin 1977a).
Large areas of the surface of the island consists of bare limestone
rock, with patches of relatively fertile soil in between. Where
the soil is more continuous and of sufficient depth, fields do
exist and provide good grazing for farm animals. For this reason
farm production was traditionally important on the island and
Aran Island cattle and sheep were always well regarded on the
mainland for their good quality early in the season (Ruttledge-Fair
1893, O'Dowd 1994). The reason for the fertility of the soil is
the alkaline and nutrient rich nature of the geological limestone
base of the island. In addition to the existing soil, the people
transported seaweed and suitable sand from the shore to areas
of flat bare limestone rock and applied these two constituents
in alternating layers to grow a number of crops, of which potatoes
were the most important (Mullen 1970, O'Sullivan & Godwin
1977b).
While Inishmore is certainly wind swept and virtually treeless,
it has a temperate climate due to its proximity to the sea, aiding
cattle production relatively early in the season. The North Atlantic
ocean current The North Atlantic Drift, originating in the Gulf
Stream west of Florida, is largely responsible for this mild and
wet climate (O'Sullivan & Godwin 1977a, Hayward & Ryland
1995). Therefore the maritime nature of the Inishmore geographic
location, not only is the reason for its fishing tradition, but
also influences agriculture through its effect on climate as well
as by providing sand and seaweed fertiliser. This close association
of sea and land meant that in the past most families on Inishmore
depended both on fishing and farming for their survival (Waddell
& O'Connell 1994).
2.2.2: Demographic and Historical Perspectives.
The population of Ireland rose from 1.3 million in the mid 1600's
to an all time high of approximately 8.5 million in the early
1840's (Marmion 1860, Whelan 1994), with an increase of 4 million
during the period from 1780 to 1845 (Whelan 1995). The Great Irish
Famine then struck and the population was reduced by 2 million
in a matter of 6 years, one million of which died from hunger
or the debilitation caused thereby, and the other million emigrated,
primarily to America.
The immediate cause of the famine was the failure of the potato
crops in six successive seasons due to ecological factors (a combination
of weather and a fungal infection of potatoes, Phytophthora
infestans or potato blight) exacerbated by sociopolitical
and economic mismanagement by the British authorities who ruled
Ireland at the time of the famine (Knox Fortescue 1846, Woodham-Smith
1968, Póirtéir 1995). However, the situation in
which such a widespread famine could occur developed over the
previous 200 years or so by a sharply rising population getting
poorer and living more and more at the boundary of where life
was sustainable. The sharp rise in population crowded on farm
holdings ever decreasing size as the sons in a family tried to
set up farms themselves. The advent of the potato allowed this
situation to develop as it is possible to feed a family on these
nutritious tubers from on a relatively small area of land, however,
it created a subsistence standard of living for millions of people.
The population growth curve of the whole of Ireland in Fig. 2.2
shows a classical ecological phenomenon of a sharp rise in numbers
followed by a collapse of a population weakened by food shortage,
in which diseases such as cholera and dysentery can get a grip
(Geary 1995), as well as directly due to starvation.
This pattern occurred many times before in human ecology and
is still occurring in regions with fast growth of relatively poor
populations, for example in recent years in certain African regions,
and is the usual pattern in any plant or animal population where
population growth and resource availability get out of step. In
fact ten other significant famines occurred in Ireland during
the 500 years previous to the great famine of 1845-1851 (Dickson
1995).
As illustrated in Fig. 2.2, the population of Inishmore fell from
a high in 1841 of 2592 people to 2312 in 1851 (O'Sullivan 1977a).
While the effects of the famine were also felt on the island,
the percentage decrease was 10.8%, while in Ireland as a whole
the percentage decrease during the same 10 years was 20%. The
decline in population on Inishmore during the later half of the
19th century was not as steady as experienced in the rest of Ireland.
In fact the population rose slightly between 1871 and 1881 (from
2122 to 2193) (Fig. 2.2). The reason for this was that the effects
of the famine were not quite as bad on the Aran Islands as on
the main land, mainly because fishing played, and continued to
play, a bigger role than was the case even in coastal areas of
the main land. In fact the population of the other two Aran Islands,
Inisheer and Inishmaan, increased during this period as, being
less densely populated than Inishmore, people moved there from
the mainland to avoid the worst of the famine (O'Sullivan 1977a).
However, as the population of the whole of Ireland steadied and
subsequently rose from the mid 1960's onwards, the population
of Inishmore continued to decline. This was largely due to emigration
of the younger people, mainly prompted by economic factors and
the tradition of emigration which had established itself during
the latter half of the 19th century.
Fishing was traditionally a subsistence activity as much as an
economic one on Inishmore, which included a barter trade with
dried fish for turf as this fuel is not found on the Aran Islands.
Following the famine crisis and subsequent crop failures during
the late 1800's, the Congested Districts Board was set up in 1891
to try to develop economic activity in the poorest and worst hit
areas of the famine. One of their activities was to survey, with
a view to upgrading, the fishing facilities (mainly harbours and
piers) around the coast (Ruttledge-Fair 1893, Micks 1925). On
Inishmore, as in many other locations, the Congested Districts
Board developed a commercial fishery, processing and trade in
salted mackerel and herring around the turn of the century. Local
fishermen were encouraged to buy and build larger fishing boats,
the "zulus" and "nobbies", which were needed
to carry out the netting for mackerel and herring. Local net making
industries were set up and the fish were salted on two locations
on the island, at the piers in Kilronan and at Port Murvey (Fig
2.1) and exported in wooden barrels (de Courcy Ireland 1994).
Between 1900 and 1920 this medium sized fishing industry gave
a considerable amount of employment and the rate of population
decline was checked somewhat during these years (Fig. 2.2), after
which it again increased during the economic recession years which
followed. The American market for salted mackerel disappeared
in the early 1920's and instead of switching to other markets
and/or fish species, the fishing industry of that time collapsed.
The zulus and nobbies were tied up at the pier in Kilronan and
rotted away.
The anomaly of the Inishmore fishing industry is that despite
its prime geographic location, with very rich fish stocks within
eyesight of its shores, these stocks were greatly exploited by
fleets from virtually every other maritime European nation except
Ireland. Despite the development of the salted fish market and
the earnings accruing from it, further development did not happen
and investment in bigger boats, which would have been able to
exploit the wealth in offshore demersal fish stocks which foreign
fishing fleets were catching, simply did not occur.
The population trend of Inishmore illustrated in Fig. 2.2 broadly
reflects the fortunes of the fishing community on the island.
For 70 years after the famine the population decrease was not
as severe as for Ireland as a whole, which was also the period
that a combination of subsistence fishing and the salted mackerel
and herring trade were of prime importance. However, the Inishmore
population continued to fall sharply at a time when the main fishing
activity in the region moved offshore and in which its fishing
community did not take part, contrasting with the population of
Ireland as a whole which then had steadied and started to rise
again.
Besides small scale agriculture, tourism plays an important economic
role on Inishmore. As Irish survived as the primary language on
the island, many European linguists visited the island to record
and learn the Irish language and its local accents. The language,
culture and archaeology attracted many outsiders to Inishmore
since the turn of the century and this laid the basis for a currently
developing tourist industry. Irish is still the main local language,
with most islanders being bilingual Irish and English. The Aran
Islands are officially a designated "Gaeltacht" or Irish
speaking area. The geographic remote location of the Aran Islands
has been an important factor in the continuation of the everyday
use of the Irish language into the 20th century. The survival
of traditional practices and culture into recent times in a coastal
community was one of the main reasons for the selection of Inishmore
as one of the Irish study areas for the present study.
2.3 : Inishbofin, County Galway, Ireland.
2.3.1: Geographic and Geological Description.
Inishbofin is an island off the west coast of Connemara, County
Galway, it is about 5.5 km at its longest point in an east-west
direction and 3 km at its widest point in a north south direction
(Hogan & Gibbons 1992) (Fig. 2.3). It lies north-north-west
of Inishmore, described in the previous section. Its name is derived
from the Irish "Inis Bó Finne", the island of
the white cow. There are numerous small islands and jagged rocks
surrounding Inishbofin, the two largest being Port Island, protecting
Bofin Harbour, and Inish Lyon off the east coast of the island.
One of the most important natural features of Inishbofin regarding
fishing and shipping in general, is its natural harbour which
is one of the safest on the midwest coast of Ireland (Fig. 2.3).
The island also has two large bays from which fishing was carried,
North Beach Bay and East End Bay of which the latter is the more
sheltered of the two. The rest of the shore line of the island
consists of bare rocks sticking up out of the sea and high sea
cliffs at several locations. As with Inishmore, the north and
west coasts of Inishbofin are battered by the Atlantic Ocean which
has created this rugged coastline, offshore of which jagged subtidal
rocks abound which form good habitat for marine life such as lobsters
but also present a threat to boats and ships of all sizes. The
island is relatively low, its two highest hills being 87 and 89
m high (Concannon 1993). The seas surrounding Inishbofin are similar
to those surrounding Inishmore (Section 2.2.1) and therefore are
equally productive, having held a wealth in fish stocks of many
types in the past.
The geology of Inishbofin is very different from Inishmore as
it is not made up of alkaline limestone, but from a variety of
predominantly acidic rock types. Many geological features are
to be found on the island, however to summarise the geology, there
are three main areas on the island. These are the south area of
Knock and a narrow strip skirting the southern coast line, a narrow
fault line called the Renvyle/Bofin Slide as its boundary and
the bulk of the island north of the Renvyle/Bofin Slide (Fig.
2.3).
Knock Hill is mainly made up of a Pebble Bed and the strip to
its west along the coast from metamorphic Schist/Slate intermediate
rocks derived from limey muds. The discontinuity line north of
this is associated with strongly distorted Schists containing
Serpentine and Talc or Soapstone amongst others. The major part
of the island is made up of a late Dalradian sequence called the
Ben Levy Formation with layers of Schist and Quartzite in between
these rock beds. These strata have become heavily folded and igneous
rock was forced into these layers at several locations, such as
the Dolerite dyke in the north Cloonamore area of the island (Fig.
2.3) which, unlike its surrounding rocks, is a basic rock.
The soils originating from the acidic rocks are nutrient poor
and although some basic rock does occur on Inishbofin, most of
the soils are acid and not very fertile. This is in contrast with
the basic soils on Inishmore which, although scarce, are derived
from limestone and therefore richer and more fertile. However,
despite the relatively poor soils, farming did form the backbone
of subsistence on Inishbofin with, as in most Irish coastal regions,
the soils being enriched using seaweeds as well as animal manure
(Concannon 1993). The climate of Inishbofin is the same as on
Inishmore for the same reasons (Section 2.2.1).
2.3.2: Demographic and Historical Perspectives.
The population census available for Inishbofin from the 18th century
also include the neighbouring island of Inishark. This second
island, situated south-west of Inishbofin across the 1 km wide
Ship Sound (Fig 2.3), is smaller and had less people living on
it compared to Inishbofin. The population of Inishark was reduced
to a mere handful of people over the years and eventually abandoned
completely 1961, since when it has been uninhabited. The census
data for both island are included in Fig. 2.4 as the trend in
population growth would have been more or less the same for both
islands and for similar reasons. No data were available to the
author for the years between 1901 and 1961, but it can be presumed
that the population continued to decline during these years.
Inishbofin also suffered from the Great Irish Famine (Section
2.2.2) and its population fell from its highest point during the
early 1840's by more than 35% in a matter of six years to 1047
in 1851. The 1841 census figure of 1612 people (Concannon 1993)
was most likely not even the highest population to have lived
on Inishbofin and Inishark, as in Inishmore and other parts of
Ireland the population grew between the census year of 1841 and
the year of the onset of the famine in 1845. The percentage decrease,
unlike Inishmore, was more than that for Ireland as a whole, but
like Inishmore, the population recovered to 1262 by 1871. This
influx of people into these two islands must have meant that the
resources were more abundant there than on the mainland where
populations showed an uninterrupted downward trend.
The population density on Inishbofin and Inishark was still extraordinarily
high even in 1891 after 20 years of depopulation (mainly due to
emigration) compared to County Galway, which had similar poor
farm land, and also compared to the rest of Ireland, which has
large areas of good farm land. The population density figures
which Concannon (1993) quotes for that year are: 202 per square
mile for Inishbofin and Inishark, 86 for Co. Galway and 146 for
all of Ireland. The reason why this was possible on such poor
soil was a combination of the availability of fish combined with
an extremely low, subsistence, standard of living. However, like
other regions in Ireland, Inishbofin also suffered famines at
other times besides The Great Famine when a combination of gales
and crop failure caused food shortages. Nonetheless, up to the
end of the 19th century the fishery resources around Inishbofin
clearly allowed a much great population density to survive there
than was possible in other regions of Ireland.
The rich fishing grounds near, especially west and north-west
of, Inishbofin have been fished by fishermen since times immemorial,
in fact legend has it that Inishbofin is said to have been discovered
by fishermen (Concannon 1993). Pilchard fishing appears to have
been carried out there in the mid 17th century (Went 1946). Fish
curing was carried out in Inishbofin during the first half of
the 19th century, however, they did not gain their supplies exclusively
from the Bofin fishing fleet, but many fishermen came from other
places, particularly Galway City's Claddagh fleet, to fish the
rich fishing grounds around Inishbofin (Commissioners of Inquiry
1837). In 1861, Andrews recommended Bofin Harbour as being the
most sheltered and best positioned for the cod and ling summer
fishery and compared the Bofin Bank to the great Newfoundland
bank, claiming it to be inexhaustible. In fact the influx of fishing
fleets to Inishbofin was so great during the early 1800's that
up to 10,000 fishermen could be found in Bofin Harbour (Concannon
1993). Fish trading companies cured fish of various sorts in Inishbofin,
the most recent of which was that initiated by the Congested Districts
Board and the landlord of Inishbofin at the end of the last century,
similar to that which developed on Inishmore (Section 2.2.2).
Also like Inishmore, the various fishing activities during the
ages seem not to have taken root and in recent times the lobster
fishery is the only fishery which is of any importance. As on
Inishmore, Inishbofin with its natural harbour and proximity to
very good fish stocks did not build on previous gains made from
fishing and develop a large fleet capable of offshore fishing
and so become a modern sea fishing centre.
In contrast to Inishmore, Inishbofin is English speaking, the
Irish language having been eradicated on behest of the landlords
by punishing children if they spoke Irish (Concannon 1993). The
development and quality of life on Inishbofin was very much affected
by the landlord system previous to landownership being transferred
to the farmers. The last landlord did take steps to promote the
welfare of his tenants, but many of those that preceded him did
not appear to have this concern.
To summarise, Inishbofin has at least as long a fishing tradition
as Inishmore, but is not Irish speaking, is geologically acidic
rather than limestone and is currently even less developed as
a fishing community than Inishmore. Both islands currently have
only a fraction of the population that they had in the early and
mid 1800's.
2.4 : The West Dingle Peninsula, County Kerry, Ireland.
2.4.1: Geographic and Geological Description.
The third study area in Ireland is located on the Dingle peninsula,
which is the most northerly of four main peninsulas which make
up the southwest corner of the island of Ireland. The Blaskets
lslands which are located off the tip of the Dingle peninsula
are in fact the most westerly point of Ireland and, excepting
Iceland, also of Europe. The part of the Peninsula which this
study concentrated on lies west of a line between Dingle town
and the village of Brandon (Fig. 2.5). This area, unlike the islands
of Inishmore and Inishbofin, is part of the main land of Ireland.
However like Inishmore, this study area is part of a Gaeltacht,
which has the Irish name of "Corca Dhuibhne". The entire
peninsula is approximately 50 km long and varies between 10 and
20 km wide. The study consists of the westernmost 20 km of the
peninsula and measures approximately 30 km in its longest northeast
- southwest axis from Brandon to Slea Head (Fig. 2.5). The region
is surrounded on three sides by the Atlantic Ocean, the bay in
the south side between the Dingle Peninsula and the Iveragh Peninsula
being Dingle Bay.
In the triangle between Dingle, Brandon village and Ballydavid
there are a series of mountain peaks, the highest of which is
Mount Brandon at 952 m above sea level. The southwest corner of
the study area is dominated by Mount Eagle which is 516 m high
(Ordnance Survey 1994). Four smaller hills lie in between the
Mount Brandon series and Mount Eagle. The study areas has three
bays of which Dingle Harbour is the most sheltered natural harbour.
The other two bays, Ventry and Smerwick Harbours also afford shelter
to shipping, but are exposed to winds from a certain direction.
Apart from these bays, much of the coast line is composed of jagged
rocks, mountain sides steeply slopping into the sea or sea cliffs.
The extent to which the Atlantic swell, driven up by gales from
the southwest, have eroded the coast line is dramatically demonstrated
by the coast between Ballydavid and Brandon village where the
near vertical rock face of the Mount Brandon series rises straight
up out if the sea. On the other side of Smerwick Harbour
The Three Sisters and Sybil Head sweep up to their highest ridge
to fall abruptly into the sea, protecting this natural harbour
from northwesterly gales. On the southern side, the coast road
from Ventry to Dunquin via the promontory of Slea Head (Fig. 2.5)
is set into the steep side of Mount Eagle and affords a spectacular
uninterrupted view of the Blasket Islands from between 50 and
100 m above sea level.
The sea depths are much as they are around the Aran Islands and
Inishbofin, with Dingle Bay and the seas west, northwest and north
of the Dingle peninsula being famous for its trawling grounds.
This is also the area where The North Atlantic Drift first hits
the shores of Ireland and hence the climate here is at its most
temperate compared to the rest of Ireland (Hayward & Ryland
1995). However, the uninterrupted southwest winds do make this
a windswept region with few trees.
The geology of the western part of the Dingle peninsula has two
main sections (Pracht 1996). The oldest section, called the Dunquin
group, dates back to the lower Palaeozoic era from the Ordovician
and Silurian periods and are between 500 and 410 million years
old. The southern limit of the Dunquin group reaches from the
village of Dunquin approximately 4 km inland to the northeast
and runs northwards towards Smerwick Harbour, skirting Ballyferriter
along the west, reaches the western shore of Smerwick Harbour,
but discontinues half way up the slopes of the The Three Sisters
and Sybil Head (Fig. 2.5). Rock outcrops of the Dunquin group
are also found on the offshore Blaskets islands to the west of
the Peninsula. The rocks of the Dunquin group are predominantly
sedimentary containing marine animal fossils. They also include
some volcanic rocks as during the Silurian period there was an
active volcano southwest of the Blaskets (Pracht 1996).
The second section covers the rest and greater part of this study
area, reaching beyond a line between Dingle and Brandon village
(Fig. 2.5). This area is made up of younger rocks than the Dunquin
group, dating from the late Silurian and the more recent Upper
Palaeozoic era, circa 420 to 250 million years ago. The rocks
in this area are made up of a mixture of old red sandstone, marine
shales and sandstone, limestones from the lower Carboniferous
period and Namurian shales and sandstones. Within the upper Palaeozoic
region considerable local variation occurs, including some volcanic
influence in the western headland of Ventry Harbour area (Pracht
1996).
The appearance of the present day landscape of the western Dingle
peninsula is largely the result of two or more ice ages, occurring
during the Quaternary period 1.6 million to 10,000 years ago,
which left many glacial features, particularly in the Mount Brandon
region, such as corrie lakes and glaciated valleys (Pracht 1996).
The mountains of the Dingle region are approximately 170 million
years older than the Himalayas (MacDonogh 1993) and therefore
have been eroded to a much greater degree, as evidenced by their
moderate altitude (maximum height 952 m) and smoothed off and
rounded outline.
While some limestone does exist in the area, the vast majority
is relatively nutrient poor rock, giving rise to a range in farm
land of which the best is just of moderate quality. However, in
recent years the unpolluted nature of the environment on the Dingle
Peninsula has been used to promote the development of marketing
its agricultural produce as organic and toxin and additive free
(O'Rourke 1994). As in Inishmore and Inishbofin, in the Dingle
region sea weed and even shellfish were used to fertilise crops
such as potatoes.
2.4.2: Demographic and Historical Perspectives.
Dingle was historically the most important port of the area, trading
with many nations from mainland Europe (Stopford Green 1924, O'Neill
1987, MacDonogh 1993). In fact its name in Irish, Daingean Uí
Chúis, or O'Cush's fortress, may be derived from the present
day Irish name Hussey and which in turn was derived from Flemish
people named Huysse who settled in Dingle during the 13th century.
One document dating from 1290 names Dingle as Dengynhuysse (MacDonogh
1993).
The population of Dingle has fluctuated considerably due to the
political and military strife which took place there during the
16th and 17th centuries (MacDonogh 1993). Foreign trade and the
abundant fishery resources of the region allowed the population
to rise, but political forces repeatedly caused depression and
poverty. During the late 1700's fishing as well as a flourishing
linen trade brought prosperity to Dingle, but the linen trade
declined due to competition from the newly developed cotton industry
in England (Young 1975). In addition around 1830 the British Government
abolished a subsidy, the "production bounty", on fish
as well as calling in loans with which Dingle fishermen had bought
fishing gear, causing serious poverty in the town. Emigration
had already started in Dingle at this time and there are reports
of women and children being left to fend for themselves because
the men had emigrated (Commissioners of Inquiry 1837).
Fig. 2.6 illustrates this decline in population even before the
famine had started and the population for Ireland as a whole was
still rising. The population of course continued to decline due
to the famine which raged in the Dingle peninsula as much as in
the rest of the poor areas of the west of Ireland. In fact in
1849 the poverty and famine was on such scale that the Board of
Guardians of the Dingle Union encouraged the poor people to emigrate
and give them some resources to enable them to do so, because
they could not look after them all (MacDonogh 1993).
The organised emigration of peasants occurred in many region
of Ireland during this time (Fitzpatrick 1995). This level of
poverty does not seem to have occurred before the famine started
in Inishmore and Inishbofin judging from the population growth
curves (Figs. 2.2 + 2.4). In addition in Dingle no partial recovery
of the population occurred in the years after the famine, as happened
on the two islands. However, like the islands, due to the lack
of commercial activity the downwards trend of the population did
continue into recent times, unlike that of the rest of Ireland.
As in the rest of Ireland, the emigrants were predominantly young
people in their late teens and early twenties, bleeding these
regions of the age group which was most likely to develop local
resources and possess entrepreneurial spirit.
As around the entire west coast of Ireland, the wealth of fish
stocks in the seas around Dingle was often remarked upon (Commissioners
of Inquiry 1837, Symonds 1855, Andrews 1861). Similar to the previous
two study areas, the fortunes of the fishing industry varied widely
with the different political, economic and fish stocks conditions.
The small scale farmer-fisherman of the coast, as in Inishmore
and Inishbofin, was an important part of the fishing industry
in the Dingle Peninsula. But because Dingle was a market centre
and Dingle Harbour could provide shelter for larger boats, boats
of up to 60 foot in length and between 25 to 35 tons register
and a crew of four to five full time fishermen were used for fishing
during the middle 1800's (Long 199?). Therefore the tradition
of larger boats which, amongst other methods, could trawl a beam
trawl and later on an otter board trawl, was established earlier
in Dingle than in Inishmore and Inishbofin.
In order to develop the fishing industry, the Congested Districts
Board also surveyed Dingle and was instrumental in developing
a fishing fleet, fish processing and marketing in the region (Butler
1892a+b+c, Parsons 1894, Micks 1925). The zulus and nobbies (Section
2.2.2) were also introduced in Dingle and in Brandon and "curing
sheds", where mackerel and herring were gutted, salted and
barrelled, were in operation in both these locations from the
end of the 1800's to approximately 1920. The investment required
to operate the, initially sailing and later motorised, larger
fishing boats and the gear which they operated meant that the
fishermen were more dependent on market prices of fish. Dingle
is relatively remote from the rest of Ireland and therefore when
the narrow gauge railway, connecting Dingle to Tralee, first came
into operation in 1891 the marketing particularly of fresh fish
was much improved. Tralee was then and still is the nearest national
rail point to Dingle. This railway stopped all operation in 1953
(MacDonogh 1993). The remote location of Dingle has been blamed
in the past for making marketing of fish difficult. Currently
it takes approximately one hour's drive by car from Dingle before
one reaches the eastern end of the peninsula.
Dingle is more developed as a fishing industry centre than is
the case in the two other Irish study areas. It has an all tide
protected harbour and a number of trawlers are based in Dingle
virtually all year round. Nevertheless, like Inishmore and Inishbofin
and despite being on the doorstep of the fishing grounds, the
Dingle fishing fleet is much inferior compared to fleets from
Spain, France and The Netherlands which fish close to Dingle,
being fewer in number, smaller in size of boats and much older
than their European competitors. Sea fisheries development in
Dingle has obviously taken a very different course to that of
other European fishing communities.
Agriculture is the most important industry on the peninsula and
has been for a long time. But the development of agriculture in
recent years has very much depended on increasing size of holdings
and mechanising farm operations, both of which has resulted in
a decrease of numbers of people being employed in agriculture.
Like Inishmore, the Irish language and the awe-inspiring scenery
of the Dingle region has made tourism an important industry along
with agriculture and fishing. Since 1982 the presence of a male
bottle-nosed dolphin at the mouth of Dingle Harbour has added
hugely to the tourist potential of Dingle. The dolphin, named
Fungi by the locals, is the longest recorded resident wild dolphin
which has stayed voluntarily in one location in the world. Since
Fungi has taken up residence in the harbour mouth the tourist
trade in Dingle has blossomed and prices of houses there have
surpassed those of larger and less remote towns in County Kerry
such as Tralee.
Largely because of its remote location, a pure form of the Irish
language survived in the Great Blasket Island into this century,
and from 1909 onwards European scholars visited and learned Irish
from the islanders (O'Crohan 1951). As a result many books have
been written in Irish by the islanders as well as the visiting
linguists (O'Crohan 1951, O'Guiheen 1982, Flower 1983, O'Sullivan
1983). These books have gained a wide readership as they record
the culture, traditions and a way of life on the remote western
coastal fringe not only of Ireland but of Europe, which has now
disappeared. The autobiography of Peig Sayer (1974), who lived
most of her adult life on the Great Blasket Island, is presently
used in Irish schools as part of the Irish language curriculum.
(The Blasket Island literature quoted here are all English translations
of the original books in Irish).
2.5 : Katwijk, Provincie Zuid-Holland, The Netherlands.
2.5.1: Geographic and Geological Description.
Katwijk is a town on the west coast of The Netherlands. It is
located approximately 32 km north of Hoek van Holland on the circa
120 km long uninterrupted beach, apart from canal and river mouths,
which stretches from Hoek of Holland in the south to Den Helder
in the north and forms the North Sea coastline of the Dutch provincies
of Noordholland and Zuid-Holland (Wiersma 1991). A branch of the
Rhine river called the "Oude Rijn", the Old Rhine, enters
the sea at Katwijk by means of water pumping station (Fig. 2.7).
Katwijk is near a number of larger towns and cities, such as The
Hague approximately 12 km south of it and Leiden approximately
10 km southwest of it. Even Amsterdam is less than 40 km to the
northeast and Rotterdam 30 km to the south southwest from Katwijk
(Ormeling 1961).
There is a freshwater harbour in Katwijk which is connected to
the inland waterways network of The Netherlands, but it does not
have access to the North Sea as the pumping station is located
over the point of outflow. Katwijk does not have a sea harbour.
The part of the old village of Katwijk which was located on the
sand dunes was called Katwijk aan Zee, Katwijk on the Sea, while
the more inland part of the village was called Katwijk aan de
Rijn, Katwijk on the Rhine. These two parts have both expanded
and are currently coalesced. However, this study will concentrate
on the part of Katwijk which is on the coast and where the fishing
activity was concentrated.
The beach at Katwijk is bordered by coastal sand dunes which vary
between 0.5 and 1.5 km in width. Katwijk is build on these dunes
and the lower lying land behind them and on the sea side overlooks
the southern North Sea. The southern section of the North Sea,
as far north as the Doggersbank, is less than 50 m in depth and
is affected by part of the North Atlantic Drift which branches
off from around northern Scotland to from a clockwise gyre in
the northern and middle North Sea and a smaller anti clockwise
gyre in the southern quarter of the North Sea which is influenced
by Atlantic seawater entering via the English Channel and the
Straits of Dover (Hayward & Ryland 1995). The influence from
the English Channel on the sea off Katwijk means that sea water
temperatures are higher there than in the middle and northern
North Sea. At certain times of the year the outflow of freshwater
from the Rhine at Hoek of Holland into the North Sea can decrease
the salinity along the Dutch coast to 29 parts/thousand, while
34-35 is more normal for the rest of the North Sea.
The geology of Katwijk, and indeed of the entire Dutch coast,
is far more dynamic in relatively recent times than that of the
west of Ireland coast (Zagwijn 1986, de Gans 1991, Wiersma 1991).
This region of The Netherlands is effectively the delta of the
Rhine river and a layer of sea clay lies underneath a sequence
at the surface of a narrow band of younger dunes bordering the
beach, behind which comes a wider zone of older sand dunes and
flats, behind which a surface layer of Holland peat, all running
more or less parallel to the coast. However, following the course
of the old Rhine branch there is a band of river clay which cuts
through the peats, the old sands and the new dunes (Zagwijn 1986,
Pruissers & de Gans 1988). The maximum height found in this
region is 35 m above sea level in the coastal new dunes between
Katwijk and The Hague to the south. However the land behind the
dunes is much lower as it is around sea level and up to 5 m below
it where the peat layer has been dug away to reveal the sea clay
beneath (Pruissers & de Gans 1988). Hence the necessity to
pump freshwater into the sea, such as takes place at Katwijk,
as this area would otherwise flood.
The coast of the North Sea 10,000 years ago was north of the Doggersbank,
the sea being approximately 20 m lower than it is now. Since then
sea level has risen due to melting of the polar ice caps and the
coast of The Netherlands has changed form many times as the influences
of rising sea level and tidal currents have eroded sand and clay
in one location to create new sea arms, while depositing it another
location creating new sand dunes and mud slicks (Zagwijn 1986,
Roep et al. 1991, Wiersma 1991). The major rise in sea level occurred
between 10,000 and 3000 years ago, when the sea level had risen
to within 2 m of its present level.
Because the Old Rhine at Katwijk used to be the main outflow of
the Rhine river, it had build a delta which extended into the
North Sea for some 4 to 5 km at its maximum at around 500 years
B.C.. However, after this time the sea encroached inland and the
Rhine eventually silted up around 1000 A.D. so that no water was
entering the sea at Katwijk and the coast was more or less at
its present position (Pruissers & de Gans 1988). In order
to drain the marshy areas behind the dunes which now had no way
out to the sea at this point, people tried to dig through the
dunes during the 1600's, but they did not succeed. It was again
tried in the 1800's and this time it was successful and locks
were installed at the sea in Katwijk which controlled the draining
of freshwater from inland (pers. comm. de Gans 1996).
Although the west coast of Ireland has been, and continues to
be, eroding due to the force of the north Atlantic ocean (Section
2.2.1), the time frame of change in the Dutch coast line is much
more recent and much faster, reflecting the contrasting geological
makeup of the two countries.
The Katwijk fishermen therefore had no harbour and could only
fish from the beach into shallow seas which had many sand banks
which frequently changed position. When these flat bottomed beach
boats became outdated and larger motorised vessels were introduced,
the Katwijk fishing community used other harbours north and south
along the coast from them and travelled home by land. Fishing
boats could be brought to Katwijk but only by entering the inland
waterway system in the sea harbours and sailing via the canals
and the Old Rhine to Katwijk.
2.5.2: Demographic and Historical Perspectives.
While the population of Ireland experienced an overall decrease
of 40% from a high of 8.5 million in 1845 to its present level
of 5.1 million for all of the island of Ireland, the population
of The Netherlands, on the other hand, increased by 400% from
around 3 million in the mid 1840's to its present level of over
15 million people (Fig. 2.8). The initial difference in population
of around 5.5 million in the mid 1840's was not that remarkable
as the island of Ireland is approximately twice the size of The
Netherlands. However, this makes the difference in population
at present, with The Netherlands having approximately three times
the population of the island of Ireland and therefore circa 6
times the population density, even more extraordinary. This great
difference in population density encapsulates the major contrast
in development which has taken place in these two Western European
countries during the last centuries.
The fast population growth rate which has taken place in The Netherlands
since the early 1800's also occurred in Ireland between the early
1700's and 1845. However, while the prosperity of the people in
The Netherlands has increased in step with the rise in population,
especially in the years since the Second World War, the rise in
population in Ireland during the 18th and early half of the 19th
century was accompanied by an increase in poverty and a lowering
of living standards as people were forced into using limited and
marginal resources more intensively, leaving them no reserve resources
for times of emergency.
Bearing this very important difference in mind, the population
growth curves for both countries still follow the population growth
curve pattern typical of the ecology of any species, be it plant
or animal, which is experiencing an unimpeded increase in numbers
usually due to either an increased availability of resources or
a significant decrease in a factor which previously limited population
growth.
The typical shape of a growth curve of a plant or animal species
does not continue to rise more and more sharply, but levels off,
then reaches a plateau and then decreases again. The decrease
can be slow and fluctuate or it can be a catastrophic partial
or total collapse of the population. In human ecology the latter
was the case when the staple food of Ireland's poor was virtually
wiped out by a fungal disease during six consecutive seasons (Section
2.2.2).
In The Netherlands the current rise in population is not based
on a lowering of living standards, but may be precarious nonetheless.
Human ecology, like that of other species, cannot escape from
the basic ecological constraints that a population cannot rise
for ever. A high population density should always be treated with
caution as a certain margin of error has almost always been compromised
to achieve the high density of individuals. In the Dutch case
a catastrophe would arise if energy supplies such as petrol and
electricity, on which most of the technology which supports the
high population level relies, were for some reason to be reduced
by a significant percentage or even disappear altogether. Within
days there would be severe famine in a country were millions of
people, living in cities, don't and can't produce their own food.
This is a danger of the current level of specialisation of human
ecology in The Netherlands and other urbanised societies.
A catastrophe does not have to happen of course and we, like other
species, can develop mechanisms to achieve balanced population
levels. In fact the upper tip of the Dutch population growth curve
is beginning to lose its steep slope (Fig. 2.8). In other words,
although the population is still increasing, the rate of population
increase is slowing down. Whether the population can be maintained
at this level will depend on the continued dependability of resources
such as food and energy.
The population trend of Katwijk since the late 18th century has
been continuously upward (Fig. 2.8). For the earliest census figures
of 1796 the population of Katwijk aan de Rijn and Katwijk aan
Zee have been added together as the subsequent data are also for
the two parts of Katwijk. The population curve indicates an acceleration
in population growth at the beginning of the 20th century with
a further increase in the rate of growth during the 1960's and
1970's after which the rate of growth has slowed down again. To
what extent the overall population was influenced by the fishing
industry is questionable. While fish processing is carried on
in Katwijk at present and many families have and/or had connections
with the sea fisheries, many people resident in Katwijk also have
access to employment in the larger centres of population close
by. Hence the effect of the fishing industry has been diluted
by other industries. The general trend of the Katwijk population
has more or less followed that for The Netherlands as a whole,
with the possible exception of the levelling off of growth since
the 1970's, which may be due to a lack of building space in Katwijk.
The population of Dingle has followed an opposite trend to that
of Katwijk. While Dingle, which was granted a town's charter in
1607 (MacDonogh 1993), had 4538 inhabitants in 1821 it had already
fallen to 3386 in 1841. Katwijk, then generally regarded as a
fishing village, had 4195 inhabitants in 1840 but has increased
ever since to over 40,000 in 1990, compared to Dingle which had
1272 inhabitants in 1991 (Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek The
Hague 1796-1990, Census Commissioners Ireland 1821+1841, Central
Statistics Office Dublin 1993). It should be born in mind that
Dingle always had a fully sheltered natural harbour while Katwijk
never had a harbour for its fishing boats. When fishing boats
developed to a size that they could not be drawn up on the strand,
the Katwijk fishermen used other harbours and travelled home by
land. Katwijk is located close to the main centres of population
in The Netherlands and therefore experienced industrialisation.
Dingle's geographic location is one of the most westerly in Europe
and had little or no industrialisation, so its fishing industry
has developed in a very different way to that of Katwijk. This
will be discussed more fully in the Results and Discussion sections.
2.6 : Urk, Provincie Flevoland, The Netherlands.
2.6.1: Geographic and Geological Description.
Urk used to be a small island of 81 hectare (Plomp 1989) in the
Zuiderzee, which was the name of the present IJsselmeer before
its was cut off from the sea. A dyke, the "Afsluitdijk"
(Fig. 2.9), was completed in 1932 and the IJsselmeer (translated:
the IJssel-lake) turned to freshwater as the IJssel River enters
the lake in the east, with the water draining from the lake into
the sea through sluices in the Afsluitdijk in the northwest .
For some years Urk continued as an island in the IJsselmeer, however
embankment work on the Noordoostpolder soon started and 1939 Urk
became the corner, and therefore part, of the new polder and was
an island no more (Fig. 2.9). Most of the Zuiderzee was between
2.5 m and 5 m in depth, with some deeper trenches (Kwast 1924).
The highest part of the island of Urk was some 9 m above sea level
before the Afsluitdijk was completed, while a second section of
the island was lower and at times was flooded by the sea. The
houses were build on the higher part, while the lower marshy area
was used as meadow. The island used to be larger than 81 ha but
a combination of storms and high tides significantly reduced the
lower lying parts (Plomp 1989).
Urk is made up of a glacial moraine of boulder clay which was
formed during the second last ice age around 200,000 years ago.
Peat formed around this mound of boulder clay, which was not affected
by the last ice age because it did not reach this far. As the
sea level rose subsequent to the last ice age, the sea invaded
the land and formed the Zuiderzee in that region and washed away
the peat around the boulder clay, leaving Urk an island. In the
case of Urk the mound of boulder clay was high and substantial
enough to withstand wave action over the years, although, as mentioned
above, the island had been reduced in size by the sea. Another
similar island in the Zuiderzee named Schokland was once connected
to Urk but due to wave action these were separated. Over the centuries
the level of Schokland subsided so that this island had to be
evacuated in 1859 (ANWB 1985, pers. comm. Schuttenhelm 1996).
An interesting characteristic of the geological basis of Urk is
that despite its small size and the fact that sea water was all
around the island, the inhabitants used to pump up fresh ground
water from the subsoil of the Urk (Plomp 1989).
The island of Urk, being small and the highest point with water
all around it, was very wind swept. Traditionally the only trees
or shrubs which survived there were in between the closely packed
houses on the higher part of the island. At present, trees have
been planted as part of the development of new housing areas and
the new land of the polder around Urk. Occasionally winter temperatures
have been so severe that it was possible to walk or skate, and
even drive a car, on the ice from Urk to the mainland.
2.6.2: Demographic and Historical Perspectives.
The population of Urk rose from 575 in 1796 to a level of 14,466
in 1995 (Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek 1796-1990, Gemeente
Urk/Het Urkerland B.V. 1995). Fig. 2.10 shows the population growth
curve for Urk, which indicates that the population had risen to
over 4000 by the time the island was made part of the new Noordoostpolder.
The population density just before the Second World War was 4698.8
persons/ square km (Plomp 1989). This was quite a high population
density and the houses were build very close together. As the
land was very scarce and of bad quality, almost the entire population
of Urk was either directly or indirectly involved in fishing.
This has been the traditional occupation on Urk for centuries.
The population of Urk has continued to increase during the last
200 years. During the second half of the 19th century fisheries
in the Zuiderzee experienced a buoyant time, with a combination
of herring and anchovy stocks being good and road transport improving
the marketing of these species (Plomp 1989). The rate of population
growth of Urk increased during this time compared to the first
half of the 19th century (Fig. 2.10). This was followed by a period
of lesser population increase during the years from the beginning
of the 20th century to the time of completion of the Afsluitdijk
and commencement of embankment of the new polder. This period
was marked by a downturn in the Zuiderzee fishery, introduction
of new fishing regulations and general economically difficult
times, during which emigration from the island did take place
(Pomp 1989).
The rate of increase in population picked up again in the mid
1930's, which coincided with new work opportunities on the embankment
and draining of the new Noordoostpolder for the people on Urk
as well as immigration into Urk by polder workers from other regions.
The Second World War saw a slight decrease in growth rate, after
which the population increased rapidly during the time that the
new polder came into use for farming as well as affording new
building space for houses.
Compared to the rate of population growth of The Netherlands as
a whole, Urk appears to be growing at a faster rate, with no reduction
in growth evident up to 1995. Since the late 1960's, for reasons
which will be outlined in the Results and Discussion sections,
Urk has experienced an economic growth period based on the North
Sea beam trawl fisheries and the marketing and processing of the
catches, high priced flat fish species in particular. Not only
is Urk's fish auction now the biggest in The Netherlands in terms
of turn-over, but it is the biggest flat fish processing and exporting
centre in Western Europe (Zwiers Partners 1995). Urk's vigorous
growth in population has gone hand in hand with the increased
availability of land space and the phenomenal economic success
of its fishing and fish processing and marketing industry.
Like in the Inishmore study area, the population trend on Urk
reflects the fortunes of their fishing industry. However, unlike
all three Irish study sites as well as Katwijk, the island of
Urk was traditionally primarily a fishing community rather than
relying on a mixture of fishing and agriculture and other industries.
Even though the new land of the Noordoostpolder became available
for farming all around Urk, the fishing tradition is as strong
as ever on this ex-island.
2.7 : Goedereede, Provincie Zuid-Holland, The Netherlands.
2.7.1: Geographic and Geological Description.
The municipality of Goedereede is made up of four, previously
autonomous, centres of population which were amalgamated in 1966
(Gemeente Goedereede 1995). These are the town of Goedereede and
the villages of Ouddorp, Stellendam and Goedereede-Havenhoofd
(Fig. 2.11). They are located on the island of Goeree-Overflakkee,
which is connected to the mainland by dams and therefore accessible
by road traffic. This island was formed from a number of islands
by embanking the sea separating them and so forming one larger
island. Of these the two islands Goeree and Overflakkee were the
most important, hence the coalescence of the two names. Goeree-Overflakkee
is elongated in shape, the longest axis of which lies in a more
or less southeast - northwest direction. The island is over 30
km long and varies between 5 and 13 km wide. It is located approximately
25 km southwest of the City of Rotterdam, separated from it by
three waterways and two other islands. This region is the delta
of the Rhine and the Maas rivers which flow together to form a
complex system of waterways and tidal sea arms. Goeree-Overflakkee
has the Haringvliet to the northeast of it, via which much of
the water from the Rhine and the Maas enters the sea, and the
Grevelingen to the southwest of it (Fig. 2.11).
The four population centres of the municipality of Goedereede
are located on the northwest section of Goeree-Overflakkee which
is commonly know as the "Kop van Goeree", or the Head
of Goeree (Fig. 2.11). When indicating this area the name Goeree
is commonly used as this used to be the island of Goeree, lending
its name from the old trading port of Goedereede. The meaning
of the name Goedereede is a place providing good anchorage, which
it was given because behind the island of Goeree and off the old
port of Goedereede was a safe and sheltered place for sailing
ship to go for anchor and await favourable wind before setting
out on the North Sea.
Goeree-Overflakkee is connected to the islands on either side
of it by four dams. Two of these are on either end of the Kop
van Goeree and are part of the extensive system of enormous dams
and sluices which was build to protect the entire southwest of
The Netherlands against inundation during strong northerly storms
and high spring tides pushing the North Sea against its dykes.
This system of dams forms a protective barrier, connecting the
seaward sides of a series of four islands and a peninsula together
so that the more vulnerable dykes all around the islands are sheltered
from the full force of the North Sea.
The decision to proceed with this plan was made after high tides
and northerly storms caused a storm surge which breached dykes
at many locations in 1953, resulting in inundation by the sea
and loss of human life and property. Apart from the all-important
safety factor for the population, there were economic reasons
as well. Even though these dams were expensive to build, this
was a much more economic solution because if these outer dams
were not present, the entire length of dykes encircling each island
would have had to be maintained at a height and standard to withstand
the full force of the strongest possible storm surge. With the
current solution, in addition to protecting life and property,
the length of full grade sea barrier to be maintained is much
less than the total length of the dykes around each island. The
entire project of dam construction is called "the Delta Plan".
Large sections of the Goeree-Overflakkee are up to 2.5 m below
sea level, with the rest only being 1 to 3 m above sea level.
Only the sand dunes along the North Sea coast are higher. The
dam across the Haringvliet (Fig. 2.11) has huge sluices which
can be shut when high tidal levels and storms threaten. So during
normal weather the Haringvliet is partially tidal, with the Rhine
and Maas water flowing out during lower tidal levels and sea water
flowing in during high tide. However, the tidal range is much
less in the Haringvliet than in the North Sea outside the dam.
The Grevelingen is still salt water, as sea water enters via sluices
in the Grevelingen Dam, but there is virtually no tidal difference.
Due to tidal scouring before implementation of the Delta Plan,
the water depths in the channels between the islands in the southwest
of The Netherlands varied wildly. Sand banks and intertidal flats
interspersed with strong current ripping through the deeper channels
wove a complex and constantly changing web which shipping had
to stay up to date with, in order to avoid running aground. The
depth in these tidal channels generally range from 2.5 to 8 m,
with the deeper gullies in excess of this (Ormeling 1961). As
off the coast of Katwijk, circa 55 km north along the coast from
the Kop van Goeree, the depth of the southern North Sea off Goeree
goes down to 50 m.
The geology of Goeree is a clear example of the dynamic interaction
between the North Sea and the Dutch coastline. Fig. 2.12 shows
a sequence in time of the coastline in the Goeree-Overflakkee
area (Kuypers & Vos 1993). In 600 A.D. the Haringvliet and
the Grevelingen were just tidal creeks in the Dutch coast on either
side of the sand dunes of the Kop van Goeree. Most of the inland
areas were covered by peat which had formed on top of Holocene
sediments (Hageman 1964, Kuypers & Vos 1993). A zone of intertidal
mud flats and marshes separated the peat from the sea.
Through a combination of a rise in sea level and, from approximately
1000 A.D. onwards, the human population cutting away the peat
for turf fuel and creating canals in the soft peat and clay, the
sea encroached heavily into the land. If these canals had been
constructed with locks near the sea to stop tidal scouring of
the channels, the sea encroachment would have been counteracted,
but this was not done (Hageman 1964, Kuypers & Vos 1993, pers.
comm.Vos 1996). By 1250 A.D. all the peat had been either cut
away or scoured away by the sea and, apart from the dunes and
a small embanked polder around Goedereede, the entire area had
been transformed into a web of meandering tidal channels, mud
flats and marshes and open water (Fig. 2.12). By 1450 A.D. the
outer sand dunes had grown and the process of embankment of the
mud flats had commenced, drawing fragmented intertidal areas together
to form polders protected by dykes. Thus the people were gaining
back what had been land before and been lost to the sea.
However, these new dykes were breached any many occasions by particularly
high tides and strong winds. In 1421 the St. Elizabeth's flood
enabled the Rhine and Maas to brake through to a more southerly
route to the sea and the present day Haringvliet was formed and
scoured out to its present width of between 2 and 4 km (Hageman
1964, Kuypers & Vos 1993). By stages sections outside the
dykes were enclosed and gradually unconnected polders were linked
by building two dykes between them and pumping out the water in
between, thus forming one large polder, until the present coast
had been achieved. However, as is clear from Fig. 2.12, that in
this region between 600 A.D. and the present day, the sea has
been the overall winner in terms of amount land gained.
An aspect which should be kept in mind is that the intertidal
areas were not sand but mud, so therefore it was worthwhile to
reclaim them as crops would grow there, once the salt had been
washed out. Had they been sand there would have been no point
in reclaiming them. This sea clay is very rich and agriculture
has been and still is of prime importance on the island.
However, considering how closely the land and sea were intertwined
it is not surprising that a long tradition of fishing exists on
Goeree, although in terms of economic gain it would have been
in secondary position to agriculture.
It is clear from Fig. 2.12 that circa 90% of the island has been
shaped by man, the dunes on the Kop van Goeree being the only
natural feature, although even they are managed by man and sand
deposition in that area is influenced by sea currents whose course
are affected by man-made dams. All of these changes have happened
in the last 600 years, which is very recent compared to changes
in coastline on a similar scale occurring in the west of Ireland.
Completion of that part of the Delta Plan around Goeree meant
that, in addition to this region now being connected to the national
road network, the old harbours of Ouddorp, Goedereede, Goedereede-Havenhoofd
and Stellendam were put out of commission. To accommodate the
fishermen who operated from these harbours, a new "Delta"
harbour was build on the Goeree side of the dam over the Haringvliet
(Fig. 2.11). This harbour has an outer tidal section and an inner
harbour which experiences the reduced tidal range of the present
day Haringvliet. Most of the now combined fleets of Ouddorp, Goedereede,
Goedereede-Havenhoofd and Stellendam operate from this harbour,
which has a fish auction but no fish processing facility. The
regulation depth of this harbour is 5 m, which means that for
the larger beam trawlers this harbour does have tidal restrictions
(Zwiers Partners 1995). In addition, the exit from the harbour
to the open North Sea (Fig. 2.11) does suffer from silting-up
since completion of the dam and fishermen are pressing the State
to carry out dredging of the shipping channel.
Fishing in the Goeree area has traditionally been strongly influenced
by the dynamic nature of the coast and the tidal channels, and
in recent years the Delta works, in a reaction to the sea's impact,
has also directly affected the fishing industry. For this reason
fishing on Goeree has seen many far reaching changes from the
traditional forms of the beginning and middle of this century.
2.7.2: Demographic and Historical Perspectives.
From Fig. 2.13 it is clear that the population of the municipality
of Goedereede, although generally increasing in population, experienced
varying periods of population growth and did not follow the steady
rise in population of The Netherlands as a whole during the last
200 years. During the years from the late 18th century to mid
19th century there was a moderate rise in population, but during
the second half of the 19th century this stopped and the population
of the Kop van Goeree even dropped slightly. When the individual
growth curves for the population centres of Goedereede, Stellendam
and Ouddorp are examined (Fig. 2.13), this slight dip is also
seen for Ouddorp and Goedereede, with the population of Stellendam
continuing to increase somewhat during this period.
The population for all the population centres increased again
towards the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th
century, after which the rate of increase dropped again between
the 1920's and 1960's. Ouddorp and Stellendam were responsible
for this increase, as the population of Goedereede stayed much
more stable. A sharp rise in population was experienced from the
1970's onwards, which again was largely due to Stellendam and
Ouddorp, in that order, with population growth in Goedereede being
much less.
It is of interest that the sharpest change in population trends
came subsequent to the dam across the Haringvliet being opened
in 1970 (Kuypers & Vos 1993). The kop van Goeree was now directly
linked by road to Rotterdam and the rest of The Netherlands, and
this seems to have had the effect of an influx of people and/or
a brake on emigration of residents. Certainly the sharp rise of
the population of The Netherlands as a whole since the beginning
of the 20th century seems not to have occurred in the Kop van
Goeree until the 1970's and the road link was completed.
Although the population centre of Goedereede was a well known
old trading town and traditionally seen as more important than
the old villages of Ouddorp and Stellendam, it has not grown as
these latter two villages did. The basis of Goedereede was the
old polder which had been embanked and had survived by 1250 A.D.
due to being protected by the dunes from the North Sea (Fig. 2.12).
Going further back, the Romans had a settlement in the vicinity
of Goedereede (Hageman 1964). When Rotterdam became more important
as a trading centre, Goedereede lost its position as a trading
port and the larger farmers moved into the houses around the harbour
in the town centre in which the merchants used to reside. Fishing
was still carried out from Goedereede as it was still connected
by a 3 km long tidal channel to the Haringvliet. Many fishermen
also lived in Goedereede-Havenhoofd which is located at the head
of this channel close to the sea (Fig. 2.11). This channel, since
the Delta works, is not directly connected to the sea at Havenhoofd
anymore.
The area around Ouddorp is not quite as old as Goedereede but
was embanked by 1375 (Hageman 1964). The harbour of Ouddorp is
located in the Grevelingen (Fig. 2.11), from where the fishermen
fished until the Grevelingen dam was closed and the fishermen
moved to the new Delta harbour near Stellendam. Ouddorp in particular
has benefited from tourism which has developed in the area since
the Delta dams were completed.
Stellendam is located on polders which were drained more recently
and originally was a settlement of dyke workers attracted into
the area when the polders were being embanked. When the work on
the dykes and their polders was finished, these people were out
of work and turned to fishing, as they did not own any land. In
later years the fishing, peeling and marketing of shrimp was more
important in Stellendam than in Goedereede and Ouddorp. The old
harbour in Stellendam used to be open to the Haringvliet, but
as part of the Delta works a whole new area of sand has been build
up on an old sand bank to the southeast of the new inner Delta
harbour and Stellendam's old harbour is now not directly accessible
from the Haringvliet. Stellendam, being somewhat lower than Goedereede,
was badly hit by the inundation of 1953.
Fishermen from all four population centres of Goedereede now have
sheds and stores in the industrial area around the new inner Delta
harbour, although most have kept the ship's registration markings
of their original port from before the Delta works. However, they
are collectively known to outsiders as the Goeree fleet. Fishing
traditions have seen many changes in the Kop van Goeree over the
years, but the north Sea fisheries are as vigorously pursued as
ever.
3.1: Overview.
The methodology applied in this study was largely that of anthropological research. The main task was to gather knowledge from people and this was accomplished by means of a combination qualitative free-ranging interviews and quantitative questionnaires. All interviews and questionnaires were conducted by the author. Three study areas in Ireland were visited, Inishmore island, Inishbofin island and the Dingle peninsula. Likewise, three study areas were visited in The Netherlands, these were Katwijk, Urk and the Head of Goeree which includes the three centres of population of Goedereede, Ouddorp and Stellendam. The reason why six study areas in two EU countries were selected was to attempt to gather and record as wide a range of traditional fishery knowledge, practice and experience from the relevant area of anthropological study as possible and to contribute to the understanding of the relationship between European fishing communities and their marine resources. Not only does a contrast exist between these two countries in terms of fishery tradition and development, but the chosen fishing communities within each country also contrast with each other. The contrasts, and the differing reasons for them, created an understanding of the bases of the ecological system which includes the fishing communities and the sea. More study sites could not be selected because of time and resources constraints. The area of anthropological study in this study is North-Western Europe. The author speaks both English and Dutch fluently so there was no language barrier. All of the respondents in the Irish speaking, or Gaeltacht, areas of Inishmore and the Dingle peninsula spoke English to the author as he is not fluent in Irish.
3.2: Qualitative interviews.
Qualitative interviews were recorded by hand and typed out the
same or next day so details would not be forgotten. In Ireland
and The Netherlands a number of background interviews were initially
conducted. Then enquiries were made within the communities and
via these personal contacts respondents were asked to share their
knowledge with the author. Although the interview was directed
in the general area of fishing traditions and practices, respondents
were limited as little as possible during the conversation to
encourage a free flow of information. As many topics as practical
were broached to encompass a wide range of fishery knowledge and
experience. To use a fishing comparison: it was a trawling exercise
for knowledge. A total of 84 qualitative interviews were conducted:
15 in Inishmore, nine in Inishbofin, 18 in Dingle, seven in Katwijk,
ten in Urk and five in Goeree. In addition 11 background interviews
were conducted in Ireland and nine in The Netherlands. These interviews
were qualitatively examined and described.
3.3: Quantitative questionnaires.
Quantitative questionnaires were also used, the questions of which were based on the topics which
were recorded in the qualitative interviews in order to measure
the spread of the opinions and experiences in the community. The
questionnaire contained 119 questions, each addressing a topic
noted in the qualitative interviews. Some questions generated
multiple variables, such as the assessments of fish stocks, which
depended on the number of fish species which the respondent mentioned.
So also the question recording family make-up, this depended on
the number of children of the respondent. Similarly the question
recording the fishing experience of the respondent depended on
how old the respondent was. For this reason 317 individual variables
were recorded for Dingle and 296 for Goeree.
One site each in Ireland and The Netherlands was selected in which
the questionnaire was carried out, this was the Dingle peninsula
and the Head of Goeree. The selection of the respondents reflected
the relative importance of the various fishing methods practised
in the area. A total of 62 questionnaires were completed, 31 each
in Dingle and Goeree. The English language version of the questionnaire
is shown in Appendix I.
The questions in the questionnaire were grouped together in such
a way as to keep the respondent interested and following a train
of thought. Care was also taken that the question would not appear
to intrusive into private affairs. In Ireland, in particular,
enquiries about a person's private business affairs are generally
received with suspicion, as in rural areas in particular there
exists a widespread wariness of what appear to be government officials
checking for tax and social welfare fraud. For this reason the
first interviews were conducted by the author dressed in casual
clothes. It was notices that the suspicion was there anyway as
the author was not a recognised local and was making a lot of
enquiries. It was the author's experience that neat dress, although
causing some initial suspicion, had the effect that respondents
took the interview more seriously. It was also felt that neat
dress gave the impression that the interviewer also took the affairs
of the respondent with a certain level of gravitas and respect.
One joking comment heard from passing fishermen as the author
walked down Dingle pier was: "he must be selling insurance
or bibles".
The number of questions was commented on by a number of respondents
as they felt the questionnaire was very long. However, only one
respondent out of 62 could not finish the questionnaire in one
sitting and he finished it at a later date. This number of questions
were used as the aim of the research was to record as much knowledge
and attitudes as possible, in other words, it was the quantitative
part of the "trawling for knowledge" mentioned above.
In preparation for statistical analysis of the questionnaire data,
the questions were ordered on the basis of their conceptual relationship.
Three main groupings of questions were identified on the basis
of the analytical model set out in Slikkerveer (1983). This involves
focussing on the aim of the study, which is to record the respondent's
fishing behaviour and analyse the reasons for it. Two components
are taken as influencing this fishing behaviour, and these are
firstly the background of the respondent and secondly intervening
factors which are not directly related to the particular respondents.
They together result in the decision making of the respondent
and therefore his behaviour depends on them. Therefore the fishing
behaviour is measured by the "dependent variables".
The "independent variables" describe the background
of the respondents and are themselves split into three subgroups.
These are the "predisposing system variables" describing
personal details of the respondents, such as age, domicile, education.
The second predisposing group are the "predisposing attitude
variables", which describe the attitudes, opinions and perceptions
of the respondents. The third subgroup are the "predisposing
enabling variables", which describe aspects of the respondents
which enable him to carry out the behaviour (in this case fishing)
which the study is recording, these are variables such as economic
status, type of boats, type of fishing gear, access to capital.
The "intervening variables" refer to factors which are
imposed from outside, such as fishery regulations. The variables
are not specific to a particular respondent, however, different
respondents may have experienced different intervening variables.
Not all fishing methods have the same regulations for instance.
The "dependent variables" variables record the fishing
method, duration of trip, speed of towing a trawl, number of lobster
pots, payment of crew, marketing of fish and such like. It is
these variables which measure the fishing behaviour of the respondent.
Appendix II lists the variables under the above five headings.
The variables arising from the questions in the questionnaire
are the result of a cognitive process, unlike measuring temperature
which measures kinetic energy of molecules or fish length which
measures distance between head and tail of a fish. The fishing
behaviour of the respondents is what we want to describe. So in
order to do that we start with a concept, which could be "type
of fishing done", then within this there may be several dimensions,
such as "fishing methods" or "parameters of fishing
effort". Within these dimensions there may be several indicators
such as "duration of fishing" or "area covered
while fishing" or "range of weather conditions while
fishing". The actual variable which results from this cognitive
process may be "number of days duration of fishing trips"
or "hours duration of tow" or "highest wind force
during which respondent still fishes". Appendix II lists
the cognitive process, or deductive steps of reasoning, for the
variables which arose from the questionnaires, of which one example
is detailed above. This method of describing the cognitive process
of the formation of variables is adapted from a model described
by Slikkerveer (1983).
A further two groupings of variables were made, these were the
traditionality variables and the sustainability variables. These
variables are included in several of the groups described above
and were combined to analyse the variability amongst the respondents
of traditionality and sustainability. These two groups of variables
are shown in Fig. 4.9 for the Dingle data and Fig. 4.19 for the
Goeree data.
3.4: Statistical analysis of questionnaire data.
The statistical analyses used to examine the variability in
the questionnaire data were the multivariate techniques, Principal
Component Analysis and Canonical Correlation Analysis, both adapted
for category data. On the basis of the Canonical Correlation Analysis,
variables were selected which were used in bivariate crosstabulations
and subjected to Chi Square tests of significance, testing expected
and observed ratios. The strategy of first using multivariate
analyses to examine the variation in a body of data, and then
using bivariate tests of significance to investigate individual
relationships of variables indicated by the multivariate test
to represent a significant part of the variability of the data,
is described in Connolly (1986).
As the data consisted of numeric data, such as length of boat
or engine horse power, as well as category data, such as answers
"yes", "no" and "maybe", the statistical
method had to be able to take account of this. Within category
data there are further subdivisions. These are "ordinal"
which are categories which have a certain set order but do not
have the relationship that actual numbers have to each other.
Engine horse powers are numbers where 50 hp is half of 100 hp.
However if the horse powers are categorised from 50 to 300 and
from 300 to 1000 hp, then category one is less than category two
but it is not half it, this is an ordinal variable. A second type
of category variable are the "nominal" variables, these
are answers like yes and no, or good and bad, or blue eyed and
brown eyed. Two types of nominal variables exist, the first type
is named "single nominal", this describes variables
whose categories can fit on a continuum but not necessarily in
order of the numbers of the categories. For example the three
ways of moving: crawling, shuffling and walking. These are on
a continuum, because one is faster than the other, but if they
refer to people between the ages of one and 80, then walking could
come after crawling, with shuffling being the last. They are still
on a continuum, or straight line on a graph, but the order is
not certain. The second type of nominal is the "multiple
nominal", this describes a variable whose categories cannot
be arranged on a continuum or straight line. Such as brown, green,
grey and blue eyes. One eye type is not less, or half, the other
type, they are just different. Variables type has to be assessed
in the context in which they are used. If crawling, shuffling
and walking referred to persons between one and 25 years of age
who are all healthy, then they could be ordinal as their order
would not change. So also with variables containing two categories,
these will always be ordinal as two points will always be on a
straight line and the order does not matter.
To prepare for these analyses, all the data in each variable have
to be categorised. This involves making decisions as to the meaning
of different answers. Often several answers have to be combined
in one category as they mean the same thing. For example in a
variable describing fishing gear, wire, plastic and wickerwork
all describe lobster pots and could go in one category if the
other categories are gillnets, trawlnets and longlines. But if
the variable described types of lobster pots then they may allotted
three categories, or two categories if the variable referred to
traditional and modern lobster pots. The methods used for the
present data give clearer results if fewer categories are used
for the variables. The rule of thumb is no more than three categories
for each variable, but this is not always possible.
The statistical method used to analyse the variation in the predisposing,
intervening and dependent variables was Princals, which is a principal
component analysis for category data using alternating least squares
(SPSS 1990). It is a programme within the SPSS Categories computer
package and was used on an Apple Macintosh personal computer.
The programme used for the Canonical Correlation Analysis of the
traditionality and sustainability variables was Overals which
is also part of SPSS Categories, using the iterative alternate
least square method, similar to Princals. These multivariate techniques
produce "dimensions" and each dimension represents a
combination of the variation in the data set which can be interpreted
by the "object scores" which indicate the position of
the cases (respondents) and the "component loadings"
which indicate the position of the variables (questionnaire variables)
on the dimensions. Successive dimensions account for a decreasing
amount of variation, the first being the highest, and this is
indicated by the "eigenvalue" for each dimension. By
plotting the respondents and variables on the first and second
dimensions, using their object scores and component loadings respectively
as coordinates, a diagrammatic representation is made of the relationships
between them on the basis of the variables used in the analysis.
No further dimensions were used as these represent lesser degrees
of variation. As regards the variables, the further they are plotted
from the origin, the stronger their influence on the variation
of the data set.
Princals was selected to investigate the relationship of the variables
within the independent, intervening and dependent groups of variables.
This gave an overview of the variability amongst the respondents
on the basis of the cognitive model which links these groups.
Canonical Correlation Analysis operates similarly to a Principal
Component Analysis, but it examines and generates dimensions using
two data sets, which have their cases in common. The Overals analysis
is capable of using more than two data sets, but in the present
study only two were used, the traditionality and sustainability
variables. For the Overals analysis, data had to be generated
by two Princals analyses first and the object scores for the first
two dimensions of the traditionality variables and the first two
dimensions for the sustainability variables were used as the two
sets of data for the Overals analyses. This was necessary because
the Overals analysis cannot take many variables compared to the
number of cases. With Princals more variables can be used, even
if there are more than the number of cases.
It should not be forgotten that although these techniques are
ways of grouping data taking many factors into account, the groups
are subjectively selected, and can be interpreted using the variables
in the analysis or variables not used in the analysis. In fact
if variables not included in the analysis are used and trends
amongst the groups recognised, then there is a high level probability
that the groups are meaningful, as the non-included variable did
not contribute to the formation of the grouping (Connolly 1986).
The conclusions and recommendations were made on the basis of
the information gathered by means of the qualitative interviews
and the trends shown in the quantitative data. Links between traditional
knowledge and practices and sustainable fishing methods and organisation
were particularly focused on.
4.1: Qualitative Interviews in Ireland.
4.1.1: Qualitative Interviews on Inishmore, Aran Islands, County
Galway.
A number of respondents saw the importance of fishing on Inishmore
as having been, and still being, the economic backbone of the
community on the island. Some fishermen were full time, but the
majority were parttime fishermen-farmers, most people who had
land also fished. Even those fishermen who did not have land would
periodically work on farms. Until the liberalisation of land ownership
in the late 1800's, all three Aran Islands were owned by a landlord
and all fishermen and farmers paid rent for their cottages and
land. There was no charge for sea fishing rights.
The fishing was carried out by a variety of boat types. Initially
fishing was carried out from small wooden rowing and sailing boats
of around 7 to 10 m in length. The famous curraghs were introduced
subsequently and became the boat from which most fishing was carried
out. The heavy sailing hookers of up to 10 m long were much used
for transport and fishing from the mainland, but was mostly used
for transport on Inishmore and only infrequently used for fishing.
The bigger zulus and nobbies were introduced at the end of the
1800's and were first used as sailing vessels, after which engines
were installed in them and were used for fishing up to the 1940's.
From the early 1950's onwards diesel powered boats of about 17
to 19 m in length were used for trawling and these were the forerunner
of the present day trawlers. At the same time that the larger
boats were being used, the curraghs were also being fished by
one, two or three fishermen, including crew members of the larger
boats when they were not going out on the larger boats. The curragh
allowed those with little or no capital and those not living near
a good harbour to still be able to fish.
Most fishermen on Inishmore would have used a curragh at some
stage during their career. These rowing boats were very light
and often no more than 1 m wide and between 6 and 8 m long. Curraghs
are made from a framework of thin laths and ribs and heavier longitudinals,
over which traditionally cattle or seal skins, and later canvas
and tar, were stretched. These boats were used on the open ocean
and were quite seaworthy, riding on top of the waves and therefore
relatively easy to row. They could also be drawn up on a sand
or shingle beach and two or three men are sufficient to turn it
over and carry it to the top of the beach, above the high tide
mark, were they were put on trestles and tied down against storms.
This boat can be used from exposed shore and does not need an
intertidal or all-tide harbour. So this type of boat was used
by many people living on Inishmore from the beach closest to them,
even if it was an exposed shore.
As the curraghs were taken out of the sea after each trip, they
had a relatively long life span for such a light boat in exposed
maritime conditions. If the traditional coating of canvas and
tar was damaged, it could be repaired relatively easily by melting
the tar, applying more canvas and covering the patch with more
tar. Another important factor which made these boats popular was
that, as mentioned previously, Inishmore does not have many trees
nor therefore wood. Imported wood was expensive and much wood
used for houses and curraghs was acquired from driftwood. As a
curragh just has a light frame and the hull was made from canvas,
a minimum of wood was used in its construction.
The draw back of curraghs is that they can only carry a limited
amount of goods or fishing gear. The bow is curved upwards and
curraghs can therefore ride out the big waves of the Atlantic.
However, having a small amount of freeboard, a breaking wave could
easily swap the boat and sink it, so curraghs are seaworthy but
needed to be skilfully handled. Previous to weather forecasts
being available, using a curragh was very weather dependent. One
danger was to go out in the morning with fine weather, after which
a storm might blow up later on in the day so that on the way back,
as the curragh approached the coast, it would run the risk of
being swamped by breaking waves close to rocks and near the beach.
Another danger in these small boats was, and still is, fog. Even
close to the shore fishermen in curraghs have been known to get
lost. On one occasion a curragh with three fishermen from the
Aran Islands were picked up some 70 miles west of Inishmore by
a trawler, subsequent to getting lost in fog. These men were very
lucky, as other curraghs were never seen again after having been
caught out by fog which came down suddenly. It is also the experience
of the author that a fog can come down in a matter of 10 to 15
minutes.
With the limited amount of fishing gear which could be carried,
the fishing capacity of each curragh was also limited. These boats
were used for driftnetting, longlining, handlining and lobster
potting. Lobster pots in particular are bulky, so only a limited
number per day could be carried or moved from one place to another.
When taking the traditional cotton nets back into a curragh, one
had to be careful not to overload it as the net was now wet and
much heavier than when it was dry. Overloading curraghs with fish,
wet nets or to much sea weed was the cause of many accidents over
the years.
The fishing effort by the curragh fishermen was tailored to suit
demand. Much of the fish was for personal use, for immediate consumption,
to salt in a barrel for the winter or to salt and then dry which
was also consumed by the fisherman's family during the winter.
However, some of the salted and dried plaice and balan wrasse
in particular was used in a partial barter trade for turf, with
traders on the mainland in Connemara, northeast of Inishmore.
An amount of dried and salted fish would be bartered for a load
of turf plus a certain amount of money which the crew often used
to buy alcoholic drink with, very often in the establishment of
the merchant which had sold them the turf and taken the fish.
This trade which involved carrying bulky loads of turf was generally
not carried out by curraghs but by "hookers" which were
bigger and had a mast and sails. These larger boats were made
entirely from wood, with heavy timbers and a smooth carvel planked
hull and a considerable amount of ballast, usually stones, in
the bottom to enable it to sail. While hookers can dry out during
low tide, if they are kept upright against a pier, they could
not be kept on an exposed beach like the curraghs as it would
not be possible to lift them out because of their considerable
weight. So hookers need an all-tide or intertidal harbour to protect
them from adverse weather.
Some hookers which were used for fishing, were of a slightly different
shape than the transport hookers, but they were not as widely
used as the curragh. Some hookers are still being used but mainly
for leisure purposes, while curragh are still being used for lobster
fishing and some handlining to this day. Some modern curraghs
have a skin of fibreglass rather than tarred canvas and cost around
IR£1200, however, respondents on Inishmore only have to
pay IF£700 as they receive a grant from the state to the
amount of IR£500 as Inishmore is a Gaeltacht area.
Dried fish was also sold in County Clare and in Galway, to the
southeast of Inishmore, and this hard cash was also important
to pay the rent on the cottage and land as well as purchase needed
goods from the mainland. However, the dried fish trade just satisfied
the immediate subsistence need for money as well as the nutritional
needs of the family. So when enough fish was caught to satisfy
these needs, people stopped fishing.
Traditionally the fishing community on Inishmore did not accumulate
wealth in the form of money, even though the fish stocks were
many times better than they are now and catching more fish would
not have been a problem. The market forces on Inishmore and between
Inishmore and the mainland of Ireland were such that catching
as much fish as they could was not seen as being in their interest,
as the respondents perception was that they would not have been
able to get rid of them. The anomaly is however, that as long
as people on Inishmore remember, foreign boats have been fishing
off its shores, so these boats had a market on the continent of
Europe and were getting the fish within eyesight from the Inishmore
coast, while the locals were limiting their catches because of
a lack of market. The fishing boats which these Spanish, English,
Dutch and other European fishermen were using were much bigger
than the biggest Inishmore fishing boats and operated up to 200
mile offshore.
Several correspondents actually worked as crew members on English
and Welsh trawlers and pair-trawlers fishing in Aran waters, one
of which recounted how he sorting out sea bream from the catch
of predominantly hake and threw them down to curraghs lying alongside
the trawlers, when these came into sheltered waters close to Inishmore
to sort their catch. Sea bream were a prized species both fresh
and salted on the Aran Islands, but were not commercially important
to the Welsh fishermen. Despite the foreign fleets operating of
Inishmore, the local fishermen did not develop and invest in bigger
boats to also exploit this fishery. It may even have been possible
to sell their catches to these boats, and this did happened during
one short period after the Second World War when the Irish fleet
had small trawlers and the predominantly Dutch fishing boats were
buying herring.
In the opinion of the respondents these offshore stocks were not
commercially fished by the Inishmore fishermen because they did
not know very much about this fishery on their doorstep and in
any case did not have the capital to invest in larger boats. Bad
marketing was also blamed for this lack of realisation of the
then potential of these fisheries. The two fisheries existed along
side another for a long time, with the foreign boats trawling
quite close to the shore.
Some respondents also mentioned the use of smaller, probably clinker
build sailing and rowing boats some of which were used to set
seine on the beach. In fact the fish were so plentiful that a
seine net, laid out during low tide and drawn in at high tide,
would catch such prime fish as turbot, sole, brill, plaice and
even some bass. Again, this was done when the fish were needed
and once enough fish were caught the fishing was stopped. Time
and effort was needed to fillet, salt and dry these fish in addition
to the other work on the land, so fishing was continued only until
the immediate need was satisfied, as continuing was a waste of
valuable time. Yet theoretically much more fishing could have
been done if a market had been available.
Not all fish were regarded as equally suitable for salting. Scad,
or horse mackerel, were preferred over ordinary mackerel because
these were less oily. Wrasse was a preferred fish in Connemara,
as mentioned above, but on the Aran Islands sea bream was a favourite.
The problem with sea bream was that they more difficult to fillet,
or "split" as it is known locally. The splitting was
done from the belly of the fish upwards, with the two halves being
left connected at the back so that the fish remained in one piece.
Salted and dried ling or conger eel were also regarded as a nice
meal and was remembered as the traditional Christmas dinner by
a number of respondents. Some Inishmore respondents were familiar
with the Dutch name for dried ling, which is stokvis, indicating
that some small trade may have existed for this fish product with
Dutch fishermen or fish buyers.
The fish stocks around Inishmore were reported as having been
very good by virtually all respondents, currently they are assessed
as a fraction of what they were as recently as during the 1960's.
One respondent claimed that he caught 40 boxes of pollack in one
day on a good "mark", i.e.: a good spot above a wreck
of a ship which the fish live in and around, using a 20 hook handline.
Every time he let the line down he got a fish on each hook. This
was a very good catch even for that time, but was nonetheless
possible. Another respondents reported catches of 60 lobster and
40 crayfish per day from much less number of pots than they are
using now. One respondent reported 12 dozen lobster per day up
to 5 or 6 years ago, now he counted himself lucky to get one dozen.
Still other respondents recounted how one could not see the bottom
of boats as they come in because they were covered by lobsters
and crayfish. The hake grounds west of Inishmore were said to
be so good, that they were only second to the Icelandic hake grounds.
Fish were also very close inshore, as lobsters could be caught
from the shore and piers, as well as beach seining being a successful
method as described above. One lobster fisherman, operating from
a fibreglass curragh off the exposed northwest point of Inishmore,
remembered that even five or six years ago another five curraghs
were fishing from that point, now he was the only one. Many respondents
also remarked that the average size of many species had decreased
markedly, much larger fish being common 20 to 30 years ago.
In the case of sea bream, or bream as they are known on Inishmore,
their virtual disappearance is blamed on the trawlers for their
catching power as well as the noise they make. When handlining
for bream the Aran Islanders were very silent, not talking or
knocking against the boat, because bream were known to be very
shy fish. The disturbance caused by the engines is thought to
have contributed to their scarcity.
Another cause for the decline in fish stocks is thought to be
the use by Spanish boats of smaller net mesh sizes than those
of the Inishmore nets and that more species such as squid, ray
and shark species which the Inishmore fishermen were not interested
in, were taken by the Spanish. In particular, the small net mesh
size and the willingness of the Spanish to catch small sized fish
was disapproved of by respondents.
Since the Second World War, a number of respondents first made
some money fishing from smaller boats, then invested in a larger
boat aided by state loans and then could not meet the repayments,
sold the boat again and returned to smaller boats fishing on their
own or with one other person. The boats which were invested in
in the 1960's and 1970's were of an intermediate size and relied
on inshore trawling, unfortunately this was just in the areas
which were experiencing heaviest fishing pressure . Few larger
capacity trawlers were bought which could go offshore and find
new grounds and fish stocks and compete on an equal basis with
foreign boats. Those that did buy these larger boats are economically
doing best at the moment. Overall, as several respondents remarked:
"the fishing has gone bad", because even the larger
boats have to go further and fish longer hours to stay economic.
Gill and driftnetting used to be carried out with cotton nets
which had to be preserved with "bark", a substance which
was dissolved in water in which the nets were soaked. The nets
were then dried and gained a dark brown colour from this process.
A difference between these nets and the present day nylon nets
is that the barking process only protected the net for certain
length of time, and if the net were lost they would rot and fall
apart. Nylon is much more resistant than barked cotton and so
if a nylon net is lost it continues to go on "ghost fishing".
In other words, it continues to catch and kill fish for a long
time after it is lost. As a certain amount of gillnet is lost
each year, these ghost fishing bits of gillnet could accumulate
causing needless mortality of fish stocks.
When the fish stocks were good, a very effective method was longlining.
This was a line of a few hundred meters with side lines on it
and around 500 hooks. These hooks were all baited and neatly arranged
in a basket. Each crew member of a three-man crew in a curragh
prepared a basket in the evening which was set the following day.
While the longline, or spillet or spiller as it is known in many
regions in the west of Ireland, was set the crew could fish with
handlines before pulling in the longline again. The fish caught
with this method were generally the larger fish as the hooks and
bait were also large, so this method tended not to needlessly
kill smaller fish. The fish were also in good conditions, if they
were taken up the same or next day. Unlike in the codend of a
trawl net, the fish were not crushed and were also "bled"
at sea so that they did not turn "black" and stayed
in good condition longer. This method was well regarded on Inishmore,
but respondents stressed that one needs a good stock of larger
fish for this method to be worth while. Baiting over 500 hooks
each day is quite a laborious job that the whole family helped
with in the evening. In terms of investment needed for longlining,
the longline could be made from flax which was grown on Inishmore.
Handlines, baited with fish or shellfish were also used from the
rocks and cliffs, a method which was mostly aimed at wrasse.
As with the gillnet, the spillets were occasionally lost through
storms or snagging. To avoid losing large sections, the fishermen
attached floats or buoys at several points along the spillet so
that they could pull from both sides if it were to snag and brake.
This method, suffered from getting caught up in trawl nets. In
fact certain areas, such as the Gregory Sound southeast of Inishmore
(Fig. 2.1), was closed for trawling for part of the year to allow
the spillets a chance to fish and thus also provided a sanctuary
for smaller fish during these months. Respondents remarked that
they thought that the Gregory Sound was a good feeding place for
fish of all sizes as they always caught a lot of fish there. They
also said that Galway Bay used to be a good nursery area and could
be again in the future if trawling was restricted or banned there.
As mentioned in Section 2.2.2, the Congested Districts Boards
(CDB) were set up in 1891 largely as a result of the famine. They
introduced the nobbies and zulus as gillnetting boats for mackerel
and herring during the following year. Fishermen from the Isle
of Man and from Arklow on the east coast of Ireland were paid
to teach the Inishmore fishermen these techniques, indicating
that they were not familiar with either gillnetting, which seems
unlikely, or to operate these bigger sailing boats and the gillnets
on a bigger scale, which seems more likely. Herring had been fished
on a small scale for salting and as bait for longlines and mackerel
was only fished occasionally with handlines for own use previous
to this. The technique of salting fish in barrels was also introduced,
although this was also traditional in the cottages in Inishmore.
However, it is possible that salting on a commercial scale and
for export needs different skills.
An interesting aside, in terms of the evolution of traditional
and indigenous knowledge systems, is that the characteristically
patterned sweaters now known and marketed all over the world as
"Bawneen" or Aran Sweaters, were in fact also introduced
to the Aran Islands during this period by the Arklow and Manx
fishermen ("bawn" in Irish means white). Then these
sweaters were not yet produced commercially but knitted by the
women for the family.
The biggest difference was that bigger boats were introduced and
there was a market for the catches which these boats could produce.
The importance of these bigger boats on Inishmore is illustrated
by the story told by a 100 year old respondent and others, that
a new catholic priest on Inishmore in the late 1800's sent a letter
to the CDB requesting to either send boats or coffins, as poverty
was a big problem on the island. What was crucial is that the
CDB provided loans to the better fishermen to enable them to buy
these boats. The cleaning, salting and barrelling of fish and
netmaking provided much employment on Inishmore, including for
the women, and even attracted workers in from as far as Scotland.
This fishing industry experienced a boom time before, during and
after the First World War, but markets then disappeared as other
fleets were built up and once again began fishing. Many respondents
did not know why this happened, one respondent said it was due
to the United States putting a $2 tariff on each imported barrel
of salted fish to supports their own fishing sector. However,
by the middle 1920's the salted fish industry collapsed. Some
fresh fish was still being caught. A "hulk" or old ship's
hull was anchored off Kilronan and stored ice which was used to
keep the trawled fish fresh while waiting to be shipped to Galway
for marketing. The fishing industry went back similar to what
it had been before the boom, with the limited local Irish markets
being the main destination for the fish.
What did not happen is that the salted mackerel and herring fishery
of the CDB produced a capital base which was used to develop the
Inishmore fishing fleet further in order to fish the rich fishing
grounds of the west coast alongside the steam engined, and later
diesel, trawlers which fished there from all over Europe.
One fishery which did become more important since the 1920's was
the lobster fishery. French boats used to buy the lobster from
the Inishmore fishermen and transport them live in tanks to France.
These boats were called "well-boats" as sea water was
allowed to flow in and out to keep the lobster alive. Lobsters
were only rarely eaten by the islanders themselves, but were mostly
sold as they fetched a good price. The respondents did not seem
to prize the taste of lobster that highly but prefer to receive
the money for them.
The first lobster pots used on Inishmore were made from willow
branches, woven together similar to a basket. The willow branches,
locally known as "sally rods", are grown in small, somewhat
damp, corners of field separated off from the rest of the field.
These "sally gardens" have to be protected from grazing
animals as the branches are not very high, just coming over the
top of the surrounding dry stone wall. The treeless and windswept
landscape of Inishmore is therefore not interrupted by willow
trees as the branches are taken off close to the ground when they
attain the required length.
Some respondents claimed that lobsters were more inclined to enter
the wickerwork lobster pots than pots made from other material,
however these pots had to be lifted once or twice a day as the
lobster would finds its way out if he started walking around in
the pot after finishing the bait. However, the French lobster
buyers introduced what is still known as the French pot, cylindrical
in shape and made from lathes with the ends closed off by net
mesh. After these, pots covered in net mesh over hoops fixed on
a wooden base were used, and also pots made entirely from metal
mesh, square in shape, known as the wire pots.
All these pots have a round opening made from wood or plastic
of up to 23 cm diameter in the case of crayfish, but less for
lobsters. If the lobster starts to walk around the pot, he can
and will eventually find his way out. For this reason the pots
were lifted once or twice a day. This also meant that a fisherman
could only handle a certain number of pots per day, as they had
to be serviced, which took time. However, the most recent type
of pot, called the parlour pot, has an opening made of netting
which is stretches in such a way that it has a little flap which
the lobster pushes open when he enters, but cannot open from the
inside because pushing against it just closes it. So now many
more pots can be put out as the lobsters will not get out, and
one can service the pots every second or third day. In effect
one fisherman can fish three times the number of pots he can service
in a day.
Another aspect of the non-return flaps in the parlour pots is
that pots that get detached from the main rope to which a series
of lobster pots are attached, like the ghost-fishing nylon gillnets,
go on fishing and the lobsters eventually die due to starvation
as they cannot get out. Respondents saw this as a bad aspect and
had heard of toggles which only had a certain life span in sea
water and held an opening shut, but on dissolving away would release
the lobster. They had heard of these toggles being used in Canada,
but no respondent knew of anyone using them on Inishmore as yet,
or if these toggles were available from suppliers. Series, or
strings, of lobster pots are quite susceptible to storm damage
and can quite easily be swept away or entangled in rocks. The
lobster pots are set close to or on rocks as this is the lobster's
habitat, so snagging is a regular occurrence.
Some respondents said that at the time that lobster were plentiful,
the gravid egg carrying, or "berried", females used
to be released, but others said that this was never done. Some
also said that taking small lobsters and gravid females was looked
down on, but others said that they were all taken and sold. One
respondent knew of a fisherman who used to take the smaller lobsters
and released them in a bay close to his fishing base, but stopped
doing that when he saw others fishing this bay.
In response to the drastic decline in lobster stocks in recent
years, a lobster conservation scheme has been started on Inishmore
and other fishing communities around the Irish coast, under the
auspices of the Irish Sea Fisheries Board, Bord Iascaigh Mhara
(BIM), and the EU's PESCA Programme.
It involved the setting up of a lobster fishermen's cooperative
of which the members would return lobster under 85 mm carapace
length, to be upgraded to 90 mm later, and to sell gravid or berried
lobsters to the coop, which then clips a "V" notch in
part of the tail and releases the female again. It has been made
illegal to keep and sell lobsters with V notched tails. In this
way a brood stock of reproducing females is conserved. It has
also been recommended that lobsters of greater than 130 mm be
released as these are over the ideal size for the restaurant trade
and produce a considerable amount of eggs per year. This conservation
scheme has been accepted in many fishing communities in the west
of Ireland, including Inishmore, as the same scheme has resulted
in greatly increased incomes for lobster fishermen in Canada.
With the aid of video's the Irish fishermen were informed about
the Canadian scheme. With the proviso that everyone kept to it,
most respondents were in favour of the scheme.
The crayfish fishery was initially nonexistent because there was
no market for them. But as a market developed for them in France,
crayfish became popular. At first they were fished for with pots,
but it was found that at times the crays were reluctant to go
into a pot, as they seemed to be migrating and not eating, so
the bait seemed to have little attraction for them. Tangle nets
were then introduced by BIM. These were very effective in catching
crayfish, as well as most other bottom living fish. However, it
was since then that the crayfish stocks declined and the over-use
of these nets is what most respondents blamed for the demise of
crayfish. In fact, many thought that tanglenets were also very
harmful for other species. With tanglenets one also has the problem
of lost nets continuing to kill fish. Presently few if any crayfish
are caught around Inishmore and there is no regular trade in them
at present.
An unusual fishery was practised off Inishmore for basking sharks,
which intermittently occur along the Irish coasts. One respondent
had fished for them with a harpoon designed for whaling. Approximately
20 years ago many basking sharks visited Inishmore waters, even
swimming around Kilronan harbour at high tide. The fishermen fished
them from a 10.5 m boat, while the sharks were up to 12 m long.
These shark are plankton feeders and filter out their food by
slowly swimming along, singly or sometimes in schools, at or near
the surface with their mouths open. As they are near the surface
it is possible to harpoon them. However, once one is hit, if there
is a school the others dive out of sight. He remembered that it
was only possible to catch two a day as the shark had to be strapped
along side the boat and, using long handled scythes, opened up
and the liver taken out. This liver is full of oil which is the
only part of the shark for which there was a market. Respondents
remarked on the curative power of this oil for cuts and burns,
and also said that the oil sealed holes in their water proof clothing.
Once the liver was out, the shark, depending on the oil in its
large liver for buoyancy, would sink and then one had to rapidly
release the shark from the side of the boat to avoid this heavy
weight causing the boat to become unstable. On release the shark
just sank. The respondent remembered getting up to 1.5 tons of
liver out of large sharks, which was stored on board in baskets,
a rather bloody affair by all accounts.
Norwegians also hunted the basking shark with their whaling boats
and thus were able to take these large fish on board and could
extract the liver on board in comfort. Despite the obviously superior
catching capacity of the Norwegian boats, the Inishmore respondents
did not think that their fishing effort caused the lack of baskers
around Inishmore since the mid 1980's. Its current absence is
seen more as part of a cycle which also occurred in the past when
periods of abundance of basking shark was followed by years when
non were seen. In addition, having seen large numbers of them
cruising along and being able to catch so few of them, gave the
respondent the impression that mortality due to fishing was not
an important factor in their population dynamics.
Basking shark, Cetorhinus maximus, (sometimes locally called
sunfish but is not the species sun-fish, Mola mola) are
the second largest fish found on earth, the whale shark, Rhincodon
typus, of tropical waters and also a plankton feeder, is the
largest (Wheeler 1978).
During the 20th century, driftnetting with gillnets for salmon
became quite popular around Inishmore as at other locations around
the Irish coast. This is a fishery carried out during the summer
and relies on salmon, migrating to their home river to spawn,
to swim into gillnet which can be at the surface or below it,
depending on how deep the salmon are. The salmon are relatively
highly priced and provided an important part of the annual income
for those involved. One has to have a license to carry out this
fishery, the only one for which this is necessary. In addition,
this fishery is regulated in terms of size of net, size of mesh,
days of the week and time of year when one can fish and other
rules. It is a type of fishing that can be carried out by a relatively
small boats, such as curraghs. However, it is notorious for being
fished by non-license holders and even if they have a license
that they brake the law in other ways. The inland salmon fishers,
both commercial and pleasure, blame the offshore driftnetters
such as on Inishmore for the decline in salmon stocks over the
last 30 years. The salmon driftnetters claim the right to fish
for salmon passing by their front door and also blame pollution
of rivers for the salmon's decline. They refer to the British
landlord era when land and inland fishing rights were privately
owned and that now the public should have a right to fish them.
One respondent said that he had always had a license and had more
or less kept to the regulations, but that fishermen either side
of him did not and so he felt he was putting himself at a relative
disadvantage. His opinion was that the driftnetters should, in
consultation with the inland salmon fishermen and salmon fishery
managers, have certain limits set for their fishery, but that
these limit should apply equally to all salmon driftnetters and
should be enforced.
Another problem encountered with salmon driftnetting is that seals
have learned to take salmon, which are just caught, out of nets.
Stories are told of the fisherman seeing a salmon flash as he
struggles in the gillnet and that he has to race against a seal
who had also seen it and was trying to get there before the fisherman
does. If a net is not carefully watched, many salmon may be half
eaten or completely taken out. Seals are also believed to follow
salmon fishing boats out from the harbour to be near to a net
when the salmon gets entangled in it. Many respondents estimated
that the seal population had increased by a factor of 20 or more
since it has been made illegal to kill them in 1976.
Traditionally seals had been hunted for their skin and meat around
Inishmore and in later years when these needs were met with from
other sources, a bounty was put on a seal head and later a seal
nose to shoot them in order to protect the fish stocks. Now most
respondents who were asked think that there are to many seals
and that they are having a serious effect on the inshore stock
of fish such as pollack, by either catching them or scaring them
away. "They eat their own weight in fish a day". Some
respondents think that the increased seal numbers will put them
out of business. One respondent advised that a proper seal census
be done and if the figures show what he suspects that a controlled
cull be carried out with an effective riffle, under license and
supervision from the authorities. His opinion was that if the
culls was not legally instituted and organised then it would be
done illegally. Most respondents who complained about the seal
numbers, prefaced their comments by expressing a liking and admiration
for seals as animals, but that the current vast increase in numbers
meant a serious impact on the inshore fisheries. Sightings of
seals 40 to 50 miles offshore were interpreted as indicating that
seals were forced to look for food far out to sea, because there
was so little left close to shore. BIM had been contacted by fishermen
and are investigating this reported problem.
The local fishermen don't want the illegal killing of seals because
this could affect tourism, as seals are generally seen as desirable
animals by most non-fishermen. Local opinion is that political
pressure from the Green lobby has had the effect of increasing
the seal population to the extent that it has. A reduction in
numbers is desired, not an eradication of all seals.
A traditionally very important marine resource was a number of
different types of sea weed. Sea weeds were eaten, such as carrigeen
moss and dillisk, and also boiled in milk and used in preparation
of foods and health care remedies. Certain seaweeds were used
as fertilisers in the potato gardens and also for other vegetables.
Some sea weeds are reputed to be better for certain vegetables
such as turnips and carrots and other sea weeds are better for
potatoes. In the case of Inishmore, with its lack of soil, the
humus provided by these plants was of vital importance. Traditionally
different families had the right to gather sea weed from different
patches of shore, where the sea weed would be thrown up by the
sea after a storm. Collecting sea weed, or kelp, from someone
else's patch of shore line was seen as a despicable act. An old
dislike between two families was often described as a "kelp
spite". Sea weed was also cut from under water at low tide
and collected in this fashion.
One very important type of kelp was the strap-like Laminaria species.
The stalks, locally called sea-rods, which connects the straps
to the rocky substrate was collected from the sea shore after
storms as well as cut at low tide, dried and gathered into large
stacks. This was burned in a kiln and stirred with pokers. After
more than a day of burning, a liquid substance resulted which
solidified into hard blocks when cooled. This resinous material
was sold as it had a high iodine content. Most people on Inishmore
collected and burned kelp every year and earned money with this
cash trade. In later years it was discovered that if the kelp
was just burned to ash, the iodine content was actually higher.
So then burning was not continued overnight and the ash was packed
in bags and sold.
One problem with the burned kelp trade was that the buyers tested
the resin, and later the ash, for iodine content and then fixed
a price for the producers. Some respondents still think that they
were not given a fair price by these buyers, as there was no competition
and it was a buyer's market. Nevertheless, this activity was a
very important and reliable source of cash for the community on
Inishmore. A factory for sea weed processing was set up on the
island but this ran into financial difficulties as well as conflict
with the locals over prices.
Another marine product was used for agriculture and that was salted
mackerel, which was fed to pigs. However, the flesh of these pigs
took on a flavour from the mackerel so this was not a preferred
practice.
The EU Common Fisheries Quotas system was generally seen as
having been pitched at to low a level when Ireland joined the
EU. It was felt that Ireland was satisfied with relatively low
fishery quotas as it received good deals on agriculture from the
EU. So the fishermen think that Irish fisheries have been sold
out in favour of Irish agriculture by its own government.
Some also commented that the quota system was not working as it
is supposed to. The basic returns from the industry are in their
opinion flawed, after which the biologists make recommendations
which are based on inaccuracies, followed by politicians who change
it to make their deals and then the allowed quotas come back to
the fishing fleets, who don't keep to them. So the whole system
is seen as being inaccurate and virtually meaningless. The impression
given by the fishermen was one of exasperation and annoyance at
the lack of EU control and knowledge about the industry, believing
that fishing is low on the list of EU priorities.
Generally the Irish and EU authorities are seen as being out of
touch and largely indifferent to the needs and opinions of fishing
communities such on Inishmore.
The question of safety in fishing was spoken about, but not
immediately and only when asked. The community on the Inishmore
is fairly small (Fig. 2.2), so everyone knows victims of drowning
accidents or are related to them. So the subject of safety is
a rather personal as well as an important one. By commenting on
a particular accident one may be perceived by others as criticising
the deceased in some way or blaming others for the accident. In
a small community, these situations are avoided if at all possible.
From information gained, mostly from respondents who do live on
Inishmore but who, through their work, stand slightly apart from
the community, it appears that less accidents occur in connection
with the sea than one would expect on an island on the western
fringe of Europe, stemming the full force of the Atlantic Ocean.
In the accidents on Inishmore which were commented on, the element
of human error seemed to play an important role. When one is dealing
with the sea, especially around the rugged coast of Inishmore,
an error of judgment, however small and seemingly insignificant,
can often be irrevocable and have far more serious consequences
than expected. In the past a number of accidents occurred which
were reputedly due to overloading, particularly of curraghs with
fish, wet nets or sea weed, as mentioned previously. Before weather
forecasts were widely available rapidly changing weather was also
the cause of a number of accidents, however this obviously occurs
much less often now. In other instances the use of alcohol was
involved and therefore suspected of being the cause, or at least
a contributory factor, and this occasionally is still the case.
Fishing from rocks and cliffs straight down into the water can
also be dangerous, as people can slip and fall in and then find
it very difficult to get out, finding themselves in the water
at the base of a sheer rock face. Occasional large waves have
been known to wash fishermen standing on rock platforms into the
sea. Thirteen people were killed once at the southwest corner
of Inishmore by being washed off by what is presumed to have been
an earthquake generated tidal wave. Even without tidal waves,
an ordinary swell can run up an inclining rock platform much further
than one would suspect and respondents advised to watch a particular
spot on a rock for a while to see if it is being washed over by
the occasional wave, before going down and fishing from it. The
danger involved in fishing from a cliff, 40 or more meters above
the sea, is that these cliffs are gradually falling into the sea
and large blocks of rock can be lose and fall down, so care is
also needed when fishing from the top of a cliff.
But the biggest factor which fishermen themselves are worried
about is the age of the smaller trawlers, 16 to 25 m in length.
These trawlers are not in as good a state of repair as the bigger
trawlers because they are much older, some over 30 years old,
and very often their owners are on a tight budget so try to avoid
expensive alterations. An added worry is that these trawlers,
which were build for trawling relatively close to the coast, are
now forced to go further out to sea because inshore fish stocks
are so low that it is not commercially viable to fish inshore.
In effect they are forced to compete with the much larger, newer
and better equipped Irish and foreign offshore trawlers. The tendency
to use these smaller older trawlers to the limit of their capacity
has, in the opinion of some respondents, created the situation
that they are an accident waiting to happen and which could be
prevented with better equipment. However, as some respondents
pointed out, if road traffic deaths were compared with fishing
accidents, there may not be such a big difference, even though
fishing may seem much more risky. On the whole respondents did
not say that they thought fishing was very much more dangerous
than other work.
Social scientists and historians which were interviewed as part
of gathering background information on West of Ireland coastal
communities, mentioned a traditional attitude with regard to drowning
accidents. This was a certain acceptance of drownings and that
they were seen in some way as unavoidable, or even fair, as people
took so much from the sea, that occasionally the sea also took
back something from the people. Incidents mentioned, not on Inishmore
but in other coastal communities, involved people who were saved
and did not thank the people who saved them. Also that a priest
preached very strongly against the fact that little or no attempt
had been made to save a drowning person. This attitude also meant
that fishermen very often could not swim, the reason being that
they would die quicker if "their time had come".
This attitude of acceptance was not encountered amongst the respondents
who participated in the present study on Inishmore, but they were
very much in favour of using the newest and best safety equipment.
In fact one incident of a near drowning was recounted in which
a member of the Inishmore fishing community was swept over board
by getting entangled in nets which were being set. In order to
free himself of the net, he mutilated himself quite badly and
did succeeded in freeing himself and was saved. This was very
drastic and resolute action to the extent of near cutting off
a limb in order to survive, and quite the opposite to an fateful
acceptance of drowning on the part of the fisherman himself. The
attitude of the respondent was not in keeping with an acceptance
of such events, as it was one of admiration and respect for this
person's action, and seen as serving as a role model in determination
and character for present and future fishermen.
With regard to swimming, it was reported that a number of fishermen
could swim and some even very well, but that swimming was itself
a dangerous activity and one was at risk while learning. Much
more confidence was placed in safety equipment than being able
to swim.
A factor which several of the respondents commented on was that
storms seemed to occur more often and be more severe than they
used to be, and that spring high tides appeared to be higher than
in the past. The harbour master of the port of Galway concurred
with these impressions, but the Irish Meteorological Service in
Dublin stated that there was no evidence to suggest that recent
storms were part of an overall increase in this type of weather
and fit in with the normal general pattern that some years are
stormier than others. The impression of engineering personnel
of the Department of the Marine was that the maximum height of
spring high tides have not got higher, but that combinations of
wind and air pressure has the effect of causing considerable variation
in tidal levels on the west coast of Ireland and that this has
always been the case.
For the future, the main conservation measures which the respondents put forward were: the restriction of foreign fleet close to the Irish coast, no fishing on weekends, close certain nursery areas for part of the year, no pair-trawling in Galway Bay, use of bigger meshes, ban the use of tanglenets and equal enforcement of EU fishery regulations in all EU member states.
Currently the fishing community on Inishmore is involved in
four different levels of fishing.
The first level consisted of two 30 m semi-automated trawlers
which are able to operate along the entire west coast of Ireland
and over the whole continental shelf. These are perceived by others
to be doing well commercially.
The second level are the 15 to 25 m older trawlers of which there
are approximately half a dozen and which are more restricted in
their range and power. The equipment is not as new and powerful
as on the biggest trawlers and their fishing capacity is much
less. They appear to be commercially holding their own if they
are owned outright. On this size and age of boat, loan interest
and repayments are difficult to meet. The conditions of work for
the crew are not at all as comfortable as on the new larger trawlers.
The safety of these older boats is also more limited than the
newer larger boats, as mentioned above.
The third level are the halfdeckers of approximately 10 m, operated
by one or two crew and concentrating on lobster potting and pollack
fishing, some gillnetting and also salmon driftnetting in season
if the owner has a license.
The fourth level are the curraghs which carry out more or less
the same type of fishing as the halfdeckers but don't have the
space or comfort. However, the curraghs can operate from a beach
or exposed slipway, while all the halfdeckers on Inishmore are
more or less bound to the harbours at Kilronan and Killeany and
therefore usually have to travel further to get to the good ground.
Killeany has the added restriction of being an intertidal harbour,
though well sheltered. In the past many boats used to operate
from Port Murvey, but this bay is very exposed to easterly and
northeasterly winds (Fig. 2.1).
4.1.2: Qualitative Interviews on Inishbofin, County Galway.
The importance of fishing on Inishbofin has varied considerably
during the last centuries. As mentioned previously, the Harbour
on Inishbofin (Fig. 2.3) was historically used by fishermen from
other ports in Ireland as well as mainland Europe for shelter
during the fisheries on the rich fishing grounds immediately surrounding
Inishbofin. However, the respondents from Inishbofin saw fishing
as having been a second option to agriculture, being additional
to their main concern which was working on the land. The landlord
system is perceived as having kept the people poor by means of
high land rents demanded by the landlord who owned the island.
Fishing was reported as being the extra means of earning money,
while agriculture provided the basic food requirements. On Inishbofin,
as on Inishmore, most fishermen were also involved in farming.
However, although regarded as secondary to farming, fishing was
an important resource and most did some form of it. The cost of
purchasing nets and other fishing gear were quite high and at
times difficult to raise. One story which a respondent recounted
was that rent collectors were visiting the island, impounding
cattle to cover rent arrears. They could do this if the cattle
were outside, but not if they were indoors and could not be seen.
One man had all his cattle indoors and thought he was safe, but
he had left his mast and sail from his boat on his front wall
and they were impounded instead. These were so important to him
that he was forced, with the help of others, to quickly buy these
back from the collectors before they left the island, thus covering
the rent arrears. Fishing to this man was an essential part of
his income, although he possibly spent more time on the land.
The boats used on Inishbofin were the same as those already described
for Inishmore, except that during the 18th and 19th century a
large type rowing boat with five to six crew members, which could
also be sailed, was in regular use. These were used from the Harbour,
East End Bay and North Beach Bay (Fig. 2.3) where there are relatively
sheltered moorings. The curraghs were also in use, as they were
on Inishmore. The large wooden rowing boats and the sailing "puchauns",
which were also rowed without their sailing ballast, were traditionally
used for driftnetting of herring and mackerel. The puchaun was
similar to a hooker but smaller in size. Hookers were also used
but, as on Inishmore, more for transport than for fishing.
The CDB in conjunction with the last landlord of Inishbofin also
established herring and mackerel curing and barrelling both at
the Harbour and at East End pier. Inishbofin is remembered as
having a large population at that time. Similarly to many west
of Ireland fishing communities, the nobbies and zulus were also
introduced on Inishbofin. One zulu remains based in the Harbour
and is still in use for transporting goods to the island. This
boat, to the author's knowledge, may be the only one of its type
remaining in Ireland. Respondents estimated that 100 nobbies,
which were somewhat smaller and more manoeuvrable than the zulus
and therefore preferred for netting, were based on Inishbofin
during the heyday of the salted fish industry. This lasted until
1926 when the driftnetting stopped and a few fishermen started
to use the zulus and nobbies fitted with engines for trawling.
After 1926 the market for fish was quite weak, as already described
for Inishmore. However, the lobster fishing continued all during
the 1930's, 40's and 50's, as it had since the beginning of the
1800's, and was carried out using curraghs and wooden rowing boats.
During this time there was much emigration from Inishbofin, and
with workers still needed on the land, few people were available
for fishing. During this time fish prices and demand were low.
In the 1960's BIM, again similar to Inishmore, developed inshore
trawling. As a result 4 medium sized trawlers were based in Inishbofin.
The fish were sold in the same way as on Inishmore, including
the salted and dried fish barter trade with the mainland. Respondents
remembered that Norwegian boats bought herring directly from the
fishermen in North Beach, the Harbour and East End. They also
recounted how the landlords before the last one tried to get as
much as they could out of the tenants. The landlords insisted
that the fishing gear was bought from them and that they bought
much of the fish. In this way, in addition to the rents they charged,
they are seen as having kept the people very poor on the island,
as there was a mark-up in price, compared to the mainland, on
the fishing gear and the fish prices were controlled by them as
well. These earlier landlords were also said to have been against
building a pier in North Beach Bay, because they would not have
been able to keep things under control as much as in the Harbour,
also stunting development in this way. A pier was build in North
Beach Bay subsequently but this was demolished by a northerly
storm. Of course curraghs were used from the beach, and this is
still being done.
The last landlord, who resided on the island during the latter
part of the 1800's until 1916 did try to improve the economic
situation of the islanders and was instrumental in promoting the
CDB developments on Inishbofin.
The salting and drying of bream and wrasse was seen by some respondents
as a lot of work. Fish were also salted in barrels which were
kept in the houses. The salt content of the brine was correct
if a mackerel or potato would float in it. Lobsters were sold
by the "baker's dozen", or per 13 lobsters, not being
sold by weight until the 1950's. So no advantage was gained from
larger lobsters.
In the 1960's BIM collected fish from Cleggan, the mainland port
closest to Inishbofin, and paid a fixed price for them. However,
this was discontinued and the reasons remembered for this were
a lack of regular amounts of fish, the ice plant in Cleggan braking
down and not being repaired and BIM not being able to maintain
its fixed prices. Then the fishermen organised transport themselves
to the Galway and Dublin fish markets, something which largely
fell to their wives while they were out fishing. With all the
costs of transport and attendant problems, such as reliability
of persons handling sales, as well as low fish prices, this system
brought many difficulties with it. Paradoxically, during this
same time respondents remember seeing so many foreign boats off
the shores of Inishbofin, that their light at night made it appear
that they were floating cities. These, as far as they knew, were
mainly fishing for hake. This again shows the difference between
the struggling inshore Irish fishery and the offshore foreign
boats, which appear to have been doing very well, fishing within
a few miles from each other.
Like on Inishmore, halfdeckers became important during the 1970's,
mostly fishing for lobsters and crayfish, and likewise the trammel
nets used during this time are also blamed on Inishbofin for the
virtual disappearance of crayfish.
A combination of relative good earnings from agriculture and the
lack of people due to emigration are some of the reasons given
for the lack of development of fishing from Inishbofin during
the 1920's and 30's and again in the 1950's and 60's. It was also
thought to have been the case that there was a lack of knowledge
about the economic potential of hake and other fish just west
of Bofin. One respondent believes that political independence
for Ireland was very much connected with people owning their own
land, but the seas were not perceived as being part of this new
freedom and conquest. In addition, foreign fleets had been fishing
off the west coast for centuries and people accepted this and
were used to it.
Tourism is a new and growing industry on Inishbofin, and part
of this is sea angling, for which there is great potential. What
is felt to be important for the success of sea angling is that
the anglers come to stay on the island. This is already happening
in another branch of the marine tourism industry, with the two
hotels on the island catering for groups of SCUBA divers for whom
the clear waters around Inishbofin are a great attraction. However,
some respondents said they suspected some divers of taking lobsters
while diving, which is illegal in Ireland and stealing from the
lobster fisherman.
As in Inishmore, all of the respondents were of the opinion
that fish stocks were seriously depleted compared to as recently
as the 1960's. Herring were reported as being good until 20 years
ago, and while people used to use 30 to 40 lobster pots per fisherman,
often having an individual buoy on each pot, now they are using
200/300 pots and have strings of six to ten pots on one rope.
Another respondent told of how he used to be able to see crayfish
walk along the bottom. While lobster potting is similar to that
on Inishmore, crabs, also of increased importance on Inishmore,
was more talked about on Inishbofin than on Inishmore. The large
subtidal edible crab is caught in lobster pots along with lobsters.
Generally only the crab claws are marketable as it does not have
a big tail like a lobster. The claws are taken off the crab after
which the crab is thrown back. As the crab is capable of regrowing
a claw, some fishermen used to only take one claw off, so that
the crab could fend for itself and eat using the other claw and
regrow the missing one. But because of recent demand for crab
claws, it is now probably more usual to take both claws. Whether
a crab can survive losing both claws is not known, as it would
put a crab at a strong competitive disadvantage relative to other
crabs and it would also experience twice as much physiological
stress and demand on his system.
Basking shark were also reported from near Inishbofin around 130
years ago, then not seen for a number of decades, but sighted
again approximately 15 years ago. No one from the island fished
for them, but Norwegian ships, anchored in North Beach Bay, were
thought to have been processing them.
One respondent mentioned that whale meat was eaten on the island
in the early 1800's, whether this was from a landed whale or whether
it was harpooned or netted he did not know.
The sensitivity of sea bream to noise was not thought to be important
to those respondents who used to fish for them. But they used
to use a bag of "rubby-dubby" (net bag filled with cut
up oily fish such as mackerel) to attract the bream close to the
boat when fishing for them with hand lines.
The fishing methods used on Inishbofin were generally the same as those used on Inishmore, with lobster potting, long- and handlining, driftnetting, seine netting, and later trawling being employed. In the 19th century trawling was seen by some fishermen on Inishbofin as damaging the fish stock as it caught and killed smaller fish as well, which is a needless waste as there is little or no market for them. Small fish just swim through the meshes of a drift net.
The opinion of nearly all respondents on Inishmore regarding the inordinately high numbers of seals in the area, was not found to the same degree on Inishbofin. When asked, most respondents did think there were more seals than there used to be, but estimated only twice as much as before the mid 1970's. They did not seem unduly worried about the seals. However, a factor which may play a part in this is that most fishing on Inishbofin at present is lobster and crab fishing which is done with pots, and don't present a tempting bait to seals. The seal damage is reported from gillnets in which the fish are trapped for a period of time so that the seals can get them easily. While some gill and trammelnetting does occur around Inishbofin, this is just for lobster bait and on a small scale.
Seaweed had the same importance in Inishbofin as in Inishmore,
being used for fertiliser as well as burned for its iodine content.
Very little seaweed is now used for fertilising and non is burned
for iodine extraction. However, one aspect which respondents mentioned
was that families gathered seaweed from certain specific patches
and it caused serious conflict if one took seaweed from someone
else's patch. As mentioned previously, this was also the case
on Inishmore.
Territoriality also existed in the lobster fishery. Fishermen
from the three centres of Inishbofin from which lobstering was
carried out, North Beach, East End and the Harbour used not to
encroach on each other's territory. Everyone knew where the boundary
lay and did not stray over it.
Currently fishermen from the neighbouring island of Inishturk,
to the north of Inishbofin, carry out lobster potting quite close
to Inishbofin, moving closer to their own island as the season
advances. The fishermen on Inishbofin accept this at the moment,
but one respondent remarked that if they felt that they were taking
to many or if more people wanted to fish lobsters from Inishbofin
and needed the lobster grounds, a few buoys would be cut from
the ropes of Inishturk lobster pots and as a result the Inishturk
fishermen would tend not to set their pots to close to Inishbofin.
The lobster territories and patches from which seaweed was gathered
are not as strictly adhered to as when more use was made of these
marine resources, but people still are well aware that they existed
and would be prepared to implement them again if they deemed it
to be required. It seems to be a flexible system which is adapted
to the needs of the people.
Safety at sea plays a big role on Inishbofin, as the possibility
of accidents is ever present for a community whose members are
so frequently in boats, even if they are not fishermen, because
as a small island they have to regularly travel to the mainland.
Accidents which happened in the late 1800's are still recalled
together with the names of the people who drowned and the names
of their family relations. Judging from background information,
storms seem to have played a big role in these accidents, with
boats sinking trying to make it across from Cleggan to get back
to the island. This crossing appears shorter than the crossing
from Inishmore to the mainland, and therefore may be more tempting
to chance crossing it in bad weather. Overloading of boats with
sea weed and fish were other reasons which respondents recalled
as causing the sinking of curraghs and other small boats.
It was the practice to surround a shoal of herring or mackerel
with a seine net and then draw it up until the fish came to the
top. Then the boat would be brought alongside the net and the
gunwale tipped down and the fish slid in from the full net. When
the boat was getting full of a mixture of water and fish a basket
was pressed into the fish and the water, which would run into
the basket, was bailed out. Respondents remembered boats having
to leave and deliver fish because they were full and then return
to collect the rest. However, the temptation was always there
to try to take all the fish in one go, because the journey to
deliver the fish was long, sometimes to Cleggan.
One lady who lived on Inishbofin during the latter half of the
19th century and early 20th century, lost two husbands and two
sons in three different drowning accidents.
The tragedy which is most often remembered is known as "The
Cleggan Disaster", which occurred on the night of Friday
28th October, 1927, in which nine fishermen from Inishbofin drowned,
as well as 44 from other fishing communities in that section of
the western coast line. Only one body of the Inishbofin fishermen
was ever recovered. Weather appeared calm as a number of the large
wooden rowing boats (not curraghs) went out drifnetting for herring,
but a ferocious storm blew up very quickly and each boat struggled
against huge waves as they were trying to hold onto their drift
net, which were several hundred meters long. They did not get
the chance to take the nets in, as this takes some time, and were
trying hold onto it because the alternative was to cut the boat
free and lose the net. The fishermen were poor and could not afford
to do so because the nets were expensive and they would not have
been able to replace them. Poverty was the root cause of their
attempt not to lose their nets and caused the loss of life as
it delayed them getting back.
This disaster affected many families on the island, and the loss
and demoralisation caused by this tragedy marked the end of the
gillnet fishery for herring and mackerel on Inishbofin.
There have been relatively few drowning accidents in recent years,
as boats are bigger and better and far fewer people fish. However,
sadly one the respondents of the present study was reported missing
shortly after the author's stay on Inishbofin. His body was later
found some 30 km north of Inishbofin near Clare Island. It is
presumed that he slipped from rocks and fell in as he occasionally
went fishing from the rocks. This is a danger of rock fishing
as discussed in Section 4.1.1.
Respondents suggested a number of conservation measures, one
of which was that, like lobster fishermen on Inishbofin, the Inishturk
fishermen would join the lobster "V" notching programme
(Section 4.1.1). A survey was suggested of all fishing methods,
their pros and cons and the markets which were available for the
fish, and that all this information be conveyed to the fishermen
so that they could make informed judgments and decisions about
their future activities and investments. As on Inishmore, all
were agreed that the crayfish trammel nets were responsible for
the demise of this lucrative fish. The worry of foreign, particularly
Spanish, boats depleting the local stocks was expressed by respondents,
but some thought that these foreign fleets were so far advanced
that the local fishermen would never catch up or be able to compete
with them. There was also a general opinion that the inshore stocks
were so far gone that the Spanish boats would not bother to fish
close to the shore, when a number of Spanish boats would be allowed
to fish inside the Irish Box from 1th January 1996, as per EU
regulation.
A possible solution to the low fish stocks problem, put forward
by one respondent, was to develop fish farming.
Currently fishing on Inishbofin is at a very low level, particularly compared to the fishing which was carried out here in the past. The main activity is lobster and crab potting. During the summer season some sea angling is also carried out as well as providing transport for SCUBA divers, but these activities are still on a very low level.
4.1.3: Qualitative Interviews in Dingle region, County Kerry.
Dingle contrasts with the previous two Irish study areas in that
it was historically of greater economic importance (Section 2.4.2),
serving a greater catchment area. Some respondents claimed that
Dingle had one time been "the greatest port in Munster",
until Tralee, the administrative capital of County Kerry, was
connected to the sea by a canal and became more important as a
trading port. Fishing was always an important part of the economic
activity of Dingle. Respondents estimated that while fishermen
lived all over Dingle town, the areas close to the pier, including
"the Colony", were almost entirely made up of fishermen's
families. Outside Dingle town, agriculture was the main activity,
as it was in most regions of Ireland, and many farmers who lived
around the perimeter of the Dingle peninsula also fished, like
the fishermen-farmers of Inishmore and Inishbofin. However, traditionally
many fishermen resident in the town of Dingle were full-time fishermen,
as the large harbour of Dingle allowed shelter for bigger boats
and, in combination with initially a limited local market and
later an outside market for fish, these boats and their crews
could make a living all year round. The basic reason why Dingle
grew as a market and trading town, as well as a centre for fishing
activity, is its sheltered harbour.
Despite the sheltered harbour and Dingle's location surrounded
by seas which traditionally held great fish stocks, the fishing
industry did experience up and downs, which in the memory of the
fishermen were mostly due to marketing and transport problems
and constraints. As mentioned in Section 2.4.2, the train connection
which was established with Tralee in 1891 enabled prime fish,
such as turbot, sole and brill to be exported fresh to Dublin
and London and this made a great difference to the fishing industry.
However, the same situation existed on the Dingle Peninsula as
in the rest of Ireland with regard to the landlord system of land
ownership. Despite the natural resources of the Dingle area, the
people were known for their poverty, even before the famine, as
described in Section 2.4.2.
The boats which were used for fishing in Dingle were similar to
those used on Inishmore and Inishbofin. The curragh was and is
still used and is known by this name, but the name which is more
commonly used for this type of boat on the Dingle Peninsula is
the "naomhóg". As in other areas, the naomhógs
have quite a long life expectance because they are taken out of
the sea when not in use, but are limited in capacity.
The naomhóg was preceded by wooden rowing boats which were
used for seine netting shoals of mackerel and herring. On the
Blasket Islands the wooden seine boat made its entrance in fishing
towards the end of the 18th century, before which the people carried
out fishing on a smaller scale with handlines from the rocks,
it seems that they appeared to have relied more on tillage before
the arrival of the seine boats (Au Maoileoin 199x). However, in
Dingle town fishing boats have a much longer history.
A small sailing boat called a Sprit boat was also used, particularly
from Dingle harbour up to the late 19th century for longlining.
This type of boat was superseded by the Nickey which was a bigger
sailing boat and was used for driftnetting for herring. After
this the very large sailing ketches came to the fore, whose size
allowed them to carry a lot of sail which gave them the power
to trawl. As in the previous study areas, the CDB introduced nobbies
and zulus to Dingle as well as fish curing and barrelling. The
nobbies took over from the nickeys for driftnetting and the sailing
ketches were used for trawling during the same period, from the
latter half of the 1800's to the late 1920's (Long 1991?).
The sailing trawlers needed the shelter of Dingle harbour but
the smaller sailing and rowing boats and, of course, the naomhógs
could be used from smaller semi-protected coves and beaches all
around the peninsula. However, during the winter and stormy weather
such boats as the nobbies were taken to Dingle harbour for safety.
There is a pier at Brandon village (Fig. 2.5) which juts out into
Brandon Bay, but it is not long enough to give shelter from northerly
winds or allow bigger boats to tie up to at low water. For this
reason the nobbies in Brandon were kept at moorings near the pier
and taken to Dingle or deep into estuaries during the winter.
However, one respondent recalled how 6 or 7 nobbies were shipwrecked
in one night because they happen to be at moorings off Brandon
Pier during a severe storm. This was a bad blow to the fishing
industry in Brandon at that time.
Ventry and Smerwick harbours also provide partial shelter (Fig.
2.5), but both are exposed to winds from a certain direction and
the fishermen have found that it is best to move the larger boats
to Dingle harbour during times when they are not used or when
storms are expected.
In Ventry harbour there was a pier which has a greater tidal range
as it is located in deeper water. This pier could have been developed
more to also provide shelter to southerly gales and, in the opinion
of some respondents from Ventry, this would have happened if the
planned extension of the railway, beyond Dingle to this pier,
had been carried out. Thus Ventry would have been the only all-tidal
harbour on the Dingle Peninsula as the pier at Dingle was not
as long as it is now and was intertidal at that time. However,
the Ventry extension of the railway was blocked and it is the
suspicion of one Ventry respondent that the Dingle traders and
business men had an influence on this, fearing competition from
the deeper harbour in Ventry. It was a number of years before
the harbour in Dingle was dredged to allow boats to approach the
pier at all tides, having an inhibitory effect on development
of all marine related industries on the Dingle Peninsula.
The nobbies in Dingle also became motorised during the 1930's
and 40's and then replaced the large sailing trawlers as they
now had the power to trawl. Subsequent to these, BIM also introduced
the wooden trawlers in Dingle, as they did in Inishmore and Inishbofin.
In fact BIM set up a shipyard in Dingle which build two of these
wooden trawlers per year. One respondent who trained and worked
as a boat builder in this yard, remarked how well suited these
boats were for conditions around the West of Ireland. However,
some respondent thought that as fishing developed in the 1950's
and 60's that these wooden trawlers were more restricted than
the bigger and more powerful steel trawlers of foreign fishing
fleets. However, because BIM also organised financing to enable
fishermen to buy boats, the BIM shipyards, such as in Dingle,
continued to build this type of boat.
BIM did try to introduce a type of boat which was bigger than
the naomhóg, yet could be pulled up on a beach or slipway.
This was an 8.5 m doubled ended wooden launch, which could be
pulled out of the sea using a tractor. While these boats were
used to some extent, they did not replace the naomhógs.
One reason for this was that one needed a tractor to haul out
the boat and not everyone had one. Even people who did have a
tractor, may not have had it available every time they wanted
to take the boat out. As well as this, it is not possible to get
a tractor on to every beach, some approaches are steep cliffs
or boulders strewn. As many shores are like this, naomhógs
continued to be a more versatile boat as they can be taken out
quickly and no machinery is needed. One factor which did have
a great impact on the naomhógs was the advent of outboards
engines since the Second World War, respondents saw these as having
made a great impact on the capacity and range of the naomhógs.
During the 1970's and later, those fishermen who could afford
it, have tended to buy second hand steel trawlers, quite a number
from The Netherlands. These trawlers have up to 1000 h.p. engines
and are used for trawling with otter boards, although they were
originally beam trawlers in Holland. Some respondents were of
the opinion that these boats are more suited for the much shallower
North Sea, rather than the deeper Atlantic shelf around Ireland,
however, those who fish on these trawlers did not remark on this.
Some fishermen bought several of these secondhand steel trawlers
and their family members fish with them. All these trawlers can
only be kept in Dingle harbour of course. On being asked why they
did not buy one large automated or super trawler instead of several
smaller secondhand ones, they said that several second hand ones
were still cheaper than one new automated trawlers, and that now
they did not have all their eggs in one basket. With several secondhand
trawlers greater number of family members could be skipper of
their own boat.
Two respondents, who were both involved in the organisation and
regulation of the fishing industry in Dingle took opposite views
on whether a greater number of smaller boats were better or fewer
larger trawlers of greater capacity and sea range were preferable.
The older respondent thought that the employment created by a
greater number of smaller units allowed more people to get involved
in fishing and was better for the future, while the younger respondent
was worried about the lack of development and economic viability
of the Dingle fleet.
Fishing for the fisherman-farmer played the same role in the
Dingle peninsula as it did on Inishmore and Inishbofin. Agriculture
provided sustenance and fishing provided protein as well earning
some money for expenses, such as rent and clothes. Salting fish
was carried out at home and, like on Inishmore, salted ling and
conger eel were traditionally eaten at Christmas time. One respondent
remarked that these fish were good for the digestion after the
traditional heavy Christmas fare.
The fishing industry experienced many ups and downs over the centuries.
Many of these changes in fortunes of the fishing industry are
blamed on measures which were, or were not, taken by the British
Government. One respondent mentioned that a tariff was introduced
on Irish herring in 1820, brought in by the "Act of Union"
which he blamed for the collapse of herring fishing in the lead
up to the famine. Taxes on the all-important salt for curing fish
and larger minimum sizes for Irish gillnets, as opposed to British
gillnets, and also at one stage restrictions on the use of bark
for preserving the nets, while this was not the case in Britain,
were all quoted by respondents as having repressed the Irish fishing
industry in order that British competitors would gain advantage.
Bounties to stimulate fishing were removed in Ireland, and some
respondents suspected that the piers which were build by public
funds around the Irish coast were deliberately build to be intertidal
so no bigger boats could be used to build up the fishing industry.
One respondent said that the Irish fishing industry was seen by
the British as only being good for producing crew for the British
Navy, which were recruited as well as press-ganged at sea straight
from Dingle fishing boats into the British Navy.
During the famine all activity was at a low ebb, however, fishing
experienced a resurgence during the CDB time, as on Inishmore
and Inishbofin, when a lot of money was made. During the fishery
slump of the 1930's BIM tried to improve the fishing industry
and had some success. This was also the time when Ireland left
the British Commonwealth and was economically penalised by Britain
for doing so, which respondents thought also had an effect on
fish sales to Britain. During the Second World War, fish markets
were better as Britain was short of fish. Mackerel was £5
per box then, which is close to their present average price. After
the war another slump was experienced in Ireland's fishing industry
as the larger foreign fishing fleets once again started fishing.
Then BIM once again tried to develop the fishing industry and
this continued to the time of Ireland's accession into the EU,
since when a decline in Ireland's fish stocks as well as the low
priority of the fishing industry in Irish national and EU politics
were felt by many of the respondents to be recent limiting factors.
During a boom time in the fishing industry, more fishing was done
by the fishermen-farmers as well the full time Dingle fishermen.
During the time that mackerel and herring were salted and barrelled,
horse drawn cart loads full of fresh fish were transported from
Ventry, Dunquin and Ballyferriter (Fig. 2.5) to the "curing
sheds" in Dingle. Many people were employed in salting and
barrelling these fish. There were also curing sheds in Brandon
village on the northern side of the peninsula, in fact one the
respondents remembered these sheds as his family used to operate
one of them. He remembered Brandon being a hive of activity then,
with fishermen earning quite a lot of money during the late 1800's,
early 1900's. He remarked that even if a man got seasick as he
walked up the pier, he would still go out fishing because the
earnings were so good.
Respondents related how some fishermen spent a lot of money on
alcohol. One respondent whose family had a pub related how, after
a good catch, the fishermen would buy a drink and then throw the
change into the fire, from where it would be retrieved by the
pub owner the following morning. However, some others who held
on to their money, still have businesses bases on the money made
during the CDB mackerel and herring boom. Another respondent remembered
how a great uncle of his made a lot of money in 1918 to 1920,
at around 20 years of age. He put this in the bank in Dingle and
followed the other younger people who emigrated to America. He
need not have emigrated because he would have been able to buy
a large farm with this money had he wanted to. However, he wanted
to see the world and did not want to be left alone without the
company of other younger people in the West Dingle Peninsula.
The money was left on deposit until a bank official reminded this
person of it when he was back in Ireland on a holiday.
A Fishermen's Cooperative was started in Dingle in order that
fish buyers would not be able to dictate prices. However, this
cooperative did not survive. The reasons which were given for
this were varied. Some say that the cooperative's managers were
giving themselves to high a salaries, other claimed that the fishermen
would not cooperate with each other. At the moment Dingle is one
of the few ports in Ireland which does not have a Fishermen's
Cooperative or public fish auctions. Fishermen did think that
a cooperative would be good, but feared that people would not
cooperate with it as before. The attitude which was portrayed
was that the Dingle fishermen were more concerned with catching
more fish that their colleagues, even if these were close family
members, rather than optimising the economic return from their
enterprise.
The lobster conservation programme is run by a network of lobster
fishermen's cooperatives, which appears to be functioning. However,
each fisherman sells his own lobsters individually, but does keep
in touch with others as regards prices. Lobsters are kept and
transported live in holding tanks and so are not suitable for
auctioning.
Curing and processing of fish was carried out, like on Inishmore
and Inishbofin, previous and during the CDB period. However, the
prime fresh fish trade was more importance in Dingle than in the
other two study areas, as there was a rail link directly from
Dingle to the rest of Ireland from the late 19th century onwards.
In addition to many curing sheds which salted and barrelled fish,
Dingle also had a fish canning factory during this same time.
This factory was remembered as providing a lot of employment,
but closed during the 1930's when the salted fish market collapsed.
The collapse of the salted fish market was blamed by respondents
on a $2 tariff levied on each barrel of imported fish by the USA.
This was also the end of this activity in Brandon village, as
it was everywhere. Interestingly, there was a trade for salted
mackerel and herring during the mid-1970's, packed in plastic
barrels, from Dingle to Jamaica, where the fish was sold by Chinese
street traders. One respondent said this trade came to a halt
when, due to political problems, the Chinese traders went to Canada.
This trade was not revived. Apparently the plastic barrels were
good because they leaked less brine than the wooden ones, however,
they had to be kept indoors as they heated up much more than the
wooden barrels if left in the sun.
Lobsters and crayfish were also collected in Dingle by French
buyers from Brittany, who transported them live in "well-boats"
as they did in the West of Ireland. Currently there are three
fish processors in Dingle which amongst other activities, instead
of salting herring, carefully extract the whole roe of gravid
herring in season, under the supervision of Japanese technicians,
which are then frozen and sent to Japan. The new market for crab
claws is also being exploited and one fish processor extracts
the flesh from the claws for marketing, as well as smoking salmon.
Some boats load their catch straight into large articulated trucks
on the pier which drive directly to continental countries such
as Spain.
Dingle, with its bigger boats and catchment area, had, and still
has, fish processing on a larger scale than in the previous two
study sites, however, the smaller scale home industry was also
very important, as it was in other areas.
The development of methods of fishing in Dingle has followed
similar trends to that of Inishmore. Longlining, or spillers as
they are known, were much used in Dingle Bay at the end of the
18th century. Gillnetting was also important, as well as seine
netting shoaling fish such as mackerel, herring and, in older
times, pilchards.
Gillnetting was done at night, and on a clear night in locations
such as Ventry Harbour, the shoals of herring and mackerel were
located in the dark by the bioluminescence which they would cause
as the shoal swam through phosphorescent plankton. The gillnets
were then placed in the path of the shoals.
Handlining from the rocks, important for those without boats,
offered an opportunity to obtain protein for one's own consumption
and also earn some small amount of money with the sale of dried
and salted fish. While personal need was an important reason for
fishing in the small hamlets and villages around the western Dingle
Peninsula coast, trading fish in Dingle town was always an opportunity
to earn some cash. However those who did not have to fish because
they had enough land or another business saw fishing as something
which the poorer people did.
The trawling, carried out with the big sailing trawlers, used
beam trawls rather than otter boards. The old beam trawls kept
the net on the ground, but had a limited width. Later the otter
trawls allowed a wider stroke of sea bed to be trawled, when engines
had enough power to carry out this type of fishing.
In the 1950's two brothers from Dingle went to the Donegal port
of Killybegs in the northwest of Ireland and learned what is called
the seining for flat fish method. This is called the "snurrevaad"
in The Netherlands. It is carried out by laying down a type of
seine net with a bag in the middle, more or less like a trawlnet,
on sandy bottom. Long cables, laid in a circle, are connected
to each end of the net and lead back to the boat, which winches
the two cables back in at a steady rate. The cables being drawn
across the sand herds such fish as plaice in towards the net,
which is then pulled up into the boat. While a few boats used
this method, most continued with otter board trawling.
New methods caused conflict at times, such as when motorised nobbies
first started trawling. One respondent said that this was because
the local fishermen thought it was to noisy and would scare the
fish away. Fishermen had bloody fist fights on the pier over this
issue.
The abundance of the fish stocks was stressed by most respondents
as having been extremely good. Respondents fishing in Smerwick
Harbour reported seven to eight dozen lobsters per day fishing
with 200/300 pots as recently as 1989 and 1990. During the CDB
mackerel curing times, it happened that so much mackerel were
caught on all sides of the peninsula that horse and cart loads
of mackerel were left to rot in the streets of Dingle because
all the curing sheds were full up. Seine netting from the beach
in Brandon Bay could result in 20 boxes of plaice from one session
and 14 to 17 lb turbot were reported caught on longlines in this
same bay up to the late 1950's. The lighthouse keeper on a rock
off the Blasket Islands told a respondent that he saw a red sea
at night caused by big numbers of crayfish which had come close
to the surface in the dark. This same respondent used to catch
plenty of crayfish as recent as 15 years ago. Fishermen used to
fish with 100 to 120 pots which they emptied four or five times
a day, but now they fish with 400 to 500 pots. Another retired
fisherman who used to fish with the Dingle trawlers recalled being
able to catch hake in five fathoms of water, now they have to
go as far out as 200 fathoms to catch reasonable quantities of
hake. He also called crayfish "the king of the fish"
as they used fetch £8 per lb and in 1950 it was possible
to get 31 to 32 dozen crays with 60 French pots in one day. At
one stage 70,000 barrels of salted fish were exported from Dingle
to American per year. Scallops were quite numerous in Ventry harbour
and could be picked up from the beach after strong southerly storms
swept them onto the beach. Interestingly some scallops were thrown
onto the beach again during a storm in winter 1996, this had not
happened for a considerable number of years.
Basking shark were quite numerous around Brandon Head during the
early 1950's, but not before or after that. These were a danger
to the gillnetter, as they would swim into the net and roll in
it, tangling the whole net. As naomhógs and other smaller
boats were being used for this type of fish, it was dangerous
to approach this trashing fish which could be longer than the
boat. A respondent told of the crew whistling for help and the
others would come. The best method was to cut the tail of the
basking shark to immobilise it and then tow the net and fish in
to the pier, where they could be unravelled in safety. It was
very important to recover the net as much in tact as possible
as these represented a considerable investment for the fishermen.
This gillnetting was carried out at night which made unravelling
a basking shark even more difficult. Baskers were not fished off
the Dingle Peninsula.
Overall, the same pattern of a steep decrease in fish stock abundances
was reported by the Dingle respondents, as it was from Inishmore
and Inishbofin.
As gillnetting is carried out by commercial roundfish netters,
salmon fishermen and lobster men for bait, seals are a big topic
of conversation with around the peninsula. Claims are made that
seals wait at the harbour mouth near Ballydavid and follow the
boats out so that they can get the salmon in the nets before the
fishermen do. The seals hang around the boat as it drift close
to the net while it is set, waiting for salmon to strike the net.
Tricks are know to try and get rid of a seal from around one's
boat by going over to another boat, ostensibly to borrow a cup
of sugar or milk, and hoping that the seal will stay with the
other boat as one leaves again. One respondent, familiar with
salmon driftnetting in Donegal in the northwest of Ireland, said
that the seals have become so well educated that they know the
best boats for catching salmon and follow these specifically.
Some boats are claimed to stay at home for a few days if this
happens, to try and make the seal go away or forget about it.
One respondent set a gillnet on the far side of the Blaskets and
found just 4 boxes of fish in it, estimating from the number of
fish heads which had been left in the net, that a further eight
to ten boxes of fish had been eaten by seals. This was not taking
the fish which were removed completely into account. Fishermen
can tell when seals have eaten fish out of a net before they lift
it, because the oil and guts which float to the surface attracts
seas gulls. This has been reported happening as much as 40 to
50 miles out from the coast. Fishermen in other regions of the
southwest take in a gillnet again and go home if they see a seal
while they are setting a net.
Respondents had the impression that seals migrate from Scotland
down the west coast of Ireland to over winter and breed in the
Blaskets and report seeing an entire beach on the Blaskets covered
with what they at first thought were light grey stones, but which
turn out to be drying seals.
A respondent in his seventies remembered killing a seal and boiling
down the skin so that the brown oil could be poured off. This
oil was used for medical treatment of cuts, bruises and blisters
in people and farm animals, as well as for burning in lamps. None
of the respondents reported eating seal meat, although there are
accounts of this in the Blasket literature. The Blasket islanders
used to salt the flesh like pork, and were very happy to have
this resource when their pig had died or other mishaps had occurred.
Dolphins also provided good meat on the Blaskets if they could
be surrounded by a seine net and driven ashore, where they would
then be butchered.
Sea weed was also important as fertiliser on the Dingle Peninsula, but kelp was never burned for iodine extraction. Seaweed was put on the potato ridges before the potatoes were planted. One aged respondent recalled rowing over to the far side of Dingle Bay, which is quite a long way, to collect mussels to crush and put on the potatoes, shell and all, just as the stalks appeared above the ground in early June. The flesh was a good fertiliser and the shell added calcium. Other respondents also agreed that this application of crushed mussel shells was very beneficial, as it also kept down weeds, they presumed due to the salt of the mussels which did not seem to affect the potatoes.
Safety amongst the Dingle fishermen's community was seen as
being quite good. Some stories were told of ship wrecks and crew
members falling over board, but most of these happened relatively
long ago. As in the west of Ireland, the idea of cutting a gillnet
and leaving it behind was anathema to the fishermen of the peninsula,
as not only was the net expensive to replace, but it was seen
as a social disgrace. Public and private ridicule resulted even
if one cut a net full of fish in half, to later return and collect
the second half. This caused fishermen to overload boats and resulted
in some cases in the sinking boats even in flat calm weather.
One aspect of safety which many respondents broached was the weather.
High wind force was seen as a very important limiting factor on
the number of days during which the fleet could fish. Even with
the present day steel trawlers and big engines, respondents estimated
that only 180 days out of 365 could be fished due to bad weather.
While this has obvious consequences as regards exploitation rate
of fish stocks, it also makes a strong statement about the severity
and frequency of dangerous weather conditions which occur around
the southwest coast of Ireland.
Another worry of local respondents was the average age of the
boats, which was reported to be 35 years of age. This has obvious
implications regarding the safety of working conditions on the
Dingle fishing boats. As already mentioned in the case of the
aging Inishmore fleet of medium sized trawlers, declining fish
stocks are also forcing the older Dingle boats to go further out
to sea, putting them increasingly in danger. Dingle respondents
were also worried that these were accidents waiting to happen.
Generally the traditional attitude towards conservation of
fish stocks reported by respondents was one of take as much as
you, when you can, because tomorrow it may not be possible. However,
some respondents were very much in favour of spillers, or longline
fishing, in combination with a ban on trawling in certain bays,
to allow the fish stocks to regenerate. This old fishing method
was seen as selecting the bigger fish while not damaging the younger
fish in any way. Of course it is not possible to trawl and longline
fish in the same area, because the trawlnets will rip the spillers
away. As in Inishmore's Gregory Sound, Smerwick Harbour had a
seasonal ban on trawling and Brandon Bay had a total ban on trawling
since 1870 between Brandon Point and Magharee Point. Respondents
were not sure whether this was still in force and had not heard
that it had been lifted, although trawling is practised there
again.
The conservation measures which the trawlers called for, was the
banning of gillnets, as these are set over rough ground which
the trawlers can't fish over. They point out that these areas
of rocky bottom provide a spawning area and nursery for many fish
species and that the large spawn bearing broodstock are caught
by the gillnets. The trawlers also make the point that gillnet
can be very wasteful, as they claimed that some fishermen, Spanish
and French fishermen in particular, set a gillnet on the way out
and take it up on the way back some weeks later. This means that
only the freshly caught fish can be taken, all the other fish,
which have been caught since the net was set and are now rotten,
are wasted. As already mentioned, they also worry about lost gillnets
continuing to kill fish. Some respondents who trawled agreed it
would be beneficial if parts of, for instance, Dingle Bay were
to be closed to all fishing except lobster potting, so that this
could act as a nursery area.
The gillnetters claim that trawlers kill a much greater size range
of fish, including many undersized fish and that this has a far
greater effect on the stocks than gillnets which can only take
fish of a certain size. They say that they can only set nets on
stony ground because the trawlers will trawl over them and ruin
them if they are set on clear sandy bottom.
All respondents were in favour of the "V" notching lobster
conservation programme, with the proviso that the rules would
be followed by all who fished lobsters. The possibility that some
would try and brake the rules was always on their minds, in fact
some people were already suspected of having done so.
Respondents were much concerned with the effect that the access
of 40 Spanish trawlers into the Irish box would have on the offshore
Dingle fishery. The fishermen felt that the EU had been allowed
to take over by their own national government, who preferred to
gain advantage for Irish agriculture rather than Irish fishing.
Like the respondents in Inishmore, the EU's Common Fisheries Policy
fish catch quota system is seen as a shambles in Dingle. Respondents
gave eyewitness accounts of Spanish boats unloading undersized
fish on Dingle pier, and they also suspect that the quantities
of fish recorded on the log books are incorrect. The whole quota
system is seen as very hazy, not controlled and certainly not
fair on the Irish fishermen. Several respondents pointed out that
Ireland has 16% of the EU's waters within its 200 mile limit,
yet only has approximately 5% of the EU's catch. This imbalance,
in combination with seeing other nations' fleets appearing to
brake the fishing laws, as well as their own knowledge of how
fishing monitoring and regulation in Ireland actually operates
(Section 4.1), has brought about a very cynical and unbelieving
attitude amongst all fishermen. Nevertheless most agreed that
regulation of fisheries was needed, but that it had to be fair
all round.
The other effect which the EU quota system has been seen to have
had is that only those young fishermen who have quota and/or fishing
vessel tonnage in the family can aspire to own a boat one day.
The others, while possibly being able to buy an old second hand
boat, can still not get the quota and/or fishing vessel tonnage
at economic prices. It is seen as a system which allows those
who have to get more, and which excludes those who have not.
Inshore fishing consists of the lobster and crab fishery which
seems to be progressing reasonably, but everyone is of the opinion
that the future of lobster fishing depends on the proper operation
of the lobster conservation measures. The crab fishery is being
fished for what it is at the moment, most respondent thought that
it will also decline and become uneconomic, after which fishing
effort will decline and allow crab populations to recover.
4.2: Qualitative Interviews in The Netherlands.
4.2.1: Qualitative Interviews in Katwijk, Zuid-Holland.
North Sea fishing was very important in Katwijk. In the past agriculture
was also important around Katwijk, but the village itself was
very much involved in fishing. Before the mid 19th century sea
fishery laws prevented the fishing community in Katwijk and other
beach villages in The Netherlands from landing certain types of
salted fish. The North Sea herring was prepared on board by removing
the gills as well as gutting, which meant that the fish were well
bled. The beach villages were allowed to gut and salt fish, but
not to take out the gills so that they were of lesser quality
than the rest. This was a serious impediment to the development
of any Dutch fishing community as the main market for fish in
The Netherlands was an export market of salted barrelled fish
to eastern Europe. During these early years in Katwijk fresh fish
was sold, caught using small sailing boats which were launched
from the beach. A combination of flatfish, cod, whiting and shrimp
were the most important, with other species being less important.
Longlines were also set at low tide, in the main for flatfish.
Respondents saw the restricted seafishery laws, which also included
regulations on net mesh sizes, as imposed by the large ship and
landowners to restrict any competition of their own enterprises.
The fishermen were regarded as the poorest of the poor. As on
respondent put it: "It was said that they were fishermen,
because they couldn't do anything else".
In 1857 all seafishery laws were abolished and this was the beginning
of the rise in importance of Katwijk as a North Sea fishing centre.
The boats in Katwijk were initially still launched from the beach,
but became much bigger as they now could go to the English banks
to catch herring and bring them back barrelled in brine to be
exported. These "bomschuiten" were flat bottomed, very
wide, clinker build with large planks and reached up 16 m in length.
They had no real keel and sailed with the aid of side boards.
They had a crew of 12 on board and made trips of up to 13 weeks
during which they fished with driftnets on the herring grounds.
These sailing vessels could travel a long way, one respondent
saying some went as far as the Orkneys. These comparatively large
vessels were landed on the beach even if the weather was reasonable
windy and were left in the surf during unloading and replenishing
if they were going out fishing again. Their flat shape were suited
for this. The Dutch beach has no solid rock in it, it is virtually
pure sand, but even so the action of the waves as they lifted
these boats up and banged them down on the sand resulted in the
bomschuiten being worn out in 10 to 12 years. When they were not
being used for some time, teams of horses could pull these boats
on rollers out of the surf, onto the upper strand.
The crew sat on deck and cleaned, salted and barrelled the herring
on board every time the driftnet was hauled in. This had to be
done because the boats were a long way from home and the fish
could not be landed fresh. Navigation was by sun and stars as
well as using a lead line which had grease at the tip of the weight
to which some of the bottom sediment would stick when it was hauled
up. Whether the bottom was sandy, muddy or gravelly was important
in assessing where to set the nets. The experience of the skipper
was all important in locating the herring shoals.
The herring fishery would start near Scotland in May and gradually
follow the migrating herring down the western side of the North
Sea as the summer advanced to the English Channel. December heralded
the end of the herring season and by this stage the fishermen
would be fishing off Dieppe.
The large bomschuiten were owned by ship owners who employed skippers
and crew from Katwijk to fish for them. Respondents remember the
power which the ship owners had over their crews as they depended
on them for work. The skippers also had a lot of power because
the crew had to get a berth from them for the coming season, or
as it was known getting their "stee". It was important
to be part of, or related to a family who was in fishing in Katwijk,
because only relatives and those who were known were given work
on the fishing boats. Respondents stressed the social control
which existed in the Katwijk fishing community at that time.
One story which was told about a grandfather of one of the respondents
was that he was a skipper for a shipowner and was asked by this
owner whether he worked for him because he deemed it an honour.
The fisherman replied that he fished for his wife and children,
and was subsequently fired by the owner. He then bought a small
sailing boat which he mooring in front of the sluices in the mouth
of the Old Rijn and went fishing independently. The capital intensive
nature of the North Sea herring fishery was the reason for the
development of the shipowners in Katwijk. Other ports which were
allowed to land barrels of salted herring had had shipowners since
the 15th and 16th centuries.
During the winter some trawling was carried out with the bomschuiten
for bottom fish close to home, but this needed less crew than
the herring fishing, which was another reason to try and stay
on good terms with the skipper in order to be kept on for the
winter fishing in preference to other crew members. Towards the
end of the 1800's the wooden "loggers" came into use,
these sailed much better than the bomschuiten, but had a keel
so could not land onto the beach and had to go into the harbour
at IJmuiden, some 31 km north of Katwijk. The harbour of Scheveningen
is approximately half that distance to the south of Katwijk, but
IJmuiden is to this day still the preferred harbour because the
community in Katwijk never got on well with the people in Scheveningen.
The last of the bomschuiten were still in use in 1918 (Martens
& Westra 1995). The driftnetting loggers were later made of
steel and build up to 40 m in length, fitted out with relatively
small 100 and 200 horse power engines, as they did not need the
power to pull trawls, but just had to get from port to the fishing
grounds and back. The loggers drifted along with the net, or the
"vleet" as it was known amongst the Dutch fishermen,
just as the sailing boats had done.
In the beginning of the 20th century the bomschuiten were also
fitted with engines, which allowed them to travel independent
of winds. As in Ireland, the first engines were as auxiliary to
the sails, but as the engines got bigger, sails became less important.
The driftnetting for herring was carried on up to 1964 after which
trawling for herring became usual. When the herring stocks in
the North Sea declined and this fishery was closed, the shipowners
invested in large pelagic trawlers and switched to offshore stocks
of horsmackerel and hake. The trawlers fished all over the North
Atlantic, such as around Ireland and even longlining near Iceland.
Further investment was made in supertrawlers which were based
in Katwijk, where fish processing plants were also located. During
the time that the North Sea herring fishery was closed, an active
trade developed between the smaller inshore Irish trawlers and
the Dutch boats, who bought the Irish herring from the Irish fishermen
and transported them to The Netherlands.
When the North Sea herring fishery was opened again it had become
a requirement that herring be frozen shortly after capture in
order to kill the herring-worm parasite. The trawling "kotters"
had completely superseded the driftnetting loggers by this time
and although they did have cooling plants they did not have freezing
equipment. So when the herring fishery was opened again, the Katwijk
fishing community did not return to the herring fishery, which
was largely taken over by the Danes.
Therefore the present Katwijk fishing fleet consists of a number
of supertrawlers, which fish all over the world, and some beam
trawling kotters, which, similar to other Dutch beam trawlers,
concentrate on the North Sea sole and plaice fishery. However,
the North Sea sole and plaice fishery is dominated by other Dutch
fishing communities. While some Katwijk fishermen invested in
secondhand trawling kotters and loggers, these enterprises were
not so successful. Most of the present kotters are owned by shipowners,
not by their skippers or skippers' families. A number of reasons
were given for this by respondents. The fishermen bought secondhand
boats, mostly from their ex-employers, the shipowners. Some say
that they should have bought new boats, so they would have been
able to compete better with the shipowners.
Another reason which is commonly put forward is the crew payment
system. It had always been the tradition that the shipowners paid
the crew a relatively low minimum wage together with share of
the profits of the boat. In the 18th and 19th centuries the amount
earned was not much, particularly considering that the work was
hard and men worked in poor conditions. It was usual to pay the
crew at the end of the year when they knew how much the boat had
caught. Therefore the wives usually had to get advances from the
shipowner during the summer to be able to buy food. The respondents
said that most fisherman's families were quite poor then and could
even end up owing money to the shipowner at the end of the year,
depending on how much the boat had caught during the season. The
amount which the crew were paid improved as years went by and
after the Second World War public pay agreements became the norm
so the shipowners had to pay social insurance and other levies
for their crew. Respondents thought it was public pay agreements
that put all but the very biggest shipowners out of business,
as well as the small owner-skipper who just started up in a secondhand
kotter. This contrasts with kotters in other fishing centres in
The Netherlands, where the crew are paid on a straight share basis,
pay their own insurance, income tax and pension contributions
and are therefore effectively self-employed. If the boat does
not catch any fish, the crew earns no money. These kotters have
done very well during the same period that the Katwijk kotters
did not. It is generally believed that the crew on a share system
kotter work better than the pay agreement boats and that the catches
since the Second World War were so good that the crews working
on the share system earned a lot of money. They see the boat and
the crew as a team, although they normally don't own any shares
in the boat, and are therefore judged to be more conscientious
about care of the boat and equipment as well as catching fish.
It is seen as an relatively egalitarian partnership, not a hierarchical
power structure, as was very much the case with the traditional
shipowners.
Of all the shipowners which existed in The Netherlands, there
are now very few left. But those that are left are economically
very big. There is a group of four supertrawler owners, two of
which are based in Katwijk, which not only catch enormous amounts
of fish but process and sell them to food outlets all over the
world. However, the percentage of the population of Katwijk which
is involved in fishing, or in one of its service industries, is
but a fraction of what it used to be. Many ex-fishermen are now
working in the big cities close to Katwijk (Section 2.5), with
just a few families still fishing for the big shipowners. Respondents
said that in Katwijk fishing related businesses are still closing
and relocating closer to other harbours. As was discussed in Section
2.5.2, the population of Katwijk is now very large and the old
fishing village has become a satellite town of the large urban
centres around it.
Like in Ireland, all the Katwijk respondents said that fish
stocks have seriously declined since the early 1970's. While the
old bomschuiten did not always find the herring shoals, overall
there was no lack of fish. Respondents told of seeing 2 m long
tuna swimming underneath the boats in the North Sea, and also
of seeing porpoises off the beach at Katwijk, neither of which
has been seen for several decades.
Fish stock were very good during the First World War and just
after the Second World War. It was accepted by most that the respite
in fishing pressure brought about by these wars had a very beneficial
effect on the fish stocks in the North Sea. However the big decline
was reported as having started from the late 1960's onwards. The
gillnetting for herring was seen as a good method and if this
method had continued, the herring stocks would not have declined
as much as they did. Respondents blamed trawling for herring for
the decline in stocks because the gillnets don't get the whole
shoal while the trawl can encircle a whole shoal, and gillnets
also let the smaller fish through while the trawls kill a large
proportion of the smaller herring as well. They thought that this
has made a major impact on the herring stocks.
The beam trawling also came in for a lot of criticism as the heavy
chains which are attached to the beam churn up the bottom to much
and disturb marine benthic life. One respondent, who had retired
as a skipper 37 years ago, last fished with a 700 horse power
(hp) trawler. He advised his shipowner to come to an agreement
with the other owners, not to increase engine power above this
level. His opinion was that 700 hp was enough for the safety and
fishing capability of a kotter and that the fish stock would not
be able to take the increased fishing capacity of stronger boats.
The horse power of kotters continued to rise as far as 3000 and
even 4000 hp and the boats lengths to 35-40 m. The upper limit
at the moment is 2000 hp, but this is seen as to much by most
of the Katwijk respondents, because of the very heavy beam trawling
gear which one can tow with this amount of power. It is of importance
that the chains on a beam trawl are heavy and dig into the bottom
because sole, and to lesser extent plaice, hide in the sand and
the heavier the chains are the more flatfish is caught.
While other fish stocks have declined, sole catches in particular
increased during the 1970's and 80's in line with the increasing
fishing efforts and catch capacity of the kotters. Some respondents
also said that some species were usually not caught together,
such as cod and herring and also shrimp and whiting or codling
and sole. They also remarked that certain species could, all of
a sudden, be very abundant at a particular location and then seemed
to disappear. They theorised that these fish might be a good year
class which came up out of a deep section of the North Sea. One
predictable fish movement is that sole will move into deeper sections
during cold weather in winter. These are easily caught as they
are also quite sluggish then. However, the next summer, respondents
will expect the sole stocks to be less. Sole suffer from cold
winters and in the severe winters of 1947 and 1963 many sole were
killed by the low temperatures, but the respondents claimed that
in 1948 and 1964 there were very good sole year classes and the
sole fishery once more recovered.
One theory, which has been put forward to explain the increasing
sole production of the North Sea during the 1970's and 1980's,
is that the phosphates and nitrates washed into the North Sea
in the water of the Rhine during this period and fertilised the
sea, causing the food chain to speed up and support the increased
rate of fish cropping (Boddeke & Hagel 199x). The respondents
did not reject this theory and added that the water had been turbid
during these years, but now that the sea water seemed once more
to be clearing up, other fish species could be getting more abundant
again. The fishermen from Katwijk also fished around Ireland at
various times. In 1975/76 sardines were fished in the Celtic Sea,
these were very expensive and called "a gold species"
by a respondent. In recent years the Katwijk fishermen have not
come across sardines anymore.
Some respondents had strong criticism of fishery regulations,
especially since the EU Common Fishery Policy came into effect.
They see regulation being ill-adjusted for the practical conditions
on the ground, such as different catch restrictions on species
which are caught using the same method. The initial refusal of
the National authorities to impose a horse power limit on beam
trawlers, when this had been proposed several times over by the
fishermen, and then the announcement of the introduction of an
upper limit some time before bringing it into law so that many
fishermen, aided by the shipyards, had time to lodge orders for
new boats with big engines before the deadline, all accelerated
the "horse power race" as the respondents called it.
Fishermen feel that EU bureaucrats make decisions in Brussels
about fisheries they don't know anything about. In fact the Dutch
biologists who assess stock levels are also criticised strongly
by the fishermen for not knowing stock levels, yet being able
to influence such important decisions as national quota allocation.
The fishermen feel they should have an input into this process
and that they are regarded as "only ignorant fishermen",
which is just a continuation of the manner in which they were
always regarded by the authorities.
At the same time the respondents also say that it was the fishermen
themselves who overfished the fish stocks, as some said "we
dug our own graves", but that an individual fisherman has
no choice but to join in the horse power race, because if he doesn't,
he may get left behind and go bankrupt. They claimed to have been
pushed into a horse power race which their fisherman's organisation
did not want and advised against several times during the last
30 years. Some respondents suggested to lower the present upper
limit of 2000 hp to between 1000 and 1500 hp, but were not sure
whether this would be possible now, considering the investment
made by operators in bigger boats and fishing gear. However in
theory, if everyone reduced their horse power, fishing would be
good and more environmentally friendly and sustainable as much
less fuel would be needed to catch the same amount of fish. However,
if one individual fisherman were to reduce his horse power now,
he would not catch enough fish because other stronger kotters
towing much heavier beam trawls will catch much more fish.
Many fishermen were of the opinion that the EU fishing regulations
are not enforced equally in all EU countries. Respondents who
were on holidays in Denmark and Spain saw large quantities of
undersized fish of various species on boats and piers in these
countries which would have earned a fisherman in The Netherlands
a hefty fine. They saw nets on boats which had small meshes which
would catch these young fish. They suggested that the way to tackle
it would be to remove the market for these fish and that the fishermen
would then automatically not fish for them. This happened when
the black market for small sole in The Netherlands was controlled,
which respondents claim had the effect of significantly reducing
the practice of putting an illegal small meshed bag inside the
main trawl bag. Respondents thought it was unfair that presently
The Netherlands is so strictly controlled while the other EU member
states are not. They also advised that it should also be made
compulsory for all EU fishermen to only sell their catch via a
public auction, and that fish buyers only buy in the same way,
as in The Netherlands.
Many complaints were also made about the red tape involved in
the fish quota system, fishing is seen as not being the free way
of life that it used to be. This feeling of freedom was one of
the main reasons why the respondents enjoyed fishing. Although
the work was hard, they missed this feeling of freedom when they
were retired.
The suggestion put forward by most respondents was that instead
of fish catches being controlled by quota, that it would be much
better, both from the actual regulation as well as fisherman's
points of view, if boats were given a certain number of sea days
during which they could catch what they wanted. It would be much
easier to check if boats were in or out of the harbour, rather
than inspecting the catches on each boat to see if the individual
skipper has gone over quotum. The fishermen find it very frustrating
to have to leave fish behind, or even worse, to dump part of a
catch, which are dead, back into the sea because they have gone
over quotum for that species.
A complaint relating to modern processing and marketing methods
was that at any one time a processing plant may be set up to take
a certain size or type of fish. This has the result that if they
catch, for example, herring which is either to big or to small
or has roe or does not have roe, then they are asked to dump them
back because the processing plant would have to be readjusted
to take them. These same fish could be required some time later
when the plant may be doing a run of this particular type of herring.
The fishermen found it a terrible waste of fish as well as food
for people to dump such fish back dead and suggested that the
marketing and processing methods should be adjusted to take a
variety of fish types as they were caught. This was in addition
to EU fishery regulations which seemed to be ill-adapted to the
realities of fishing.
Safety was seen as being much better than it used to be. The
sailing vessels could run aground on sand banks and shallow sandy
beached in storms, so the Katwijk fishermen used to sail out to
sea during storms to avoid grounding and the boat being smashed
against the strand. Respondents mentioned that when the Urk fishermen
first came and fished on the North Sea, that they did not know
this and often ran for shore where the boat would run aground
and get wrecked in the surf. They claimed that many Urk fishermen
learned about the North Sea from the Katwijk fishermen.
A dangerous period in fishing was in the 1960's when beam trawling
was first being developed. The kotters tow two beam trawls, one
on each side, from the end of a boom which sticks out sideways
from the middle of the boat. In the beginning the problem with
this system was that if the trawl got caught on the bottom, the
momentum and engine of the boat would carry it forward and often
the boat would veer to one side, causing the tow cable to go diagonally
either under the keel or over the super structure of the boat,
with the result that the boat would be pulled over sideways by
the boom. Many Dutch fishermen drowned during this period because
their beam trawler was flipped over in this way. Respondents related
that this happened on their boat but that the cable snapped just
in time to release the boat. Now, however, there is a quick release
mechanism which allows the boom to swing back along the side of
the boat and so the strain comes from directly behind the stern
of the boat and it is just held back and not turned over. The
booms are now also lowered closer above the sea surface which
counteracts them flicking up and allowing the cable to go across
the superstructure.
One aspect of the work as a fisherman which was emphasised by
most respondents was that because of the hard physical work exposed
to the elements, and particularly because of the lack of sleep
experienced while hauling tows every hour and a half, day and
night, four and a half days per week, that by the age of about
45 a fisherman has finished his useful life at sea. Many have
back complaints and other physical ailments, especially if they
are a crew member on deck, sorting fish and handling the trawlnets.
Skippers, although also experiencing lack of sleep, usually stay
in the wheelhouse and appear to continue to work for longer.
A change which occurred in the regulations as regards skippers
and mates is that one does not need a mates and skippers ticket
or license anymore to act as a fishing boat skipper. This used
to be the case in The Netherlands and some respondents were strongly
of the opinion that it should be made compulsory again for a skipper
to have an official skipper qualification.
The main conservation needs which the respondents in Katwijk
suggested have been mentioned above and mainly consist of control,
and if possible, reduction of engine horse power in combination
with EU regulation which are enforced equally in all countries.
Suggested conservation needs specific to the North Sea fisheries
are, the curtailment of fishing during the winter months for flatfish,
plaice and sole in particular, which are full of spawn or have
just spawned, and are therefore weakened and have bad flesh quality
at this time. Also that sea days be instituted, instead of fish
quota, to allow more efficient use be made of boats and gear as
well as avoiding the dumping of good quality fish.
The Danish fishmeal fishery was regarded as harmful to the young
stock of a number of species, as respondents were of the opinion
that they swim together in mixed shoals. Although they realise
that Danish fishing communities economically depend on this fishery,
they think that much damage is done to North Sea herring stocks
as well as other species by this fishery which uses very small
meshed nets and catches small and young fish.
The use of longlines and gillnets for shoaling species was also
seen as beneficial, but no respondent thought that it would be
realistic to expect these methods to be reintroduced, considering
fish stock levels and the level of investment in the present trawling
fleet and the current structure of the industry in Katwijk.
4.2.2: Qualitative Interviews in Urk, Provincie Flevoland.
Fishing has been of prime importance to Urk since time immemorial.
As discussed in Section 2.6, Urk was a small island which had
very little agricultural land and was virtually completely dependent
on fishing. Traditionally the fish that were caught by the Urkers
were sold and they had to buy all their other requirements, as
they did not produce anything but fish. They were not subsistence
farmer-fishermen and the earnings from fishing were just enough
to keep most people going. Amsterdam was an important market as
well as markets in the south of The Netherlands and other countries.
However, there has never been a boom time in the fishing industry
on Urk as there is at present. Now on Urk, 57 years after Urk
became part of the Noordoostpolder and is not an island anymore,
approximately 80-90% of the population of Urk are still dependent
on fishing or one of its spin-off industries.
Before 1932, when the Zuiderzee was still connected to the Waddenzee
and the North Sea, the fishing community on Urk fished on the
Zuiderzee using small flat bottomed sailing boats, in the traditional
Dutch style, using side boards for sailing as the boats did not
have a keel. There were many different types of these sailing
boats; botter, logger, schokker, bons, kwak, aak, and tjalk are
but some of these types, hundreds of which fished on the Zuiderzee
from all the fishing communities around its edge. On Urk many
fishermen used botters until after the Second World War. Most
of the fishing was with nets, but some longline fishing and beach
seining was also carried out. Driftnetting for herring was an
important Zuiderzee fishery, with the herring being used for smoking,
pickled and eaten fresh. These were not suited for the light salted
"maatjes" herring, which come from the North Sea during
spring time and were said by respondents to be fatter and younger
than the Zuiderzee herring. Small trawl nets of various types
were also used with these sailing vessels and many different types
of fish were caught, amongst them the various types of flatfish,
anchovy and shrimps. There were also fisheries for mussels, periwinkles
and other shellfish. After the Afsluitdijk was closed (Section
2.6.1) eel become the most important fishery on the new IJsselmeer,
using a trawl net called the "kuil net".
Urk fishermen also fished on the North Sea when herring stocks
had declined in the Zuiderzee, but before the Afsluitdijk was
completed the fish stocks had improved again and most of their
fishing effort was on the Zuiderzee. They fished from Monday to
Friday and not on the weekend, with the fish being marketed on
Fridays. At this time Urk was but one of many fishing communities
around the Zuiderzee and the area was heavily fished. After the
closure of the Afsluitdijk many of the fishing communities stopped
fishing, but Urk did not. This may be due to the fact that Urk
was an island and that most, but not all, of the other fishing
villages were on the mainland and therefore, like Katwijk, had
better access to work opportunities in the bigger urban centres.
The Urk fishing community continued to fish on the IJsselmeer,
mostly for eel and later, as the water became more fresh, also
with gillnets for zander (pikeperch). When the IJsselmeer was
formed many went back to the North Sea again fishing with trawls
from their small wooden boats for bottom fish.
As mentioned previously, traditionally much of the fish from around
the Zuiderzee was sold to the south of The Netherlands where many
catholics lived who used to observe the religious practice of
eating fish on Fridays. Some of the fish was also exported to
eastern Europe. In fact Urk respondents explained how, because
of the limited prospects for advancement on the small island of
Urk, many Urk people moved to the mainland and started fish shops
there, selling fish which their family had caught. The Urk respondents
were at pains to point out that, although many Urkers move away
for reasons of education or work, they always keep a link with
the island, wishing to return there at some stage or continuing
to do business with the island. There appears to be great loyalty
to Urk by those who hail from it.
One aspect of Urk social life, which some find anomalous, is that
in this relatively small community of around 14,500 people, there
are 11 different protestant church communities listed in the "Gemeentegids",
or municipal yearbook, for 1995. The independent spiritedness
of the Urkers is also demonstrated by the fact that the split
in the Dutch national fishermen's organisation also occurred amongst
the Urk fishermen and both organisations are now represented on
Urk.
However, should an Urker meet with an accident, the community
is always very quick to collect money or to help this person out
in any other way. This fits in with the tradition of fishing.
As fisherman, one is quite independent and reliant on one's own
resources, and is always in competition with the other fishermen.
But should a fisherman get into difficulty, and in fishing this
can be very serious, it is his colleagues who are most likely
to be in a position to help him and it is they he has to rely
on. Every fisherman is in this same position. Judging from the
Urk respondent's attitudes to each other, it appears that this
relationship also seems to pervade other aspects of Urk community
life. In fact, it may be difficult to separate social relationships
with the business of fishing in a community which is so focussed
on this activity. Generally in The Netherlands, Urk people are
known for their well developed sense of identity.
From 1914 onwards fishermen installed engines in their botters
and some progressed to small loggers subsequently. At this stage
the economy based on fishing on Urk was not an affluent one. As
respondents said: "it kept bread on the table, but you certainly
did not get rich on it". The purchase of an engine for the
sailing boats was a big investment for the fishermen to make and
many borrowed money to do this. Some fishermen did get into financial
difficulty, but what usually happened was that those who loaned
the money, often a local businessmen who also supplied the fishing
industry, were pretty flexible as regards interest payments or
principal repayment schedules.
Urk before the Second World War was relatively poor. At the beginning
of the war the fishermen were exempt by the Germans from doing
other work because they were food producers. In fact, as food
got scarcer, fish prices rose and many fishermen were able to
repay outstanding loans in the first couple of years of the war.
As the war progressed some fishermen were taken off fishing and
transported away to work for the Germans, some of the wooden botters
were also impounded by the Germans to be used in their war effort.
One respondent had to retrieve his father's botter along with
44 others from the Kiel Canal in northern Germany in 1945.
The comparison with what other labouring people were earning,
the love of fishing and the life out at sea and being one's own
boss, all kept the fishing tradition going on Urk when the economic
rewards were not that good. Even as The Netherlands emerged from
the Second World War most fishermen on Urk were poor. However,
as the herring fishing and later the otter board trawling developed,
the Urker fishermen, as those from other ports, gradually invested
in larger loggers at first and then kotters for trawling. This
development happened mostly on the North Sea. However, the eel
trawling fishery, with the kuil, on the IJsselmeer was important
for many Urkers as a living, but it also influenced North Sea
fishing as the growth in this fishery was also based on beam trawling.
An aspect of the sailing botters and the other sailing boats was
that every fisherman had more or less the same catch capacity.
Although there were some differences between these boats, they
were all very similar as regards the nets they could tow or service.
The kuil which was used was effectively a beam trawl which raked
the bottom for eel. Because this method raked up the bottom it
came in for a lot of criticism, particularly from sport fishermen
on the IJsselmeer, and it was pressure mainly from anglers which
eventually got trawling for eel banned on the IJsselmeer. However,
an aspect of the kuil eel fishery which all respondent reiterated
was that the eels seemed to be attracted to the stirred up bottom,
probably attracted to the food which was brought to the surface.
A saying which respondents quoted was: "you will not catch
fish in places where no one fishes". In other words, the
eel fishing with the kuil trawl depended on its own stirring action
for its success. Certain trawling grounds were fished every week
by all the IJsselmeer village fleets, while other grounds where
never fished. The catches were best on Mondays as the fleet arrived
after the weekend break, then the average size of the eels got
smaller as the fishing progressed over the next couple of nights.
On Wednesday the botters spread out more over the IJsselmeer,
to return to the favoured ground again on Friday, where the larger
eels would have once more returned. One respondent told of how
his father started to fish along a dyke where it was not usual
to fish for eel and continued to fish there at regular intervals,
only to find that his catches of eel started to rise the more
he fished there. Respondents made the comparison with farmers
ploughing a field which also brings the food to the surface which
attracts flocks of birds.
The respondents also thought that the stirring action of the bottom
and the food it brought up, actually increased the growth rate
of the eels. They claim that since this type of fishing was banned
on the IJsselmeer the eel population has not done as well as when
it was in progress. Just after the Second World War one respondent
estimated 3000 fishermen on the IJsselmeer, but now he thought
there were around 150. The eel fishery is now primarily carried
out with fyke nets. Respondents reported a difference in the quality
of the eels taken with the different methods. The best quality
was from the trawl, in comparison the quality from the fykes were
not as good, but the worst were from baited boxes and longlines
which were called "hungry eels".
The big expansion came with the development of the beam trawlers
in the early 1960's, or the "boomkorren" as they are
known in The Netherlands. The Urk fleet was amongst the leaders
in this development, it was the start of Urk's rise in importance
in the Dutch fishing industry. The old beam trawling technique
had been used and banned in the 17th century because it was said
to disturb the bottom to much. The IJsselmeer eel beam trawling
was also banned. But the North Sea beam trawling was reintroduced
by the fishermen in the 1960's and developed as the sole and plaice
fishery. This technique was found to catch up to three times as
much as trawling with otter boards, according to one respondent.
As discussed previously, this method depends on the weight of
the beam and its attendant chains to stir the sole out of the
sand. The Urk fleet were in the forefront of the horse power race,
which enabled fishermen to tow increasingly heavy beams and chains
ever faster.
Hand in hand with this development was the development of the
flatfish auction and the filleting and freezing plants on Urk.
The North Sea harbour of IJmuiden was, and still is, frequently
used by the Urk fishermen, as it was convenient to Urk. When there
was a strike in the 1960's in this harbour, the Urkers decided
to auction their catch in the small fish auction house back on
Urk, which had always been there but was not important then. The
fish had to be transported to the island as Urk is in middle of
The Netherlands and not along the North Sea coast. From this beginning
the Urk North Sea fishermen began to increasingly make use of
the Urk fish auction. The auction and the processing plants developed
in Urk all during the 1970's and 80's to the extent that Urk has
now the biggest turnover of any wholesale fish auction in Europe
and many other fishermen also use Urk to market their catch. This
is largely due to the fact that sole and other flatfish are high
valued, prime fish species. Here again we see a high level of
loyalty of the Urk fishermen to their own auction house.
The latest type of kotter to come to the fore are the Eurokotters,
which are only allowed a maximum of 300 hp, but can fish inside
the 12 mile zone along the Dutch coast. There are two sub-classes
of these kotters, one which fishes with 4.5 m beam trawls and
one which fishes with 9 m beams. While these kotters are much
smaller than the kotters that fish with 12 m beam trawls outside
the 12 mile limit and also catch much less fish, they don't have
the high running costs of the 2000 hp engines. Some say that the
net earnings are better from the Eurokotters than from the big
kotters. This class of kotter is a particularly attractive option
for those who don't have much quotum. They are used for shrimp
fishing as well as sole and plaice fishing.
Other old Zuiderzee fishing centres have more or less died away,
but Urk has kept going, taking the financial and personal risks
in the developing stages of the North Sea fishery as we know it
now. As one Urk respondent said: "Some of us were drowned
by storms and by the early beam trawlers being turned over, but
we kept on going". The Urk beam trawl fleet is the most important
individual fleet in The Netherlands, with many Urk fishermen having
invested in boats from other ports and even flying the flag of
other countries. The reasons which are pointed out for this is
the persistent nature of the Urk people and also the share system
of payment of the crews. What some respondents of course also
acknowledge is that this could not have happened if the sole and
plaice production of the North Sea had not increased in step with
the increase of fishing capacity of the fleet. The share system
of payment would not have worked had catches been poor, because
the crews would have gone to work on land. An interesting aspect
of many of the processing plants is that they also use the piece-work
system of payment.
Fish stocks are reported by the Urk respondents to have varied
widely in the past. The Zuiderzee herring fishery had many up
and downs, forcing many Urkers to fish on the North Sea at different
times, as discussed previously. However, those who fished with
the boomkorren, or beam trawls, while being concerned that not
to many kotters would fish the North Sea and that there should
be a top limit on engine size, were not worried about the fish
stocks. They explained that in their opinion beam trawling brought
food to the surface for sole and plaice and thereby increased
the production of these species.
They complained that the predictions of the biologists had been
inaccurate. Predicted declines in catches had not materialised
during the 1970's and 80's, but instead the catches had gone up.
Year classes of sole which had been expected to tail off over
two or three seasons, continued to provide fish for seven or eight
years. Large older sole suddenly became regular part of the catch,
while the biologist had said that few if any sole would reach
such an age because they were all being caught when they were
young. Sole of 20 cm in length were reputedly sexually mature,
while biologists said this did not happen before sole were 24
cm long. Cod catches declined and then suddenly and unexpectedly
new cod stocks were found close in to shore where they had not
been before.
All these observations by the fishermen strengthens their belief
that the action of the beam trawl on the bottom enhances the growth
and reproduction of flatfish. They also quote the example of the
"plaice box" which is located in the area between the
north of The Netherlands, Germany and Denmark. In this area beam
trawling for plaice and other flatfish was curtailed and so was
designed to act as a plaice nursery area. Respondents reported
that no big resurgence of plaice had taken place in this box and
so they claim other factors had more effect on plaice stocks than
beam trawling.
The beam trawl fishermen are of the opinions that as long as the
fishing efforts does not get out of hand to much, that flatfish
production will continue to support the fishing effort. They also
agree with the theory which explains the high production of sole
and plaice in the North Sea by the phosphates and nitrates having
fertilised the sea. In any event they think that the fish stocks
will not be fished out because if catches decline the beam trawlers
will become uneconomic long before the stocks are completely gone,
because the overheads and running costs for beam trawlers with
engines of 1500 hp or more are considerable.
On the other hand, those respondents who fish with the ordinary
otter board trawl and gillnets set on old wrecks, are of the opinion
that the heavy beam trawls rip the sea floor apart, kill too many
small fish and that the heavy engines needed to tow these beams
are a gross waste of energy. These respondents point to the fact
that in the past more fish could be caught with less than a quarter
the horse power than is the case currently. Their reported experience
is that they have to go further and further to get the same amount
of fish. A retired fisherman compared the beam trawl catches with
those of the past. He said that he used to have catches of 4000
to 6000 kg of sole per week with a kotter powered by engines of
less than 200 hp in the early 1960's. He compared this to 4000
kg which is considered a good catch for a week with a kotter of
around 2000 hp. He judged the fishing he had with his brothers
just after the war to have been much better than it is now.
As in Katwijk, the opinions of the Urk respondents about national
and EU regulations and management were not good. While all agreed
that regulation was needed, they thought the North Sea fisheries
had been mismanaged. The horse power race was said to have been
encouraged by such measures as decommissioning of fishing boats
which was supposed to have reduced the total horse power in the
Dutch fishing fleet. However, orders for boats could be lodged
with the shipyards before the deadline expired so the shipyards
had orders on file ready to be build when older kotter were decommissioned,
for which the fisherman received money. These orders were used
to build bigger and better boats. The respondents claimed that
in addition to newer and better boats frequently replacing the
older ones, the decommissioned boats were often sold to fishermen
in other countries so that some of these boats continued to fish.
In Urk the repeated recommendation by the fishermen's organisation
to impose an upper limit on horse power was mentioned by several
respondents. The reason one fisherman said that the government
had given for not imposing a maximum limit was that they did want
to curb a growing industry.
The operation of the quota system was also seen as not being fair.
Again the complaint that not all EU member states enforced the
regulations to the same degree was made, as well as the undependability
of the level of quotas for the future. Although admitting that
EU regulations used not be followed, now the respondents complained
that The Netherlands strictly followed the fishing regulations
while nobody else did. No good longterm fishing plan could be
made and so the only way to fish was to get what you can this
year because next year it may not be possible. Like in Katwijk,
seadays were the preferred option, but some brought forward the
problem of boats travelling different distances to their fishing
grounds. With seadays those boats who have less far to travel
have an advantage. The system which is in operation at the moment
that a number of seadays are calculated on basis of the quotum
and size of boat was regarded as not being to bad if the quota
are not cut any further. But most referred to two years in the
early 1990's, when each skipper was given a certain set number
of seadays for the year, as the best two years fishing they had
had in recent times. Not only could they plan their year and avoid
wasting fuel such as going out fishing during rough weather, the
market prices were much more stable and high during these two
years as well. Respondents said that it is possible if the national
quotum is fished up that towards the end of the year fishermen
are told to stop fishing while they think that they still have
quotum left. So fishermen tend to fish quite intensively at the
beginning of the year so they will not get caught with no quotum
at the end of the year. This also drives the price down at the
beginning of the year because of over supply. One respondent then
mentioned that recently the prices had also been very stable,
making him wonder if a cartel was in operation between the fish
buyers.
Respondents also had problems with the system which records how
much quotum they have left. One respondent inquired if he had
enough quotum left to hire some out and was first told that he
had and then, after he had hired it out, he was told that he had
gone over quotum. He had to go to court to get this sorted out.
Another respondent asked how much he had left and was told that
it would take several weeks before they would be able to tell
him, which meant that he did not know how much he could catch
during these weeks.
Initially, after introduction in 1974, the quotum system was not
adhered to, but, after political heads had rolled and the rules
were enforced, the regulatory authority were suddenly much to
strict in implementing the laws in most respondents' views. One
fisherman had put a turbot on top of a box of sole, which used
to be the practice in order not to squash the turbot because it
is an expensive fish species, and his whole catch was confiscated
because he had mixed fish species in a box. He argued that the
inspectors had seen this practice of putting prime fish on top
of other fish many times and were familiar with it. He was compensated
for his catch, but only after he went to court to get it. Although
it seems not to be as bad at present, when the rules were first
enforced, the inspectors were renowned for their nit-picking of
insignificant infringements. This was at a time when fishermen
claimed they noticed that many inspectors did not know the difference
between a flounder and a plaice. The same respondent found that
the worst aspect of all these problems and wrangles was the psychologically
stressful effect it had on a person.
Another big complaint was the measuring system of the meshes in
the trawl net. These meshes have to be a minimum of 8 cm, but
the problem is that a sole of 24 cm, which is the lower legal
size limit for sole, can fit through a mesh of 8 cm, so if a trawl
has an average mesh size of 7.8 cm, then more legal sized sole
are caught. Hence the temptation to have a smaller meshed net.
There are different types of nylon from which the trawl nets are
made and some of these shrink through usage because sand and salt
gets encrusted in the fibres. So the fishermen have to buy 8.1
to 8.4 cm nets and then hope that they don't shrink to much.
The measuring method and the tool used for this came in for virtual
universal criticism by the respondents. A wedge shaped metal sheet,
with the measurements market on the edges, is pushed into the
meshes of the net. If one pushes hard, the wedge goes in further,
stretches the mesh, and the measurement is bigger. If one doesn't
push hard the mesh is measured as being smaller. In addition,
different metals glide differently in wet sandy net and some wedges
are aluminium and some are copper or brass. All this introduces
to much subjectivity into the measuring method in the opinion
of the respondents. Depending on whether an inspector wants to
catch someone or not he can measure one way or another. The fall
back method is to hang a 5 kg weight on the end of the measuring
wedge, but this is not done as routine on all boats.
Another aspect of the implementation of fishery regulations was
that engines can be adapted in a number of ways so that their
output horse power can be increased by quite a high percentage.
The boats where this has a big effect is with the Eurokotters,
which are only supposed to have a 300 hp engine, but which can
be increases by 25% quite easily by a number of means. The respondents
found this another inequity in the way the fishery regulations
operate, as they think that these engines are not checked effectively
enough in all boats. Respondents pointed out that the trawl beams
being narrow can be deceptive as they can be made very heavy and
then dig so deep into the bottom that they catch much more sole
than one would expect. This is especially made possible if the
engine or propeller are adapted to increase the effective horse
power coming from the propeller to 400 or 450 hp.
Because of the quota system and the high prices now charged for
quota, younger aspiring fishermen find it next to impossible to
start in fishing. To buy a kotter is expensive, but the quota
will cost nearly as much on top of that and then the whole enterprise
becomes uneconomic. One respondent said that when he bought his
brother's share of their joint fishing enterprise, that his brother
sold it to him for a low price, because if he had charged him
the full market price, the boat would not have been economic.
This means that only those that have quotum in the family can
hope to own a boat one day.
In general, fishery regulation, whether done by national authorities
or EU agencies, should be even handed and fairly enforced in all
EU member states and for all types of fishermen. The basic problem
expressed by the fishermen was the inequity which they identified
in the system and the powerlessness which they feel when bureaucrats
make decisions about their livelihoods without consulted them.
The fish stocks survey work done by the fishery biologists was criticised because the fishermen saw it as being too random and too short, and done during the day when least fish is caught. The gear which is used for the survey work is not the same as that used by the fishermen, which they also think is wrong. They think that the stocks are underestimated and that they could show the biologists much bigger stocks if they would let them. The argument that these trawls, even though they are not the same as those which the fishermen do, can be compared from year to year and therefore will show yearly trends in fish populations, is countered by contention that the test tows are too short and too random. There are simply not enough trawls done, and one could be unlucky and very easily miss the fish if you don't go looking for them, with the result that the quota are lowered some more. Fishermen certainly think that the biologists have much less of an understanding of the fish stocks in the North Sea than they themselves do.
Safety was discussed by the Urk respondents and they were of
the opinion that it was much better than it was in the past. The
kotter are strong and stable and fishermen in 30 to 40 m kotters
fish in a force 9 or even 10 if it happens to suit them. However,
one cause for concern which has emerged is that the fishing gear
has got very heavy. The beam trawl is very heavy and swinging
fishing gear above a deck has hit and killed crew members in the
recent past. On the whole similar concerns about safety were expressed
on Urk as in Katwijk.
Some Urk fishermen mentioned that certain items of compulsory
safety gear are not appropriate to conditions on a fishing kotter.
One example given was the, expensive, stretcher which fishermen
have to have on board, which does not fit through the door of
the cabin when held flat, so it can only be used outside on deck.
Another example is a certain type of survival suit which the crew
must wear, but which is hard to work in and of which there are
no large sizes available for tall crew members. As it happens,
the average size of Dutch males is amongst the tallest in the
world and Dutch fishermen tend to be robust. The recommended safety
equipment is quite expensive to acquire.
Conservation was seen as necessary by most respondents. However,
as discussed in relation the fishery regulations, the fishermen
have no confidence in the process whereby fish quota levels are
determined. They think that many bureaucrats, biologists, inspection
staff and politicians are more concerned about their own careers
than about the fishing industry. They do not listen to the fishermen
enough and are controlled by political pressures.
As in Katwijk, the Urkers would like to see a real limit on horse
power and ideally at a level far below its present limit. One
respondents estimated that 1200 hp would be an ideal engine size
for a beam trawl, or boomkor, kotter. Others even went as low
as 800 to 1000 hp. They also think that a straight number of sea
days would be best to create the most efficient use of fish resources
and optimise market trends, as well as avoid the waste of good
fish which is currently dumped back dead into the sea every year.
Also as in Katwijk, Urk respondents thought that the Danish fishmeal
fishery was taking the juveniles of herring and other larger species
as well as the small species such as sprat because they swim in
mixed shoals.
Respondents claim that the unsure future of the quota actually
force fishermen into catching as much as they can when they can.
Still the tendency for a fisherman to want to catch more fish
than his colleagues or even, maybe especially, his brother seems
ingrained. Who actually ends up with more money at the end of
the year does not seem to have the same status as who was at the
top of the table for amount of fish landed for the week.
But, nevertheless, a number of respondents said that the best
method to control the way fishermen fish, is to control the market
they sell to. They said this in relation to the undersized fish
which are reputedly being brought ashore by southern European
fleets as well as the problem with the critical size of the 8
cm trawl mesh and the size limit of sole being 24 cm. If the markets
only accepted larger sole, the mesh size problem would not exist.
Another way to solve it would be to lower the legal size for sole
to around 20 cm in length, one way or the other market requirements
and mesh size limits should be synchronised, and the recommended
approach is to control the market.
4.2.3: Qualitative Interviews on Goeree, Provincie Zuid-Holland.
Fishing formed an important part of the local economy on the Kop
van Goeree. Until 1972, before the Haringvliet and the Grevelingen
were closed, fishing was based in three centres, Goedereede, Ouddorp
and Stellendam (Section 2.7, Fig. 2.11). Agriculture was important
on the sea clays of the polders, but fishing was also the main
source of income for many on that part of Goeree-Overflakkee island.
Particularly during the crisis in agriculture at the end of the
18th century many turned to fishing, as did the dyke workers of
Stellendam when the polders, which make up Goeree-Overflakkee,
were completed.
The typical 10 to 14 m flatbottomed Dutch wooden sailing boats
were also used for fishing in the three fishing villages on the
Head of Goeree. As on the Zuiderzee, there were a number of different
types, like on Urk the botter was used, but also the hoogaars,
blazer and aak which are typical to this area of The Netherlands.
Again like on the Zuiderzee, although these boats were different,
their catching power was more or less the same. These boats were
used for towing a small beam trawl, which was towed with the flow
of the tide. No booms were used to tow the beam trawls, as they
are on the modern beam trawl kotters, but the beams were small
enough to tow directly over the side of the boat, one on each
side. The boats left the harbours on an outgoing tide, fished
for 12 hours and returned on the next incoming tide. The three
harbours used to be intertidal, so could only be entered from
half to high tide. Night fishing was carried out during one week,
during which the catches were always better, and day fishing the
next week, which used not be as good especially if the days were
bright. The boats stayed close to the coast or in the Haringvliet
and the Grevelingen. Being small, these flatbottomed boats could
not go out in a force 7 or higher. The basic design of the sailing
boats did not change substantially for at least two hundred years.
As on Urk and in Katwijk, the fishing community on Goeree were
not affluent.
Steel loggers with engines made their appearance towards the end
of the 19th century, however the wooden sailing boats, now fitted
with engines, were used for fishing until after the Second World
War. In fact the Germans confiscated many boats during the war
and sank some in the mouth of Ouddorp harbour to stop enemy craft
using this small harbour. The boats which were sank included some
wooden as well as steel boats. These were raised after the war,
repaired and put back into service, including the wooden boats.
The changeover to kotters occurred in Goeree much as it happened
in other fishing communities in The Netherlands and has been described
in the previous sections.
Shrimp fishing was very important on Goeree. This was carried
out with small beam trawls in the sea arms north and south and
in the North Sea just off the head of Goeree. Flatfish were also
caught using this method of course, as well as cod and other bottom
dwelling fish. In winter, when the flatfish migrate to deeper
waters, most fishermen concentrated on shrimp, respondents estimated
that generally speaking 80% of the landings were shrimp and 20%
were finfish. The fishermen from Goedereede tended to fish more
for flatfish than those from Stellendam and Ouddorp. Trawling
for shrimps and for flat fish depended on knowledge of the fishing
grounds where the good places to fish were. One respondent pointed
out that the new electronic equipment, such as echo sounders,
only told you the depth, while with the old leadline one also
got a sample of the bottom stuck to end of the lead weight. The
type of bottom sediment, in conjunction with the depth, gave the
traditional fishermen a lot of information about where they would
find the fish and what their geographic position was. There used
to be a lot of "bottom knowledge" amongst the fishermen
which they also used for navigation, particularly during misty
weather, as well as locating fish. Beam trawling has a long history
in Goeree.
Another traditional method used in Goeree was the "anker
kuil", a type of stake net which was held in place by an
anchored boat. The net was on a frame which was let down into
the tidal current in the Haringvliet and Grevelingen sea arms
from a boat which was anchored in the current. The main fish species
which were fished using the anker kuil were sardines and smelt
which migrated in and out of the Haringvliet and Grevelingen.
Cod, bass, herring, garfish and other species were also caught
using the anker kuil.
Gillnets were generally not used, except tangle nets which were
set in the gullies on the intertidal mud flats and into which
fish were herded by fishermen wading in the gullies. Flounder
in particular was attracted into the shallow warm water on the
mud flats during sunny weather.
A respondent from Ouddorp used to help his family fish for salmon
migrating up through the Grevelingen to the Rhine and the Maas.
This was done with fish traps made from poles which were stuck
into the mud. A palisade of poles, called a "stol",
ran out 100 m from the dyke, at the end of which there was a fyke
net. The salmon would follow the line of poles and end up in the
fyke. The poles were sunk into the mud by pumping water into the
mud which loosened it and allowed the pole to slip down.
The tradition of mussel fishing were brought over from fishing
villages south of Goeree, in Provincie Zeeland, to Ouddorp. Mussels
were grown in plots on the mud flats in the Grevelingen. When
the Grevelingen Dam was completed this fishery ended. A fishery
which become more important in the Grevelingen when the dam was
completed was the eel fishery with fyke nets. The fykes are fixed
to poles which are sunk into the mud using the same technique
as was used for construction of the salmon stol. However, the
eel fishery supports just a few fishermen now, while respondents
tell of hundreds of botters and hoogaarsen trawling for shrimp
in the Grevelingen and the Haringvliet before the Second World
War. Longlines were also used to some extent, but more inland
from the head of Goeree.
Drift and gillnetting were not traditionally practised because,
according to respondents, there were no rich shipowners with investment
capital in the Goeree fishing communities.
After the war the first small kotters used the otter board trawls
as well as small beam trawls for shrimps. The development of the
North Sea beam trawl then occurred and the kotters which fished
for plaice and sole went further out on the southern North Sea
than the kotters which concentrated on shrimp fishing, which return
everyday to port. After the dams were closed, the shrimp fishing
was carried out just off the coast of Goeree, on the same grounds
which used to be fished by the traditional wooden sailing botters.
As elsewhere, the Goeree plaice and sole beam trawlers became
bigger and more powerful during the 1960's, 70's and 80's, but
the shrimp kotters underwent a more modest increase in size. Currently
it is the smaller Eurokotters which fish for shrimps with their
small beam trawls.
The shrimps were, and still are, boiled on board just after
capture as they spoil very easily. They were brought back the
same day and peeled that evening. The shrimp fishery traditionally
depended on shrimp peelers who were concentrated in Ouddorp and
Stellendam. Shrimp buyers lived in Stellendam and people used
to earn some extra money by peeling shrimps. The main markets
for shrimps included England to which boiled and also salted shrimp
were exported. Until recently shrimp peeling was carried on in
the area, but because of hygiene requirements it has become uneconomic
to peel shrimp in The Netherlands. The reason for the current
upswing in the shrimp fishery is that a Dutch company trucks the
shrimp to Morocco where it is economic to run a shrimp peeling
plant which satisfies hygiene regulations.
The traditional market for fish on Goeree was a fresh fish market
which supplied the larger urban centres close to Goeree, of which
Rotterdam was the most important. The fishing boats used to sail
to Rotterdam or Scheveningen and sell their catch there. The beam
trawl fishery on Goeree still sells its fish mostly to the fresh
fish retail market, as it traditionally used to do, as there is
little filleting and fish processing on Goeree. One respondent
pointed out that the great development in the beam trawl fishery
was due to a number of factors, of which the advent of refrigeration
and refrigerated transport also contributed significantly. A fish
auction has been established at the new Delta Harbour near Stellendam
via which most Goeree fishermen sell their catch. As in Urk, fishermen
in Goeree point to the share system of payment as an important
reason for the success of the beam trawling in Goeree, and for
the same reasons.
One aspect which several respondents stressed was that quality
of fresh fish is very important and that some skippers have a
name for landing good quality fish. Ways to improve fish quality
include doing short tows, so that the fish is not packed against
the inside of the net for long and it therefore does not lose
its scales and slime layer. It is also better not to put to many
fish in a box, because they will be squashed by the weight of
the other fish. If fish are not "bald", the slime layer
stays intact on the fishes body which protects it against bacterial
contamination. Another technique which a respondents said was
important was to strip the flatfish with "a half moon cut".
This is better than a straight cut because it removes the intestines
more thoroughly.
Herring is not that important on Goeree anymore because they have
to be frozen to -20 Celsius to kill the parasitic herring worm
which can infect people with possible lethal consequences. One
respondent said that when herring were gutted at sea on board
the boats in the traditional manner, the guts were taken out just
after the herring were caught and the worms, which normally reside
in the intestines of the herring, are taken out along with the
intestines. If, however, a herring is left for some time and the
guts start to decay slightly, the worms leave the intestines and
crawl into the flesh and are then inadvertently eaten by the consumer.
Currently those kotters which have a herring license and fish
for herring every year, land their catch several times a week
and the catch is frozen to the required temperature before it
is processed.
Mussels were sold to the traditional markets for Dutch shellfish
in Belgium and France.
Traditionally fish stocks varied considerably. Shrimp were
so plentiful that at one stage, a respondent and his brother had
cleared their loan on a fishing boat they had bought in six weeks.
On the other hand, another respondent remembered his grandfather
saying that during some years the fishing was so bad that the
anker kuil fishermen used to shout the number of individual smelt
they had caught over to another, instead of the number of baskets
of smelt as was more normal, as they fished while anchored in
the tidal currents. The grandfather of a third respondent had
to travel to the north coast of The Netherlands to fish, as just
after the Second World War fish stocks around Goeree were very
bad.
However, during the last 35 years the catches, of sole in particular,
have been going up all the time in Goeree. Those involved in Goeree's
public fish auction have seen plaice landings go down slightly
recently, but the sole landings are still rising slightly. One
experienced fisherman remarked "nature has a lot in store!",
every week, year after year, the auction hall is filled with fish.
Traditionally 50 to 60 kotters from Goeree fish the same grounds
in the southern North Sea every week and this area continuously
supplies these catches. Hence the belief that beam trawling attracts
fish to an area. Skippers are quite often back in the harbour
by Thursday as they have already filed their weekly quotum of
fish.
Some do expect that this cannot continue and that catches will
drop. They do expect that fewer boats will be able to make a living,
but the landings since the 1960's have been rising all the time.
Cod had been in decline some years ago, but these have picked
up recently again.
A number of respondent remarked that large amounts of flatfish
fry were noticed by fishermen, indicating good recruitment to
the adult stocks. They also claimed that survey work carried out
by the Dutch fisheries research institute did not find much fry
when they surveyed with a small beam trawl during the day, but
that shrimp fishermen, fishing at night with small meshed shrimp
nets, were inundated with fish fry. Another fisherman said that
they were fishing in English waters and were catching so much
fry that when the English fishery inspectors came on board, they
suspected them of fishing with an illegal smell meshed bag inside
their normal trawl bag. He invited the inspectors to stay on board
during a tow and witness the catch.
As regards pollution, the fishermen mentioned that one of the
best locations to fish was near the wreck of a boat which had
carried drums of chemicals. One respondent also said that they
used to fish in the "red" water around a ship which
was dumping waste from a chemical plant, claiming that there was
always a lot of fish there. However, this same respondents was
not convinced that the theory, about the phosphates and nitrates
from the Rhine fertilising the southern North Sea, was correct.
He claimed it had predicted a decline in catches now that the
amounts of these chemicals have been decreasing in the Rhine water,
but the shrimp landings have increased recently, contradicting
forecasts based on the theory. Another fisherman said that during
the 1970's and 80's the water of the North Sea had been murky
for many miles out from the coast, but the fishing improved all
the time. Recently respondents reported that the waters of the
North Sea have been much clearer closer to the coast.
Some fishermen are of the opinion that sole migrate in a northerly
direction into the North Sea from the Atlantic via the English
Channel and that this is the source of unexpectedly abundant year
classes.
Similar to trawl fishermen in both Irish and Dutch study sites,
respondents of the Goeree fishing community thought that gillnetting
of wrecks should be banned so that the broodstock fish would then
be left in peace to spawn in the safety of the wrecks.
In the experience of the fishermen, ray and weeverfish were never
that abundant on the eastern side of the southern North Sea, with
ray preferring the rougher ground closer to the English coast.
According to the respondents, during the last couple of years,
cod and whiting have been plentiful, and there has never been
so much sole in the southern North Sea as there is at present.
Sole appears to have increased in abundance ever since beam trawling
for sole started.
Another aspect of the fish stocks mentioned by a number of respondents
is that fish, sole and plaice in particular, seemed to be able
to swim much faster than they used. The beam trawls were towed
much slower with the smaller engines in the past, but fish are
thought to out-swim towed beam trawls at least as much now as
they did in the past.
Fishing pressure on stocks was curtailed in the past by bad weather.
Storms could last a month at a time, and one year storms did not
allow fishing from December to the following March. One respondent
said that stormy weather was the cause of a lot of poverty in
two ways. The first was, as there were no fish landings there
was no income, and the second was, as there were no birth control
methods, they tended to make a lot of children during these periods
of inactivity, resulting in bigger families and more mouths to
feed.
The prognosis of the Goeree fishing community for future fish
stocks was good, with the quality of landed fish being seen as
the area with some potential for further improved. As mentioned
previously, the high overheads connected with energy costs needed
for beam trawling is seen as a safeguard against overfishing.
As the big kotters need big catches to stay economic, decline
in the catches will immediately result in a reduction of fishing
effort, so taking pressure off the fish stocks at a relatively
early stage and consequently allowing them to recover quickly.
A fair system of catch regulation was thought to be necessary
in fisheries management by most respondents.
When the fishing communities of the Head of Goeree fished with
the traditional sailing boats, storms did cause accidents. One
respondent recalled that October was always the month during which
most storms occurred and most drowning accidents happened. October
was also the month that the Cleggan disaster occurred in the area
around Inishbofin (Section 4.1.2). The initial period of development
of the beam trawl, or boomkor, fishery, when the boom were lowered
at an angle of 45 degrees to the sea, also caused kotters from
Goeree to turn over. A respondent reflected that the development
of beam trawling had brought prosperity to many, but that it had
also cost lives. When more drums were added to the winches on
the kotters which hold the cables controlling the booms, these
arms could be let down further parallel to the sea surface and
this, together with a quick release mechanism, did away with the
booms flicking up.
Respondents are quite happy with safety on board the beam trawling
kotters and the Eurokotters. The state safety inspection service
is generally believed to do a good job, although at times satisfying
new safety regulations can be expensive. On the whole it is seen
as good and necessary.
One source of accidents which occasionally happened was if a regular
crew member could not work and a new person would take his place.
Not knowing the routine of the ship and being less relaxed in
unfamiliar surroundings was presumed to be the reason that these
stand-in crew members appear to be more accident prone than the
regular crew members. On a kotter of one respondent a relief engineer
was washed over board by a wave during stormy weather. On the
whole the Goeree fishermen thought that the young apprentices
straight from the fishery school in the new harbour in Stellendam
were well trained and knew their way about a kotter.
Respondents were worried about the future because they feel
at the mercy of authorities over which they have no control. They
see the decisions being taken about fishing regulations at national
and EU level as being the greatest uncertainty in the fishing
industry at the present time.
State and EU authorities were considered to be ill informed, influenced
by political considerations, generally disinterested, and viewed
with extreme suspicion by respondents on Goeree. As in Katwijk
and Urk, the horse power race was said to have been created by
national and international policy. Some Goeree respondents mentioned
that between 1972 and 1980 the Dutch government was subsidising
the fishing industry while also bringing in decommissioning of
fishing capacity from 1974 onwards. These measures combined to
promote the modernisation and growth of the Dutch fishing fleet's
capacity. The fact that the Dutch authorities refused to introduce
the horse power limits suggested by the fishermen's organisations,
was part of this national approach which stimulated the horse
power race, according to respondents in Goeree. As well as that,
initially fish catch controls were not part of Dutch fisheries
management policy, but once they were introduced they were very
severe. All this gave respondents the impression of a rather haphazard
fishery policy, with little long term consistence, which made
medium and long term business planning very precarious and forced
Goeree fishermen into a strategy of short term gain, similar to
the situation experienced by the Urk respondents.
Respondents also worried that labour regulation might stop the
share system of crew payment, which they claim has been one important
reason for the success of the beam trawl fishery, and force skippers
to have a pay agreement with their crew. Any place where a pay
agreement was in operation respondents have seen the North Sea
beam trawl fishing industry decline.
One Goeree respondent suggested that theoretically 1500 hp would
be a better limit for the Dutch beam trawl fleet, rather than
the present 2000 hp and some still allowed to fish with 3000 and
3500 hp. If this limit was aimed for, it should be worked towards
over a period of time, in his opinion.
The fish stock assessment techniques for marine fish species were
judged to be flawed. This criticism was mentioned previously in
relation to surveys carried out during the day and not finding
much fry while shrimp fishermen had large catches of fry at night,
thus seriously underestimating fish stocks. Some fishermen even
suspected the research institute of depressing stock estimates
on purpose in order to safeguard their own organisation's raison
d'être.
Predictions made by the fish biologists were subsequently seen
to be inaccurate, creating the belief amongst fishermen that the
research service can not predict fish stocks and are, at best,
wise after the fact. However, the biologists do have an important
input into the national and EU decision taking process as regards
fish catch quota. Considering the fishermen's opinion on the ability
of the research service to determine fish stocks levels, they
find their position of influence to be disproportionate, and that
fishermen, with their experience, should be part of the decision
making process, so that they have an opportunity to assess and,
if necessary, challenge the biologists' findings.
"Fishermen are not listened to enough" is a common view
in the Dutch fishing communities of this study. However, some
respondents did voice the opinion that fishermen had to be careful
with what they said because there was a danger that others would
try and use their own pronouncements against them. They see their
relationship with the fisheries regulatory system as antagonistic.
One respondent mentioned that a kotter from the Texel fishing
community in the northwest of The Netherlands was commissioned
to fish for the national fisheries research institute. As this
kotter was using the same fishing gear, at the same time of day
and night and on the same grounds as normal beam trawling kotters,
respondents thought this could be a good development if the biologists
followed the skipper's suggestions rather than the other way around.
The Goeree respondents had similar opinions about the manner in
which the fishery inspectors do their work, as the Katwijk and
Urk fishermen. A big gripe was the subjective nature of measuring
mesh size with the handheld wedge, and also the inequity of controls
across EU member states, as described earlier. The expressions
used by fishermen to describe the Dutch policy for enforcement
of fishing regulations compared to other EU countries are that
The Netherlands is trying "to be top of the class" and
"more Catholic than the Pope". As regards catch regulations,
a system of seadays unrelated to catch quota was the preferred
system of the Goeree respondents, as it was in Katwijk and Urk.
Nevertheless some respondents do see the necessity of the EU's
Common Fishery Policy because they pointed out that The Netherlands
does not have enough territorial waters to supports its own fishing
fleet.
One respondent who fishes for eels in the Grevelingen behind the
dam, would prefer if the sluices in the dam were opened in spring,
to let the elvers migrate into the Grevelingen, and closed in
autumn to hold the silver eels returning to the sea back so he
can fish for them. Apparently the sluices are opened in autumn
and closed in spring. However, this respondent did not hold out
much hope as he thought that the operation of the sluices is controlled
by water level management requirements for The Netherlands, compared
to which his interests pale into insignificance.
4.2.4: Comments on conducting Qualitative Interviews in Ireland
and The Netherlands.
In order to conduct qualitative interviews, prospective respondents
have to be approached and requested to take part in an interview.
This means that they have to be willing to give the time for this,
as well as be prepared to divulge information about their ideas,
their own and their families lives and their businesses. In return,
their opinions and experiences are recorded and disseminated to
people whom the respondents want to reach. Not all people who
were approached agreed to take part in an interview and of those
that did, the length of the interview and the attitude of the
respondent differed.
The main difference between Ireland and The Netherlands which
was noticed was that the length of the average interview in Ireland
was shorter than that in The Netherlands. The Dutch fishermen
were more open about discussing the current problems of the fishing
industry. On the other hand, the Irish respondents were more inclined
to chat about matters only vaguely, or not at all, related to
fishing. While few people who were approached refused point black
to relate their experiences and opinions about fishing, most incidences
of this occurred on Inishmore in the west of Ireland. A request
to take part in interviews appeared to arose more suspicion in
this study site than at any other site. Some people in the other
fishing communities in Ireland and The Netherlands said that they
had no time at that moment, usually suggesting contacting them
again and maybe they would have time. Some of those did agree
to do an interview on being approached a second time, and some
put it off again. On the whole there was somewhat less reluctance
to take part in an interview in The Netherlands than in Ireland.
As regards the veracity of respondents statements, no discernible
difference was noticed between Ireland and The Netherlands or
between the study sites within the two countries. While it was
felt that some subjects were avoided by some respondents, the
author gained the impression that most tried to be as honest as
possible while at the same time avoiding saying anything which
might compromise them. Most did give the impression that they
wished to help the research on traditional fishery knowledge.
4.3: Introduction of Quantitative Questionnaires.
The qualitative interviews were carried out in three Irish
fishing communities and three Dutch fishing communities. The results
of the qualitative interviews were reported in Sections 4.1 and
4.2. As set out in Chapter 3, the qualitative interviews investigated
the range of traditional fishery knowledge and fishermen's opinions,
experiences and practices. The topics which came to the fore in
the qualitative interviews were then incorporated into a questionnaire
which was presented to members of the fishing communities in Dingle,
Ireland, and in Goeree, The Netherlands. The quantitative questionnaires
estimate the spread in the communities of the knowledge, opinions,
experiences and practices of the topics recorded by the qualitative
interviews. The questionnaire is shown in Appendix I, it contains
119 topics which generated 317 answers to questions, or variables,
from the Dingle questionnaire results and 296 variables from the
Goeree questionnaire. The difference in the number of variables
generated by the questionnaire in Dingle and Goeree is due to
such factors as a difference in maximum number of children, maximum
number of predecessors, maximum number of boats fished with during
fishing career and maximum number of important fish species in
Dingle compared to Goeree.
Straight counts of individual variables will be extracted, but
this cannot be systematically done for each variable because there
are to many, so therefore variables will be selected when and
where they are deemed relevant to the discussion of the particular
aspect of fisheries knowledge systems at hand, such as in an overview
of the questionnaire data (Section 4.4.1). In a large body of
data, as the questionnaires have produced, bivariate statistical
techniques are most useful on such a selective basis. In order
to gain an understanding of the variability present in the data
set as a whole, multivariate statistical techniques will be used,
as described in Chapter 3.
There were 31 respondents both in Dingle and in Goeree. The number
of variables which the questionnaires generated were reduced to
191, in the case of Dingle, and 185, in the case of Goeree, which
were used in the multivariate analyses of the data. This reduction
was due to a number of data items from questions being summarised
by one score for a respondents. In question 24, the data for each
boat which the respondent worked on was summarised by the current
method practised (variable 24), the number of boats owned by the
particular fishing business (variable 24.11), the current total
horse power of the boats owned by the business (variable 24.12),
total years fishing experience (variable 24.13), total years as
skipper (variable 24.14), total number of methods used during
fishing career (variable 24.15), total number of boats fished
on (variable 24.16), total number of engines fished with (variable
24.17) and highest horse power fished with (variable 24.18). Question
61 is concerned with the respondents' opinions on the state of
stocks of fish for those species which are important to them.
This topic generated different numbers of variables for individual
respondents, but was summarised by a average score of the ratings
which the respondent gave to the species he mentioned, the higher
the score the better was the assessment of the fish stocks, as
well as the number of species he mentioned. In the case of question
61 a separate multivariate analysis was done just on the fish
stock ratings and certain individual species were selected on
the basis of this analysis as being representative for the other
variables with question 61, and these were used in further analysis.
In order to describe the information contained in the large number
of variables comprising the questionnaire data in a clear and
logical way, multivariate analysis techniques are used to study
the relationship between the variables, as well as the variability
trends amongst the respondents. The groups will be interpreted
in the light of their answers on a limited number of selected
variables. Variables were grouped in the manner described in Chapter
3 and shown in Appendix II and multivariate analyses are individually
carried out in these groups of variables.
4.4: Quantitative Questionnaire data from Dingle, Ireland.
4.4.1: Overview of the questionnaire results from Dingle.
All the respondents were male as commercial fishing is an exclusively
male occupation in Dingle. The age distribution of the respondents
are shown in Fig. 4.1. Respondents ranged in ages from 25 to 79,
with most respondents aged between 30 and 50 years of age. Six
respondents were single and 24 were married, with one a widower.
18 respondents were residents of Dingle town, three lived in Ventry,
three in Ballydavid, two in Brandon, one each in Dunquin, Cromane
and Ballybrack (Fig. 2.5) and one was officially resident outside
Ireland. Cromane and Ballybrack are townlands on the Dingle peninsula.
The numbers of children in the families are shown in Fig. 4.2.
Of the 25 families, most had between two and four children, with
two families having none.
Nine of the Dingle respondents were parttime fishermen and the other 22 were fulltime. Of the 31 respondents, 13 were trawlermen, one was a gillnetter, ten fished for lobster and crabs and of these some also did some gillnetting and salmon fishing, two were owners and also fish processors, one was a fish processor only, one was an owner and worked for the Dingle fishermen's organisation and three were involved in marine recreation and maritourism such as angling and boat trips. All of the respondents had had experience of commercial sea fishermen for a period of time. The nature of the respondents' involvement in the fishing industry at the time of interviewing is listed in Table 4.1.
Table 4.1: List of the nature of the Dingle respondents' involvement in the fishing industry at the time of the interviewing.
| Respondents number | Nature of involvement | ||
| 1 | Retired trawler crew | ||
| 2 | trawler skipper | ||
| 3 | fish processor/ship owner | ||
| 4 | lobster fishing | ||
| 5 | fisherman'sorganisation/ ship owner | ||
| 6 | boat trips/ lobster fishing | ||
| 7 | non-owner trawler skipper | ||
| 8 | fish processor | ||
| 9 | boat trips/ trawler crew | ||
| 10 | trips for angling + diving | ||
| 11 | trawler skipper | ||
| 12 | small trawler skipper | ||
| 13 | trawler skipper | ||
| 14 | trawler crew | ||
| 15 | lobster fishing | ||
| 16 | trawler skipper | ||
| 17 | trawler skipper | ||
| 18 | lobster fishing | ||
| 19 | lobster and crab fishing | ||
| 20 | trawler skipper | ||
| 21 | trawler skipper | ||
| 22 | trawler skipper | ||
| 23 | lobster fishing | ||
| 24 | gillnet skipper | ||
| 25 | fish processor/ship owner | ||
| 26 | lobster fishing | ||
| 27 | lobster fishing | ||
| 28 | lobster fishing | ||
| 29 | lobster fishing | ||
| 30 | angling boat operator | ||
| 31 | lobster fishing |
As regards formal education, 13 held skipper qualifications, four
had attended university, two had completed related courses such
as food processing and cookery, nine had attended secondary school
and completed radio operator courses run by the Irish Sea Fisheries
Board, one had trained as a boatbuilder, one had attended an agricultural
college and one had attended primary school only. Eight respondents
did not, either in the past or the present, have family members
involved in fishing, while 23 had had or did have at least one
other family member involved in fishing. The opinions of respondents
about future fish stocks was varied, with 18 having reasonable
or full confidence in future fish stocks, two thought they would
stay as they are at present, nine thought the stocks will decline
further and two did not know. When asked whether they thought
that their grandson would have the choice available to him to
fish in the manner in which the respondent was currently fishing,
eleven respondents thought that they would and eleven also thought
that they would not, with nine not being sure what the future
situation in fishing would be.
These data give an outline of the 31 respondents which took part
in the questionnaires in Dingle.
4.4.2: Princals multivariate analysis of Predisposing System
Variables of the Dingle data.
Of the Predisposing System Variables listed in Appendix II, 26
variables were used for the Princals analysis. The eigenvalues,
which indicate the amount of variation of the data which the particular
dimension represents, for the first and second dimensions which
were extracted by the Princals analysis were 0.3084 and 0.1876
respectively. Fig. 4.3A shows the object scores of the respondents
on the first and second dimensions, from which nine groups of
respondents can be selected. These groups are interpreted on the
basis of six variables which were selected with the help of the
component loadings of the 26 variables on the first and second
dimensions shown in Fig. 4.3B.
The values of the six selected variables for the nine groups are shown in Table 4.2. The six variables are as follows: formal schooling (school9), marital status (marstat3), family members currently in fishing (famfis15), respondent's domicile (res1), total years fishing experience (toyr2413) and boat type which father fished with (fath1.17). These were selected on the basis of their distal position on the plot of Fig. 4.3B, which would indicate that their contribution to the overall variation in the data set was significant, and also on the basis of the meaning which they contributed to the description of the respondents.
Table 4.2: Values of six selected variables for respondents grouped on the basis of Princals analysis of 26 Predisposing System Variables of the Dingle questionaires.
| Group | Respon. | Domicile1 | Marr.Stat.3 | Schooling9 | fish.fam.15 | fath.boat17.1 | Tot.Yrs.24.13 |
| 1 | Dingle | single | SkipcourseBIM | none | - | 6.5 | |
| 10 | Dingle | married | Univ | father(navy) | navy | 1 | |
| I | 14 | Dingle | single | SkipcourseBIM | - | - | 15 |
| 25 | Dingle | married | AgricCo | none | - | 0 | |
| Mean 5.6 | |||||||
| 21 | Dingle | married | SkipcourseBIM | cousins | - | 13 | |
| 4 | Ventry | single | BIMradio+2ndary | - | - | 28 | |
| 8 | Dingle | married | Cook | none | - | 16 | |
| II | 31 | Ballybrack | married | 2ndaryschool | none | - | 10 |
| 18 | Dunquin | married | SkipcourseBIM | - | - | 26 | |
| 26 | Ballydavid | married | 2ndaryschool | none | - | 20 | |
| Mean 20 | |||||||
| 6 | ventry | married | boatbuilding | - | curragh | 33 | |
| 23 | Ballyferriter | married | 2ndaryschool | cousins | - | 36 | |
| III | 19 | Ballydavid | married | BIMradio+2ndary | cousins | curragh | 26 |
| 29 | Cromane | married | 2ndaryschool | brother(s) | woodlaunch | 22 | |
| 30 | Ballydavid | married | 2ndaryschool | son(s) | curragh | 20 | |
| Mean 27.4 | |||||||
| 17 | Dingle | married | SkipcourseBIM | none | - | 28 | |
| IV | 27 | Brandon | widow | primary sch. | son(s) | - | 58 |
| Mean 43 | |||||||
| 7 | LaCurona | married | SkipDipl | Uncle+Son | steamtrawl | 39 | |
| V | 11 | Dingle | married | SkipcourseBIM | SoBrUncCos | nobby/trawler | 35 |
| 16 | Dingle | married | SkipcourseBIM | son+neph | trawler | 43 | |
| Mean 39 | |||||||
| 12 | Dingle | married | 2ndaryschool | brothcous | halfdecker | 15 | |
| VI | 15 | Ventry | married | Univ | nephews | sailtrawler | 18 |
| 28 | Brandon | single | 2ndaryschool | brother(s) | curragh | 32 | |
| Mean 21.7 | |||||||
| 2 | Dingle | married | Univ+BIM | uncbroncous | trawler | 14 | |
| 9 | Dingle | married | SkipcourseBIM | brother(s) | halfdecker | 17 | |
| VII | 13 | Dingle | married | SkipcourseBIM | brother(s) | halfdecker | 13 |
| 22 | Dingle | married | SkipcourseBIM | uncbrothcous | trawler | 16 | |
| Mean 15 | |||||||
| 20 | Dingle | married | SkipcourseBIM | unc+cous | halfdecker | 20 | |
| VIII | 24 | Dingle | single | SkipcourseBIM | brother(s) | trawler | 28 |
| Mean 24 | |||||||
| 3 | Dingle | married | processing | son(s) | curragh | 1 | |
| IX | 5 | Dingle | single | Univ | - | halfdecker | 6 |
| Mean 3.5 |
As mentioned above, the respondents were grouped in nine groups,
with one respondents, resp21, falling outside any group (Fig.
4.3A). From Table 4.2 it is clear that all the respondents which
fall above the X axis (i.e.: positive second dimension values)
were domiciled in Dingle, while most, but not all, of those below
the X axis (i.e.: negative second dimension values) lived in locations
outside Dingle. Only one respondents (Resp. 6) who plotted to
the right of the Y axis (i.e.: positive first dimension values)
had a father who was a fisherman, all the others did not.
None of the fathers of the respondents in group 1 fished. Respondents
21 is similar to group I and II but, unlike group I and II, has
family members who fish (cousins) and, unlike those in group II,
lives in Dingle. Group III all live outside Dingle and none have
skipper qualifications and for all fishing is a family tradition.
Groups IV and V are characterised by many years of personal experience
in the fishing industry, while those in group VI have less years
of experience. Group IV contrasts with V and VI in that their
fathers did not fish, while group V differs from IV and VI because
they have skippers qualifications. All of the respondents in group
VII followed skippers courses like in group V and unlike group
VI, but they have less than half the fishing experience of the
members of group V. Group VIII, like group VII but unlike group
IX, have skippers qualifications but have more years of experience
than both these groups. Group IX has much less years of fishery
experience than either VII or VIII and never followed fishing
courses. Group IX differs from group I in that their father used
to fish. The fathers of the respondents in groups V, VI, VII and
VIII used to fish in halfdeckers or large trawlers, while those
of groups III and IX, with one exception, fished in smaller wooden
launches and curraghs. As mentioned before, the fathers of respondents
in groups I, II and IV and respondent 21 never fish.
4.4.3: Princals multivariate analysis of Predisposing Attitude
Variables of the Dingle data.
Before carrying out the Princals analysis of the predisposing
attitudes variables, as mentioned before, a Princals analysis
was run on the attitudes variables on fish stocks, generated by
question 61 (Appendix I), in order to reduce these 17 variables
so that they would not contribute a disproportionate amount of
variation to the analysis of the predisposing attitude variables
as a whole. Fig. 4.4 shows the component loadings labelled with
the variable name codes. The eigenvalues for the first and second
dimensions were 0.4140 and 0.2369 respectively. From this analysis
five representative variables were selected based on similar criteria
as the selection of variables in Section 4.4.2, and these were
used in the Princals analysis of the predisposing attitude variables.
These variables are as follows: opinion on current pollack stocks
(pollnow), opinion on current cod stocks (codnow), opinion on
current megrim stocks (megrnow), opinion on current lobster stocks
(lobsnow) and the average score of the respondents on past and
current stocks of the species which were important to them (fisaverg).
Of the Predisposing Attitude Variables listed in Appendix II,
51 variables were used for the Princals analysis. The eigenvalues
for the first and second dimensions which were extracted by the
Princals analysis were 0.2439 and 0.1350 respectively. Fig. 4.5A
shows the object scores of the respondents on the first and second
dimensions, from which five groups of respondents were selected.
These groups are interpreted on the basis of five variables which
were selected with the help of the component loadings of the variables
on the first and second dimensions shown in Fig. 4.5B.
The values of these variables for the five groups are shown in Table 4.3. The five variables are as follows: reason for being involved in fishing (reasfi12), membership of fishing organisations (fisorg23), average score on opinion of the abundance of fish species in the past and present (fisaverg), the number of fish species whose abundances were commented on (nofis61) and opinion on trends of future catches (catfu116). These variables were selected on the same basis as the variables in Section 4.4.2.
Table 4.3: Values of five selected variables for respondents grouped on the basis of Princals analysis of 51 Predisposing Attitude Variables of the questionaires from Dingle
| . | ||||||
| Group | Respon. | ReasFi12 | fisorg23 | fisaverg | nofis61 | catfu116 |
| 1 | lovesea | Dingcoop | 3.7 | 1 | dontknow | |
| 8 | likeit | none | 3.2 | 3 | less | |
| I | 10 | lovesea | - | 2.5 | 6 | reasonconf |
| Mean 2.9 | Mean 4.5 | |||||
| 6 | family | IFO+shellcoop | 2.6 | 9 | reasonconf | |
| 9 | family | Dingcoop | 2.5 | 11 | less | |
| II | 28 | tradit+nowork | none | 2.3 | 11 | reasonconf |
| 30 | nowork | none | 2.0 | 10 | dontknow | |
| Mean 2.4 | Mean 10.3 | |||||
| 7 | family | none | 3.6 | 5 | stable | |
| 15 | likeit | Shelfishccop+lobstcoop | 2.1 | 3 | reasonconf | |
| 18 | nowork | lobstcoop | 2.1 | 4 | fullconf | |
| 23 | lovesea | lobstcoop | 2.3 | 6 | fullconf | |
| III | 26 | likeit | lobstcoop | 2.1 | 5 | reasonconf |
| 27 | family | - | 2.3 | 7 | reasonconf | |
| 31 | emplfisfact | lobstcoop | 1.9 | 4 | less | |
| Mean 2.2 | Mean 4.8 | |||||
| 4 | commun | Shelfishccop+lobstcoop | 1.4 | 6 | reasonconf | |
| IV | 19 | commun | lobstcoop | 1.3 | 14 | verbad |
| 29 | family | Shelfishccop | 2.7 | 6 | reasonconf | |
| Mean 1.8 | Mean 8.7 | |||||
| 2 | family | IFO+IFPO+DingCo | 2.98245614035088 | 9 | reasonconf | |
| 3 | family | Dingcoop | 2.2 | 12 | less | |
| 11 | family | exDingcoop | 2.6 | 7 | reasonconf | |
| 12 | family | Dingcoop | 3.2 | 8 | reasonconf | |
| 13 | family | IFO+IFPO+DingCo | 2.64912280701754 | 9 | less | |
| 16 | family | IFPO | 2.3 | 7 | reasonconf | |
| 17 | tradit+nowork | IFO+IFPO+DingCo | 3.1 | 8 | reasonconf | |
| V | 21 | nowork | IFO+IFPO | 2.3 | 4 | less |
| 22 | family | IFPO | 2.4 | 5 | stable | |
| 24 | tradit+nowork | IFO+IFPO+DingCo | 3.2 | 8 | less | |
| 25 | knewProcess | Dingcoop | 2.5 | 8 | reasonconf | |
| 5 | family | IFPO+Dingle | 2.4 | 6 | less | |
| 14 | lovesea | - | 3.2 | 10 | reasonconf | |
| 20 | family | IFO | 2.4 | 5 | reasonconf | |
| Mean 2.7 | Mean 7.6 |
The five groups which the analysis of the predisposing attitude
variables indicated can be broadly explained in terms of the involvement
of the respondent in the fishing industry (Table 4.1). Group I
consists of a fish processor and a charter boat operator, group
II contains two charter boat operators and two lobster fishermen,
group III are all lobster fishermen, group IV are also all lobster
fishermen and one fisherman who particularly specialised in crab
potting and group V contains all the offshore fishermen fishing
from trawlers. Respondent 1 and 7 plotted some distance from any
group and are a retired trawler crew member who is not a native
of the Dingle area and a hire skipper on a trawler who is non-Irish.
From Table 4.3 the separation on the basis of their type of activity
is also clear from their membership of fishing organisations.
Group I are not in any organisation, group II a mix between no
membership, the Dingle fishermen's organisation and national fisherman's
organisations. Group III are all members of lobster cooperatives,
bar one respondents is not a member of any organisation. Group
IV are all members of lobsters cooperatives and group V are all,
bar one, in national fishermen's organisations which cater for
fishermen operating from trawlers.
Respondent 1 and group I gave love of the sea as their reason
for fishing, however, group II had traditional and economic reasons
for fishing. Both respondents 1 and 7 had much higher average
ratings for their assessment of fish stocks than groups I and
II, but group II had the highest average number of fish species
which they deemed to be important whose abundance they felt they
could assess, more than twice as many as groups I, II or III.
Group III was characterised by the most consistent high confidence
in future fish catches of all the groups, as well as a low average
number of fish species whose stock abundance were estimated, which
were allotted a medium average abundance rating. The reason for
fishing given by those in group III was a mix between tradition,
economic reasons and love of fishing and the sea.
Group IV all gave traditional reasons for being in fishing and
had the lowest average rating for fish abundance estimates, but
had the second highest average for the number of fish species
whose abundance they felt they could assess. Their view of future
catches was mixed, with two respondent being reasonably confident,
but one being very pessimistic.
Group V, as mentioned before, are all but one members of national
fishermen's organisations which cater primarily for trawlermen.
This group is also characterised by predominantly traditional
reasons for being in fishing and had the second highest average
fish abundance assessment rating of the groups and a medium average
for the number of fish species which they felt they could assess
the abundance of. The view of future catches was mixed. Group
V has a number of similarities with group II but group II has
the highest average number of fish species whose stocks were assessed,
while group V has the third highest average for this.
In terms of the overall concept of the attitudes of the fishermen,
group IV, which all had tradition as the reason for fishing, also
had a high average number of fish species which they assessed
and the lowest average rating for fish abundances in the past
and present. Group II was similar, having the highest average
number of species mentioned, and had economic reasons as well
as tradition as the reason for fishing. This contrasts with respondent
1 and group I who gave love of the sea and fishing as their reason
for fishing, and also had the highest abundance average ratings
for fish species, but the lowest average number of fish species
which they felt they could make and estimate of. As for expectations
for future catches, only one group was predominantly positive
about this, group III, all the rest had mixed reactions to this
question.
4.4.4: Princals multivariate analysis of Predisposing Enabling
Variables of the Dingle data.
Of the Predisposing Enabling Variables listed in Appendix II,
13 variables were used for the Princals analysis. The eigenvalues
for the first and second dimensions which were extracted by the
Princals analysis were 0.3841 and 0.2342 respectively. Fig. 4.6A
shows the object scores of the respondents on the first and second
dimensions, from which five groups of respondents were selected.
These groups are interpreted on the basis of four variables which
were selected with the help of the component loadings of the variables
on the first and second dimensions shown in Fig. 4.6B.
The values of these variables for the five groups are shown in Table 4.4. The four variables are as follows: the highest engine horse power used by the respondent (highsthp), the main problem associated with the type of fishing carried out by the respondent (probs40), the current amount of fish catch quotum available to the respondents (qo84/90.2) and the degree of ease or difficulty of gaining access to capital to invest in fishing enterprises (invs1095). These variables were selected in the same manner as in previous sections.
Table 4.4: Values of four selected variables for respondents grouped on the basis of Princals analysis of 13 Predisposing Enabling Variables of the Dingle questionaires.
| Group | Respond. | HighstHP | probs40 | qo84/90.2 | invs1095 |
| 1 | 0 | trickypair | justenough | - | |
| I | 8 | 0 | seasonal | - | easy |
| 10 | 420 | weather | - | easy | |
| Mean 140 | |||||
| 14 | 0 | none | notenough | verdif | |
| 7 | 1200 | trawlground | notenough | - | |
| 13 | 330 | weather | notenough | verdif | |
| II | 20 | 450 | enforcSqumesh | justenough | notpos |
| 22 | 1200 | weather | moreenough | verdif | |
| 30 | 40 | partbigbusns | notenough | verdif | |
| Mean 722.5 | |||||
| 6 | 210 | advertise | - | verdif | |
| 19 | 130 | weather | - | verdif | |
| 2 | 1200 | energy | nolimit | verdif | |
| 3 | 700 | none | justenough | reason | |
| 5 | 1200 | territ+modrn+quota | notenough | verdif | |
| 11 | 930 | meshbigger | justenough | reason | |
| III | 16 | 1200 | trawlground | moreenough | verdif |
| 17 | 450 | flagships | notenough | verdif | |
| 21 | 425 | dirtyice | notenough | notpos | |
| 24 | 670 | tides+seals | moreenough | verdif | |
| 25 | 600 | shorttrip+tows | notenough | verdif | |
| Mean 819.4 | |||||
| 9 | 120 | forgnrs+smallmesh | notenforced | verdif | |
| IV | 12 | 450 | compbigboat | moreenough | verdif |
| Mean 285 | |||||
| 4 | 20 | territ+escaphatch | - | verdif | |
| 15 | 15 | overfish | - | verdif | |
| 18 | 30 | needorganstn | - | verdif | |
| V | 23 | 15 | enforsregs | - | verdif |
| 26 | 10 | fisscarce | notenough | verdif | |
| 27 | 10 | handhaul+weath | - | reason | |
| 29 | 10 | fisscarc+seals | notenough | verdif | |
| Mean 15.7 | |||||
| 28 | 0 | swell+weather | moreenough | verdif | |
| 31 | 6 | swell+weather | - | reason |
From Table 4.4 it can be seen that the respondents which are
located above the X axis (positive values on dimension 2) predominantly
identified physical problems, such as the weather, the nature
of the fishing grounds, tidal currents and seasonality in catches
as the main problems associated with their method of fishing.
Those which plotted below the X axis mostly indicated conservation
of fish stocks as their main problem. Those respondents on the
right side of the Y axis (positive values on dimension 1) tended
to fish with higher horse power engines than those on the left
side of the Y axis.
Group I consists of a retired fisherman, a fish processor and
an angling and diving boat operator. Respondents 14 is a trawler
crewman, while group II comprises three trawler skippers, one
hired trawler skipper and an angling boat operator. Group III
largely consists of trawlermen and processors who also own shares
in trawlers. Group IV has a small trawlerman and a parttime boat
trip operator/parttime trawler crewman. Group V consists of lobster
fishermen.
In group I two did not fish currently as one was retired and one
was a fish processor who did not own any shares in boats, but
they all named physical problems as most important in fishing.
Concern with quota was also mixed as two were not concerned with
this and the retired fisherman was not concerned with availability
of investment capital while the other two had no real problem
with this. Respondent 14 is a crew member, but not a boat owner,
so owns no horse power and did not indicate any main problem with
trawling. For the rest he had a similar opinion on quotum and
investment as the respondents in group II.
Group II had relatively high average horse power and pointed out
a mixture of conservation, physical factors and business as the
main problem areas. The respondents in group II were varied in
whether they had enough quotum and generally found it difficult
to get capital for investing in fishing.
Group III, like group II, averaged high horse power engines but
predominantly found conservation of energy and fish stocks to
be the main problems and maintaining fish quality and some physical
problems such as tidal current, seals attacking fish in nets and
sections of fishing grounds which are unsuitable for trawling.
All respondents in group III, bar two, found capital for investment
in fishing difficult to get, in fact one found this simply not
possible. Group IV had medium to small engines, no real problems
with quota, found competition from other fishermen the main problem
they faced and getting investment capital quite difficult.
Group V had low average engine horse power and primarily named
problems related to fish stocks conservation as their main problems.
On respondent mentioned physical factors, the fact he hauled lobster
pots into his boat by hand at 79 years of age and the weather,
as his main problems. Group V was generally not concerned with
quota apart from two respondents who mentioned that there was
not enough quota. Most in group V found finding capital to invest
in fishing enterprises difficult. Respondents 28 and 31 both found
weather and Atlantic swells disrupting lobster potting close to
rocky shores the main problems they faced. Both also found quota
not restrictive, but differed in that 28 did not own an engine
and 31 found capital for fishing relatively easy to get while
28 found this very difficult.
4.4.5: Princals multivariate analysis of Intervening Variables
of the Dingle data.
Of the Intervening Variables listed in Appendix II, nine variables
were used for the Princals analysis. The eigenvalues for the first
and second dimensions which were extracted by the Princals analysis
were 0.3333 and 0.2653 respectively. Fig. 4.7A shows the object
scores of the respondents on the first and second dimensions,
from which six groups of respondents were be selected. These groups
are interpreted on the basis of four variables which were selected
with the help of the component loadings of the variables on the
first and second dimensions shown in Fig. 4.7B.
The values of these variables for the six groups are shown in Table 4.5. The four variables are as follows: a local tradition which has been important in the development of fishing in Dingle (trads44), good aspects of the EU quota system (probs40), overall effect of the EU on fisheries (effeu100) and experience of the manner in which the fishery inspection service carries out its duties (inspc104).
Table 4.5: Values of four selected variables for respondents grouped on the basis of Princals analysis of nine Intervening Variables of the Dingle questionaires.
| Group | No. | trads44 | qotgod93 | EffEU100 | Inspc104 |
| 6 | notrawlareas | conservfis | fisngdown | tostrict | |
| 8 | weather | conservfis | verybad | morestrict | |
| I | 15 | history | conservfis | reasoneff | morestrict |
| 26 | grants+dole | conservfis | verybad | insplocal | |
| 27 | history | conservfis | moreforagric | tostrict | |
| 31 | hardwork | conservfis | noeffect | morestrict | |
| 4 | parttAgric+lotfis | - | reasoneff | morestrict | |
| II | 18 | makemoney | - | noeffect | fair |
| 12 | history | contrlcompet+conserv | reasoneff | fair | |
| III | 29 | newGenratn | conservfis | reasoneff | morestrict |
| 3 | Respondent | cons+markets | verybad | fair | |
| 13 | history | conservfis | unfavour | nonexistent | |
| IV | 16 | shipbuilddev | cons+markets | unfavour | fair |
| 25 | sameelswhere | stability | reasoneff | morSpanis+lessIrish | |
| 28 | sameelswhere | none | fisngdown | antismallboats | |
| 2 | experimnt+licens | forshoalonly | unfavour | fair | |
| 5 | history | none | verybad | fair | |
| 9 | history | dontknow | verybad | fair | |
| 11 | history | none | unfavour | fair | |
| 14 | Inspecthelps | notenforced | verybad | fair | |
| V | 17 | none | conservfis | reasoneff | fair |
| 20 | nofisweekend | none | verybad | morestrict | |
| 21 | history | conservfis | unfavour | morestrict | |
| 22 | sameelswhere | conservfis | verybad | fair | |
| 24 | sameelswhere | none | unfavour | fair | |
| 30 | exp+seamanship | conservfis | unfavour | fair | |
| 1 | none | cons+markets | dontknow | dontknow | |
| VI | 7 | dontknow | cons+markets | verybad | nonexistent |
| 19 | history | conservfis | noeffect | morestrict | |
| 10 | history | conservfis | noeffect | fair | |
| 23 | safe+plentylobs | - | noeffect | morestrict |
Group I was of the opinion that the good effect of the quota
system was to conserve fish stocks but was relatively negative
on the effect of the EU, having just one respondent who thought
it had had a positive effect. All but two were of the opinion
that the fishery inspection service should be stricter than it
was. The traditions which group I thought were important varied
from factors relating to the physical environment and the history
of fishing in Dingle to economic reasons and the personal effort
of the people involved.
Group II saw economic reasons as having promoted fishing in Dingle
and had no opinion on the good effects of the quota system. They
were positive and neutral, in other words not negative, about
the effect which the EU has had on fisheries and had a mixed reaction
on the fishery inspection service.
Group III found that the EU had a positive effect on fisheries
and found that the good aspects of the quota system were that
they controlled competition and conserved fish stocks. They had
a mixed attitude to the inspection service and thought that the
history and personal effort had helped fisheries in Dingle.
Group IV differs from group III in that their reaction to the
EU's effect on fisheries was predominantly negative, with just
one respondents thinking that the EU had a reasonable effect.
The experience of the respondents in group IV with respect to
the good effects of the EU's quota system mainly concentrated
on the stability which it brought to market as well as conservation
of fish stocks and one respondent who experienced no positive
effect of the quota system. Group IV had a mixed experience with
the fishery inspection service.
Group V contrasts with groups I and IV in that it had a predominantly
good experience with the fishery inspection service, but, like
groups I and IV, reported a predominantly negative experience
with the effect of EU on fisheries. Group V also had more respondents
who reported not experiencing any good aspects of the quota system
as well as some who saw it as helping to conserve fish stocks.
Group V indicated a variety of traditions as being important to
fishing in Dingle, including the history, personal effort and
two respondents who thought that Dingle did not have any special
traditions but was the same as anywhere else in Ireland.
The two respondents comprising group VI found the quota system
to contribute to stability of the market and conserve fish stocks,
but knew of no traditions which had been of help to fishing in
Dingle. One respondent in group VI knew of no effects which the
EU nor the fishery inspection service had had, and the other had
found the EU's effects to have been bad and the inspection service
to be non existent. Respondents 10, 19 and 23, which were not
included in any group, all found that the EU had had no effect
on fisheries but had varying experiences as regards the other
three question