The Millionaires of the River Maine
For years I have been campaigning because the official story about the River Maine simply does not line up with the ground truth. The fish counter results being promoted by state bodies put the Maine among the top rivers in the country for late-run salmon — a headline that sounds impressive until you look closer at what the rest of the data actually say. The rod and angler catch returns for the Maine are low; local angling club logs and individual rod records show a modest, and in many years worrying, number of salmon landed by rods. Those low angler returns are at odds with the counter’s portrayal of the river as a top three salmon producer, and that contradiction is not a minor bookkeeping error — it points to a systemic misclassification problem with the counting equipment. The most plausible, and observable, explanation is that the Maine counter is routinely recording sea trout (and sometimes large brown trout or kelts) as salmon. That mis-classification inflates salmon totals in the published tables, distorts trend signals and plucks away at the credibility of any management decisions based on those figures.
I have lodged a formal petition with the Oireachtas — Petition No P00008/23, “Stop legal netting of Atlantic salmon in Castlemaine harbour” (submitted 18 October 2023) — and I run an online petition on My Uplift to remove legal nets from Castlemaine Harbour. Those petitions are not rhetorical. They are grounded in the clear mismatch between three separate bodies of evidence: (1) the fish counter indices that rank the Maine highly for salmon, (2) angler catch returns and local rod logs which are low, and (3) the mixed-stock draft net fishery in Castlemaine Harbour which legally removes fish from the estuary and sells them through local processors into lucrative smoked-salmon markets. If state managers rely on the counter figures alone, they will under-estimate risk and over-allow exploitation in the estuary. If they rely on angler returns alone, they will miss the commercial removals in the harbour. We need both streams of data — accurate, transparent, and reconciled — before any responsible management decision can be taken.
To be clear about the economic stakes: the Castlemaine mixed-stock fishery is small in landed weight but large in retail value when the product is processed as smoked wild salmon. Local processors advertise wild smoked salmon at roughly €115–€160 per kilogram. Using official mixed-stock catch baselines (approximately 1.63 tonnes per year as a conservative mean) that retail smoked-product value translates into roughly €187,000–€261,000 per year; over a decade that becomes roughly €1.87M–€2.61M. Even allowing for processing and retail margins, this is real money that flows through Kerry businesses and local supply chains. That market value—what the finished product sells for in shops and online—shows why miscounts matter: if salmon are being mislabelled in the counters as sea trout (or vice versa), then both conservation outcomes and commercial revenues are being determined on shaky foundations.
The mechanics of the problem are well understood among fisheries technicians and anglers. The Maine counter sits in a section of river with complex morphology; in spate conditions fish can move through side channels or flood margins where the counter has no coverage. The sensors suffer in tannin-stained, silt-laden water; algae, debris and weed growth change the sensor signals. Crucially, the technology in place cannot reliably separate species where size and behaviour overlap. The Maine has a substantial sea-trout run and large brown trout present in the system; when those fish pass the sensor the machine logs a target of a certain size and signature, but offers no validated species identification unless accompanied by video verification, which is not routinely published. When management then treats the raw, adjusted or smoothed counter outputs as definitive, it creates a false picture of the true salmon run composition.
This is not an argument about anecdote vs science. It is an argument about the quality and transparency of the datasets being used to justify policy. Angler catch returns — the rod logbooks and club returns — are a vital, independent check on counter data. Those angler returns on the Maine are consistently low; they are not matched by comparable commercial landings that would explain the discrepancy. What we see instead is a legal estuarine draft/net fishery operating in Castlemaine Harbour that removes fish from a mixed stock and supplies processors who turn some of that fish into high-value smoked product. If the counter is over-reporting salmon (by counting sea trout as salmon), management may be permitting netting under the false impression that there are sufficient salmon upstream to withstand removal. Conversely, if the counter is misreporting and anglers report low catches, the true salmon stock may be at greater risk than the official narrative acknowledges.
My demands are precise and immediately achievable. Inland Fisheries Ireland must publish the full Maine counter dataset with full metadata: raw counts, adjusted counts, timestamps for every detection, a complete downtime log, all calibration and maintenance records, and any video footage used to validate counts. IFI must also publish the processing notes that describe any post-collection edits or species reassignments. Second, the State must compel transparent landing logs for every net licence in Castlemaine Harbour — licence number, date, species recorded, weight, disposition (sold to which processor), and any available genetic or otolith information that links estuarine catch to river of origin. Third, there must be an independent verification exercise: contemporaneous video validation and manual counts during peak run windows, and a DNA/genetic composition study of the estuary draft net catch to confirm stock origin. Until those steps are completed and the datasets reconciled, the precautionary principle must apply and the legal netting regime should be suspended or strictly limited.
This is why I took my case to the Oireachtas and why I set up the My Uplift petition: to bring public scrutiny to data that is being used to justify continued exploitation. The smoked salmon on our plates is delicious and valuable, but value does not excuse poor science or secrecy. If the counters are counting sea trout as salmon, then managers are flying blind. If they are relying on those numbers to allow nets in a Special Area of Conservation, then the precautionary principle and the conservation objectives of the SAC are being undermined. Sign the petition if you agree, share the facts with your TD and Senator, and demand that the data be released, checked, and reconciled. The rivers and the people who depend on them deserve nothing less.
