Irish fishermen get shirty about whales BY LLOYD GORMAN
A BUNCH OF PLUCKY IRISH FISHERMEN HAS DONE WHAT A FORMER AUSTRALIAN PRIME MINISTER PROMISED BUT FAILED TO DO. IN 2014, TONY ABBOTT SAID HE WOULD “SHIRTFRONT” RUSSIAN PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN OVER THE DOWNING OF MALAYSIAN AIRLINES FLIGHT MH17 IN EASTERN UKRAINE, IN WHICH 38 AUSTRALIANS LOST THEIR LIVES. “I’m going to shirtfront Mr Putin ... you bet I am,” he said on TV. In the end his bark was worse than his bite. Admittedly, it would take a lot to stand up to Putin whose country does not muck around with defence issues, but it seems Russia bit off more than it could chew when planning to carry out maritime war games in the Atlantic Ocean, about 150 miles off the west coast of Ireland, in an area inside the country’s Exclusive Economic Zone in a spot fished by Irish trawlers, mainly from Castletownbere, West Cork. The welfare of whales and other sea creatures formed a big part of why the Irish were so defiant. The fishermen and their representative organisation – the Irish South and West Fish Producers Organisation (ISWFPO) – met with Yuriy Filatov, the Russian Ambassador to Ireland, in late January to make their case. They said they would continue to fish the area as normal, despite the danger posed by Russian vessels going through their drills. 26 | THE IRISH SCENE
“We don’t want anyone doing live fire in our waters; it’s our backyard, it’s where we make our living,” fisherman Alan Carlton told an (Irish) CNN reporter. “We’re worried about what live fire might do to fish stock and marine life. There’s whales and dolphins out there, it’s bound to interfere with them and frighten them like. It’d frighten me if a bomb went off there, so it’s bound to frighten them.” The reporter, Donnie O’Sullivan, asked Carlton what message he would send to the Russian President. “Maybe they could go out to deeper water where they wouldn’t affect the fish stock as much,” he replied. Around the same time as the fishermen were rocking up at the Russian embassy the Irish government – which, some said, came late to the party – was throwing its own shapes. On January 25, CarlowKilkenny TD Malcolm Noonan issued a statement saying he was deeply concerned about the military exercises planned by the Russians. “While we do not know the nature of these exercises,”
