Tom MacSweeney. Cork diving club finds seagrass beds in Kinsale mussel farm plot

Two thriving seagrass beds have been mapped exactly where a 23ha mussel farm has been approved for bottom-culture dredging in Kinsale Harbour.

“These lie between Dock Beach, Charles Fort, and James Fort — dense, healthy beds with vibrant biodiversity.”

That is reported in Subsea, Ireland’s diving magazine published by Diving Ireland organisation, featuring Cork Sub-Aqua Club (SAC) divers who carried out GPS mapping of Kinsale Harbour.

“They documented something absent from the official record, the discovery raised an awkward question,” says the magazine’s report.

“How had such a significant marine habitat been missed in the original environmental assessment?

“Underwater evidence does not lie. Cork SAC’s seagrass survey exposed a crucial data gap.”

According to the report, written by John Collins, nine club members carried out the investigation. Snorkellers used handheld GPS units to trace the bed boundaries. Divers photographed marine life.

“The results were more extensive than expected,” the report says, identifying snake pipefish, juvenile ballan wrasse, shoals of sand eel, crabs, sea hares, peacock worms, and snakelock anemones in the area.

When the Department of Agriculture, Food, and Marine granted an aquaculture licence last May to Waterford’s Woodstown Bay Shellfish Ltd for the cultivation of mussels in Kinsale Harbour using bottom culture on the sub-tidal foreshore at a site between Dock Beach, James Fort, and Charles Fort, there were hundreds of appeals and a land/sea protest at Dock Beach in June, with 7,000 signatures to a protest petition.

The issue was also raised in the Dáil.

EU nature regulations list seagrass as a priority habitat for restoration, and it is claimed to absorb carbon faster than tropical rainforests. However, a lot is said to have been lost mainly due to human activity.

The club findings, from their investigation last June, are interesting in the context of an awaited final outcome, which has been deferred until October 5 of this year on appeals against granting of the aquaculture licence.

“By documenting what was there rather than leaving it unseen, divers have shown how clubs can become the underwater eyes that desktop studies lack,” says Subsea.

The Aquaculture Licences Appeals Board had been expected to make a decision on appeals last October.

It met on October 6, announcing the deferral of its decision for a year because it had “formed the view that, due to having to consider the logistics of managing the appeals, given the number of appellants and assessing all the issues raised in each appeal”, it would need the extra time.

Matthew move

The moving of the MV Mathew through Monkstown Bay caused much interest at the end of last week, when tugs were involved in getting her from her usual berth at Marino Point to the deepwater quay in Cobh.

Speculation centred on whether she had been sold and was departing the harbour forever. Revenue Commissioners declined immediate comment.

She was berthed starboard-side on at Cobh. That faced her back upriver so, even though Tánaiste Simon Harris had told South Central TD Seamus McGrath that “it is intended to have MV Matthew eventually removed to a recycling yard”, she was not bound there at present.

To depart for a scrapyard, MV Matthew will require “classification society” certification of seaworthiness for insurance — part of the shipping industry system.

A company has been engaged “to advance the certification and clearance processes necessary to facilitate departure of the vessel”, the Tánaiste told Mr McGrath.

Revenue and the Government will doubtless be relieved to see her stern eventually passing Roche’s Point because her maintenance bill in Cork Harbour has now exceeded €14m.

Castletownbere investment

Castletownbere is to get €5.8m harbour investment, including for Dinish Island, in the latest Government overall €27m financial commitment to the country’s main fishery harbours.

The seafood task force has also been announced, but is it a bit late for such State support to an industry in severe crisis?

As this commitment was being announced, the Irish pelagic fleet faced imminent tie-up with its meagre quotas almost caught for the entire year. At the same time, 36 Norwegian trawlers off the West Coast reported landings of over 40,000 tonnes of blue whiting last week — which is more than the entire Irish quota.

• My Seascapes is on podcast platforms and https://tommacsweeneymaritimepodcast.ie.
  Email: tommacsweeneymarine@gmail.com.