Territorial dispute preventing aquaculture licensing on Foyle

Britain’s Crown Estate does not have the deeds to the seabed of Lough Foyle, according to a spokesperson for the Loughs’ Agency.

In an exclusive interview for Donegal Live, Barry Fox, the organisation’s director of aquaculture and shell fisheries stated categorically, “Nobody has deeds. There are no such thing as deeds to the seabed of Lough Foyle”.

According to Mr Fox, the Loughs’ Agency, one of six all-Ireland implementation bodies established under the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, is primarily a “conservation organisation”.

Outlining its remit, he said: “A lot of the Loughs’ Agency’s activity is based on regulation. We are a conservation organisation first and foremost.

“We also have a responsibility for the development of marine tourism. We have funded and helped to develop some of the activities on Lough Foyle, including Inish Adventures at Moville.

“We have helped the sailing clubs there and we are continually looking for projects and good ideas, as regards the development of marine tourism in the region.

“Loughs’ Agency would welcome approaches from people in the tourism provision sector down the Donegal coast, particularly in Lough Foyle,” said Mr Fox.

Addressing the perception relationships between the Loughs’ Agency, fishers and communities living along the Foyle often seem fraught, Barry Fox suggested it had to do with “regulation”.

He said: “Pre-2008, there was no regulation of the native oyster fishery on Lough Foyle. The Loughs' Agency brought in regulations to conserve the native oyster and regulate the fishery.

“So, we have gone from a situation where people could do what they wanted, when they wanted, and they did, whether they like it or not, to a position where the activity is being controlled and licensed, as it is in all the other parts of the island and within Europe.

“The other part of it is historical. Historically, pre-Loughs' Agency, we had the Foyle Fisheries Commission, which was the salmon protection organisation and controlled all the drift netting in the Foyle and the coastal area.

“As one of our previous chief executives said, we do things to people and for people and the doing things to people is prosecuting them for breaking the law and that, generally, is not well received by people,” said Barry Fox.

According to Mr Fox, the native oyster fishery has been operating in the Foyle for 30 or 40 years.

He said: “Some people will tell you it has been going on for generations. It has not. It absolutely has not and there is documented evidence to prove that.

“As a regulated, commercial fishery, the Foyle native oyster fishery has only been in existence since 2008 and it is only some people that would have a significant issue with that.

“A baseline survey undertaken at that time by, the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science, an independent scientific organisation, determined the native oyster fishery was close to collapse and had been overfished for a number of years.

“The Lough’s Agency introduced regulation to the fishery in 2008 and, every year up to 2019 when covid hit and we had to close the fishery early, it has produced in excess of 100 tonnes of adult oysters per year. In addition, the age profile of oysters within the fishery shows it as being an extremely healthy fishery. The Lough Foyle oyster has been classified by the Marine Institute, which is the Marine Science Organisation for the Republic of Ireland, as achieving good environmental status under the Marine Strategy Framework Directive Fisheries Reporting and is one of only two oyster fisheries in Ireland to achieve the status, the other one being Tralee, which are the two major oyster fisheries on the island,” said Barry Fox.

Mr Fox asserted many Foyle onshore fishermen welcomed the regulation of the fishery.

He said: “There are a lot of licensed fishermen out there who act responsibly and are glad to see the regulation of the fishery, glad to see a season because they do not have be worrying about getting up in the middle of the night to get up fishing when other guys are up there.

“In fact, Loughs' Agency would have a lot of representations about reducing the actual daily opening times. At the minute it opens from 6am to 6pm but there are a lot of people would like to see it opening from 8am to 5pm. That is something we are going to look at, once we are in a position to make regulations,” said Barry Fox.

The director of aquaculture and shell fisheries revealed Loughs’ Agency had not been in a position to make these regulations due to the collapse of the north – south institutions, following the suspension of the Assembly in January 2017.

He added: “However, we are now moving to a position, where we could start to look at some of the changes that fishing would require.

“The native oyster fishing season on Lough Foyle opens on September 19 by regulation. It never opened before that because, scientific evidence, gathered by Loughs' Agency marine scientists, has proven that a lot of oysters, which have been removed from the fishery in September are full of eggs or have just spawned and are in bad condition, so they are not marketable anyway.

“We have pushed the opening of the season off by regulation to the first week of October, a stretch of three weeks. It has not impacted the markets in any way that we are aware off. We contact buyers and we discuss these issues with buyers on an ongoing basis.

“There is a very small niche market for the Foyle native flat oysters in Spain. Madrid is the biggest consumer of flat oysters in Europe. That is how small the markets is. There is a small consumption in France, but the main market is in Spain,” said Barry Fox.

The Loughs’ Agency has endeavoured to develop a sustainability label for the native oyster.

It funded a pre-assessment study on the native oyster fishery, which was designed to obtain the certified sustainable seafood label from the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) label.

According to Barry Fox, the MSC label is the highest level of sustainability labelling obtainable for seafood in the world.

Mr Fox added: “Loughs’ Agency held a public meeting. We presented the MSC pre-assessment. We told the fishermen what we wanted to do. We told them the benefit of it. We told them the additional access to markets they would have. The proposal was shot down in a ball of smoke. We tried several times to get labelling, but people have said 'It is only going make you look good’.

“Yes, it would be great for the Loughs' Agency to say we managed a fishery up to an MSC certified sustainable seafood level, but this was to get additional access to markets and potentially more money for the product.

“Pre-regulation, there was an issue with undersized oysters being fished and being sent out to France and Spain to be grown on in those areas. What happens now is that buyers from France and Spain buy up the adult oysters, not juvenile oysters, and most of them are already at a marketable stage where they can be put on a plate and sold in a restaurant but what they do is hold them in wet stores, in bays until they can sell them,” said Barry Fox.

Addressing the lack of Loughs’ Agency regulation of the Gigas or Japanese oysters grown on the trestles which proliferate east Inishowen, Barry fox said no enacting legislation has been passed to permit such regulation.

He added: “Primary legislation was developed in 2007 to give the Loughs' Agency responsibility for the licensing of aquaculture, including mussel farming in the Lough on the seabed, the inter-tidal farming of oysters and inshore, freshwater fish farms, within the catchment.

“The Dáil and the North's Legislative Assembly would have to bring in enacting legislation to allow us to bring forward secondary legislation to enact those regulatory powers, however that has never happened.

“It has been stalled because of the UK claim on Lough Foyle. Britain laid claim to Lough Foyle in 1922 as part of the British Territory. The Irish Republic never accepted that claim. The only way that licensing of aquaculture in Lough Foyle will happen is with agreement from the British and Irish Government.

“We have a disputed territory. The British Government may lay claim to Lough Foyle and the Irish Government does not accept that claim. That is the current position. There are currently very high level talks going on between the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, which is the UK representative, and the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. They are discussing how to fix the problem of Lough Foyle, with regard only to the licensing of aquaculture and dealing with the issue that is currently there. It has been ongoing for years, since 2007. We would not be appraised of the progress of those discussions,” said Barry Fox.

Turning to an article in the Inish Times a number of weeks ago, Barry Fox challenged the statement he was “not prepared to tell the Crown Estate how much seabed was under aquaculture in Lough Foyle”.

Mr Fox asserted: “My statement in those board minutes was very clear. Loughs’ Agency held meetings between the Department of Agriculture in the South, which has responsibility for aquaculture licensing, and the Crown Estate Commission in the UK, which has responsibility for seabed leasing for aquaculture, to try to get an agreement between the two of them, where the Loughs' Agency could act as an agent for both jurisdictions, to license aquaculture.

“I was not prepared to give Crown Estate the hectarage under culture because I did not want to give them a figure that they thought they may generate in the future from the practice.

“It was nothing to do with the fact that they owned anything because they have no maps, they have no deeds. The bottom line is, they have never charged a penny to any organisation be it the Irish State or a private organisation for the seabed of Lough Foyle outside of the inter-tidal on the Northern Shore because it is a contested area.

“They are being used as a red herring. It is misinformation. The Crown Estate is an agent for the Crown. They are not in the Foyle over and above the two governments,” said Barry Fox.