Following several recent IFSA articles about how the Sea Fisheries Protection ‘Authority’ constantly portray the Irish fishing industry to the general public, isn’t it strange that yet again we have a case in point with this article published in the Irish Examiner yesterday.
The headline exclaiming that inspections were carried out on “just 6% of Irish trawlers in 2022” takes a different slant to what the article actually goes on to say i.e. that, according to the SFPA’s own records “it used a ‘risk-based methodology for inspection’ of fishing boats to carry out checks on catches”.
In other words, based on a “risk-based” system and the fact that the Irish fishing industry has the highest fisheries regulation compliance rate anywhere in Europe, the percentage of Irish vessels inspected was very low compared to the percentage of non-Irish vessels inspected.
But also its worth noting that when using percentages in broad sweeping terms to make a case its easy to misrepresent the actual figures - - for example, to say 75% of Norwegian vessels were inspected may actually only mean that a total of three vessels were inspected out of the four that landed fish into Ireland during last year -
- but therefore to state that ‘only’ 6% of the Irish fleet were inspected may mean that out of 2,000 Irish vessel landings 120 inspections of Irish vessels took place - - thus meaning that in reality, the 6% Irish vessel inspections versus the 75% Norwegian vessel inspections actually translates to 120 Irish inspections versus 3 Norwegian inspections - - - but naturally the SFPA make sure that the public aren’t told these figures.
So once again we have a case of the SFPA twisting the facts and using percentages instead of hard numbers to mask the reality of the data.
Instead of highlighting that, according to their own assessments, they deemed Irish vessels to be low risk of law breaking, the SFPA twists the tone of the story to make it sound like the Irish fishing fleet are somehow ‘getting off lightly’ compared to the monitoring of the fleets of other nations.
In other words, based on a “risk-based” system and the fact that the Irish fishing industry has the highest compliance rate anywhere in Europe, the percentage of Irish vessels inspected was very low compared to the percentage of non-Irish vessels inspected.
So once again we have a case of the SFPA, instead of highlighting that, according to their own assessments, deemed Irish vessels to be low risk of law breaking, twist the tone of the story to make it sound like the Irish fishing fleet are somehow ‘getting off lightly’ compared to the monitoring of the fleets of other nations.