Everybody thinks that the nets in Castlemaine catch only fish entering the Laune or Maine, this is not true, in fact my own town of Tralee has a little river called the Lee and genetics showed back in 2010 that a few salmon caught in the nets in Cromane were from that river. So if salmon are at an all time low why are we still allowing nets to kill Salmon? It should be a no brainier but I have been trying for years now to make this whole thing public but to no avail. The Nets are at this moment still killing thousands of salmon every year across Ireland! They seem to bend the rules to suit themselves. All of this is corruption because although they have procedures in place they don't follow any of them. No verified data and no accurate counts, all very important aspects of providing conservation limits set to conserve salmon.
If you haven't signed the petition please do :-
Here is a snippet from that study back in 2010 :-
A total of 783 Atlantic salmon individuals caught in the Cromane fishery between the 11th June and 27th August 2010 were genetically typed for variation at fifteen microsatellite DNA loci. These were tested against a baseline of approximately 8300 individuals from 160 Irish Atlantic salmon populations sampled from 104 rivers located throughout Ireland. Taken at face value, the results from analysis of the fishery as a whole indicate that approximately 93.5% of the fishery is made up of stocks from Castlemaine Harbour rivers with the Laune (64.4%), Maine (18.2%) and Caragh (5.6%) being to most substantial contributors. Small contributions from the Behy, Emlagh and Owenascaul were observed in the fishery as a whole. It is noted, however, that analysis of temporal stability in the samples taken from the Behy and Emlagh indicates that these rivers may have low genetic integrity over generations (see Temporal Stability report to the IFI 2011). We recommend assessment of the Owenascaul river for temporal stability. Approximately 2% of the fishery appeared to be originating from rivers close to but outside Castlemaine Harbour (Inny, Ferta and Tralee Lee in particular), whereas 3.8% appeared to originate from further distant locations (3.4% to Waterford/Lismore rivers and 0.4% to Donegal). However, analysis of simulated fishery samples suggests that these apparent contributions from rivers outside Castlemaine Harbour may result from experimental error associated with mis-assignment from correct population of origin.
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| River Lee, Tralee |
