Press Release 27 May 2010
Rescuing salmon from the Avoca river !
Photo: Samlon smolts in the Avoca River.
The Eastern Regional Fisheries Board has produced some tremendous results from a recent salmon trapping programme on the Avoca river. In a bid to rescue baby salmon from the Avoca river over 5,000 salmon smolts were rescued during the month of May, from Ireland’s most polluted river.
Staff from the Eastern Regional Fisheries Board set up and trapped baby salmon upstream of the polluted stretch at Avoca. The traps were funded under the Conservation Stamp fund which was set up by the Government in 2006 to rehabilitate salmon stocks in rivers where stocks are particularly low and which have a good prospect of recovery. These salmon are known as smolts and are about 2 years old. Fisheries staff then transported them and released the smolts downstream of the pollution point. The purpose of trapping them is to prevent them from dying in the polluted stretch and enable them to continue their journey out to sea. They will remain at sea for a number of years and hopefully some will return to the Avoca river to enable the salmon lifecycle to continue in the Avoca river. In recent years the marine survival rate of wild salmon smolts leaving our Irish rivers has been around 7% compared with 20% at times during the 1980’s.
Photo: Staff from the Eastern Regional Fisheries Board set up and trapped baby salmon upstream of the polluted stretch at Avoca.
The Eastern Regional Fisheries Board has been involved in this salmon smolt rescue programme for the last three years, however this year has very productive with over 5,000 salmon smolts rescued to date. It is estimated that this is approximately 20% of what the salmon smolt population in the river could be, if this river was cleaned up and restored as a salmonid fishery.
Presently the Avoca river is the most polluted river in Ireland as classified by the EPA due to the impact of 250 years of mining. Reports by the University of Newcastle in 2003 and by Unipure in 2007 which were commissioned by the Eastern Regional Fisheries Board identified and proved that active treatment is the solution for the Avoca river. The Unipure report of 2007 funded by an Ireland Wales Interreg programme, demonstrated through a series of trials that a full scale active treatment plant would cost €3.6m with an annual operational cost of €0.5m.
The benefits of a clean river to Avoca would be massive in that the restoration of the Avoca River would raise the profile of Avoca as a tourist destination. It is estimated that revenue of €750,000 per annum could be generated from recreational salmon angling alone, therefore bringing huge benefits not only to Avoca, but to the County of Wicklow
...ENDS...
Media enquiries:
Josie Mahon,
Eastern Regional Fisheries Board,
15A Main Street,
Blackrock, Co. Dublin.
Tel: 01 278 7022 / 087 6538202, email: josie.mahon@erfb.ie
Notes to Editor
The Eastern Regional Fisheries Board is a statutory authority whose function is to conserve, develop, protect, manage and promote the inland fisheries and sea angling resources within its jurisdiction. The Region extends from the border in Northern Ireland to South of the Wexford coast and includes all catchments which enter the sea between these boundaries. For further information, please visit www.fishingireland.net