Feature: Trawling the murky waters of fisheries politics

In doing so it followed the state governments of New South Wales and South Australia which had already banned the vessel from their coastal waters.

An editorial in the Sydney Morning Herald opined: “The decision to block the arrival of the Irish-owned supertrawler Veronica is a win for common sense as well as a victory for the minnows over the great white shark.”

Although the Panamanian flag flutters above the Veronica’s huge deck, the ship is undeniably Irish and McHugh has been painted as the deep-sea bogeyman of Australia. Variously described as the czar, magnate or pirate of the Irish fishing scene, he has inspired such emotive headlines as “Irish king fisher pays A$1.6m for a licence to kill in Australian waters” and “Plundering the depths”.

Opposition parties have levelled insinuations of skulduggery and secret agreements, but the Australian government has stuck hard to the line that no deal had been done.

The company agreed no formal application for a permit to bring the boat to Australian waters had been made, but confirmed last week that the process had been going on for almost a year. The firm also said it was confident of success. It had already recruited key local crew, bought a licence and set up an Australian company structure to manage the business.

The present Liberal government, led by John Howard, is considered to be the more pro-business of the two main Australian political parties, and was believed to be amenable to the arrival of the vessel.

“The Liberals seemed positive and were taking soundings from industry — which are very positive — and let’s face it, nobody is going to be taking a business that is a threat,” said Niall O’Gorman, the financial controller of Atlantic Dawn, the operator of MV Veronica. “Feedback was good — before this election was called and it became a football, it was all looking positive.”

O’Gorman insists resistance to the supertrawler is based more on ignorance than fact, but acknowledges the company has a real battle on its hands to quell the opposition.

“We fully accept that the concept looks scary from an environmental point of view but . . . nine-tenths of the vessel are factory, cold storage and living accommodation,” he said. “The difficulty is perception — they just see a big ship and say, ‘Oh my God, this spells danger’.”

The impetus behind the initiative did not come from the company, but from leading figures in Australia’s burgeoning fish-farming industry, keen to exploit their waters for fish feed in a bid to reduce reliance on European and African imports. The Veronica and her sister ship, the Atlantic Dawn, specialise in catching pelagic species such as anchovies, sardines and mackerel, used to supply food for fish farms, poultry and animals.

Australia has the third-largest fishing zone in the world, covering 11m square miles and extending 200 nautical miles out to sea. The native fishing industry concentrates on low-volume, high-value fish for export to Asia, and especially Japan. Although wild sea fishing still accounts for the biggest share of such exports, aquaculture has become a fast-growing rural industry and analysts believe it could take off in the same way as the Australian wine trade in the early 1990s.

Aquaculture turnover has grown from $A670m to A$745m and is expected to top A$832m this year, with tuna and salmon the fastest-growing market sectors. The government believes the industry can triple in size and achieve sales of A$2.5 billion by 2010 based on increased sales to a recovering Japanese economy and the continuing rise in affluence in China.

Fish feed is key to this and, at present, only one Australian boat trawls for the crucial supply of pelagic species necessary for a thriving aquaculture industry. Feed is the biggest variable production cost for fish farmers and prices are on the rise.

It can take up to five tons of wild fish to produce a single ton of fishmeal and 12 tons of fish to produce a ton of fish oil, according to marine scientists, who also estimate the production of two pounds of farmed salmon takes seven pounds of wild fish for feed. As much as 37 pounds of wild fish are used to produce two pounds of ranched tuna. Such figures have prompted extensive research into synthetic replacements.

McHugh has been nothing if not controversial in a career that began as a teenage trainee on the fisheries board before he bought his first boat at the age of 21. Apart from the two supertrawlers, the 57-year-old Achill-born entrepreneur is a prominent businessman in his adopted home town of Killybegs, where a couple of fish-processing factories and a local hotel are in family ownership.

He made his money when he turned to mackerel fishing following the closure of the herring industry. This high-protein fish was seen as low value and uncontrolled by government quotas, but the shift coincided with the rise of aquaculture across Europe and McHugh made a fortune.

Highly regarded for his business acumen, he came to wider attention in 2000, when Bertie Ahern made a personal plea to Romano Prodi, the president of the European commission, to ensure that the €70m Atlantic Dawn, which McHugh had ordered without an international licence from the European Union, would receive the necessary paperwork.

McHugh had personally put €15m into the ship and a consortium of Irish banks put up the remaining capital, minus a €4m grant provided by the Norwegian government to aid its shipbuilding industry.

He already owned the Veronica, which he bought in the 1980s for €15m. At 1,140ft in length, the trawler can process fish, freeze them, and catch bigger volumes than competitors. It can also stay at sea for months on end. The success of the Veronica spawned the Atlantic Dawn and, in essence, the plans are now to take the supertrawler to Australia to work in the same way as it has done off west Africa, where it has concentrated on underdeveloped fishing grounds.

“What people don’t realise is that this business is only really viable with ships of scale that allow refrigeration and processing to take place at sea,” said O’Gorman.

High volume has become a euphemism for overfishing among development agencies that believe EU policies, designed to compensate African countries in return for fishing rights, are nothing short of exploitation. The Atlantic Dawn in particular has become a lightning rod.

“Scientists have recommended that the level of fishing shouldn’t be higher than it was between 1995 and 1999,” said Béatrice Gorez, the coordinator of the Coalition for Fair Fisheries Arrangements, a non-governmental EU agency.

“In those days, Atlantic Dawn wasn’t around. It’s obviously a much bigger fishing effort so the impact on stocks is uncertain.”

Regardless of misgivings about the dangers to world fish stocks by the appearance of these vessels, it would appear that unlike agriculture, where EU policy has been to pay small farmers to stay on the land, the fisheries policy is leaning towards scale.

According to Frank Doyle, the secretary-general of the Irish Fishermen’s Organisation, it is becoming increasingly difficult for an individual to afford to run a boat. The result has been a significant increase in the number of skippers who own more than one vessel in a bid to achieve economies of scale.