West Cork, Ireland, 08 July 2025 — For Immediate Release
c. 950 words
A highly publicised campaign to stop the unregulated exploitation of Sprat off the Irish coast is gaining momentum with the formation of a new Save Our Sprat group to cover inshore waters from Kinsale to Mizen Head.
The industrial overfishing of Sprat was in the news in early June as a public meeting and march organised by Save Our Sprat Bantry Bay garnered significant public support and national media coverage. Rosscarbery-based wildlife artist and illustrator, William Helps, was at that march in Bantry, and it inspired him to take action.
“After marching in Bantry, I felt my local bays needed to be represented in the call to end industrial fishing for forage fish,” said Mr Helps. “Witnessing the collapse of marine life in Rosscarbery bay at the hands of unregulated fishing has broken my heart. I reached out and quickly discovered that I am not alone, and, in true West Cork fashion, I was immediately surrounded by talented, creative, driven people with a shared love of the ocean and a determination to stop the madness and make things right for the sake of our children.”
Save Our Sprat Bantry Bay has welcomed the formation of the new Save Our Sprat West Cork group, and is working closely with members to expand and amplify the Save Our Sprat message.
“We’re delighted to be joined by Save our Sprat West Cork in calling for a moratorium on Sprat fishing,” said Dolf D’hondt of the Save Our Sprat Bantry group. “We look forward to more groups forming around the country, and together we can be a strong united voice to protect the Irish Sprat, which is a vital feed source for Irish marine ecosystems.”
Sprat is a tiny fish that forms a crucial link in the marine food web, providing a vital food source for larger species in our inshore waters. However, this ecologically pivotal fish is under intense pressure from unregulated industrial trawling when it is at its most vulnerable. Every autumn, Sprat should gather in dense shoals to spawn in West Cork’s shallow bays and inlets, where they become easy marks for large, Irish-owned vessels. Working in pairs, these boats haul entire shoals of Sprat out of the water before they get a chance to reproduce.
“It’s sheer lunacy,” said Calvin Jones, founder of Ireland’s Wildlife, who has worked as a wildlife guide along this stretch of the West Cork coast for over 20 years. “They’re killing not just this generation, but also the next in one fell swoop, offering Sprat no opportunity to recover. Sprat is food for practically everything bigger than it in the ocean: seabirds; larger fish like mackerel, cod and pollock; seals; dolphins; whales… you name it.
“I’ve been sharing the spectacular marine wildlife of West Cork with visitors from all over Ireland and around the world for decades, but over the last five years, it’s become harder and harder to attract visitors to West Cork, and to find wildlife to show them when they arrive. It simply isn’t there anymore.”
This decline in West Cork’s marine wildlife is not just anecdotal, there is evidence to back it up.
“In a relatively short few years we’ve seen West Cork’s inshore waters go from one of the best places in the northeast Atlantic for whale sightings to a quiet backwater,” confirmed Pádraig Whooley, Sightings Coordinator with the Irish Whale and Dolphin Group (IWDG), citing data from the NGO’s nationwide sightings scheme.
While the IWDG acknowledges factors like climate change and pollution are likely to play a role in this shift, Mr Whooley stressed the immediate imperative to address factors under our direct control.
“Rather than conveniently blaming this on climate change or pollution, we should focus our efforts on the elements we can control,” he said. “At the very top of that list is the industrial extraction of Sprat. As long as successive Irish governments allow this unregulated and unsustainable practice to go unchecked, establishing why we are losing our whales will remain impossible, and only extends the pressure on our once rich inshore waters and coastal communities.”
At least one Government Minister has openly acknowledged that pair trawling for Sprat is causing untold damage to our coastal marine ecosystems. Posting on his Instagram account recently, Minister for Nature, Christopher O’Sullivan TD, highlighted concern over decline in Sprat, and acknowledged that: “Pair trawling by larger boats in our bays and harbours is completely unsustainable.” He went on to state that “Ireland needs to lead on conservation, especially marine conservation.”
That leadership in marine conservation is precisely what Save Our Sprat is looking for from Ministers as it calls on our Government to take decisive action, and impose an immediate moratorium on the fishing of sprat and other forage fish in Irish inshore waters, until there is independent science that clearly demonstrates it can be done sustainably, with appropriate quotas and monitoring in place.
To demonstrate public support, and hopefully kick-start our leaders into action, Save Our Sprat West Cork is holding a protest march on Wednesday 13th August in Clonakilty, West Cork. It will start at the Whale Tail sculpture outside Clonakilty Distillery at 13:45, and will progress through town to end at the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and the Marine offices.
“We’d like as many people as possible to come out and support us on the march,” said William Helps. “It’s really important that we show our public representatives that we demand action on this critical issue. A healthy marine ecosystem isn’t just important to wildlife, it’s essential for the prosperity of coastal communities right around our Island nation.”
Find out more about Sprat, the issue of overfishing forage fish, and what you can do to help on westcorksprat.net, and follow Save Our Sprat West Cork on Facebook, Instagram, X and YouTube for updates.
ENDS
For more information see the notes below or visit westcorksprat.net
Images to accompany this press release, along with PDF and .docx versions of the text and photo captions can be downloaded here.
Media Contacts
For additional comment / information / interview requests, please get in touch with our media contacts below:
Print Media
Calvin Jones, Save Our Sprat West Cork
[email protected]
Broadcast Media
Padraig Whooley, Save Our Sprat West Cork
[email protected]
Notes for Editors
About Sprat
https://westcorksprat.net/about-sprat/
The European Sprat (Sprattus sprattus) is a small, silvery fish that belongs to a group of similar small, shoaling mid-water fish known collectively as forage fish.
What are Forage Fish?
Forage fish are critically important to the health of any marine ecosystem. In our oceans, phytoplankton absorbs energy from the sun. This phytoplankton becomes food for Zooplankton, a living soup of tiny animals: larval fish, crustaceans, jellyfish and more, but this zooplankton is much too small for most larger creatures in the ocean to catch and eat. That’s where forage fish like Sprat come in.
These voracious little predators gorge themselves on this zooplankton bounty, and in turn become prey themselves for larger fish, seabirds, seals, dolphins, whales and more.
In other parts of the world, species like Capelin, Manhaden, Anchovy or Sardine are the most important forage fish species. Here in Ireland, the humble Sprat fills that role, and until relatively recently it occurred off our coasts in huge numbers.
Sprat (Sprattus sprattus), the lynchpin of the marine food web, is being systematically targeted by unsustainable industrial trawling in Ireland.
The European Sprat occurs in both open water offshore, and in sheltered bays and estuaries, and can tolerate salinities as low as 4 parts per thousand. It is a schooling fish, often gathering in vast shoals when it migrates between its feeding grounds and shallow coastal bays to spawn. While in other parts of its range spawning is reported to occur in summer, here in Ireland, it takes place during the autumn into winter, usually from September to January.
About Pair Trawling
https://westcorksprat.net/what-is-pair-trawling-and-why-is-it-so-damaging/
Pair trawling is an industrial fishing method where two vessels tow a large, shared net between them. This technique is highly efficient and is often used to target small pelagic fish like sprat, which form dense shoals near the surface or midwater column, especially during their inshore spawning season in autumn and winter.
On Ireland’s south coast — particularly in West Cork’s inshore waters — pair trawling has been used intensively over more than a decade to harvest sprat. While technically legal, this method poses serious ecological concerns due to its non-selective nature and high catch volumes at a pivotal point in the fish life cycle.
Sprat is a keystone forage species, forming the base of the marine food web. It plays a vital role in sustaining a wide array of marine life, including commercial fish species (like cod, hake, and pollock), seabirds, and marine mammals such as dolphins, porpoises, and whales. When industrial trawlers remove large quantities of sprat from the ecosystem — particularly during their inshore spawning aggregations — it disrupts this delicate balance.
Over the last decade, communities along the south coast have reported dramatic declines in marine biodiversity. The reduction in common dolphins, whales, and seabird activity correlates closely with the intensification of pair trawling for sprat. With no catch quotas or robust ecosystem-based management in place, sprat stocks are being systematically depleted, undermining the long-term health of the marine environment and the coastal communities that depend on it — including tourism, fishing, and nature-based enterprises.
Many conservationists, scientists, and coastal stakeholders are now calling for an immediate moratorium on inshore sprat fishing and a move toward a more precautionary, ecosystem-based approach to fisheries management.
What Save Our Sprat West Cork is asking for
We are calling on the Irish Government to instigate an immediate moratorium on commercial fishing for Sprat (and other forage fish) in Ireland’s inshore waters pending the outcome of independent science that demonstrates that the fishery can be managed sustainably and appropriate quotas, management and monitoring processes are put in place.
Relevant Links
- Save Our Sprat West Cork:
Save Our Sprat Bantry Bay: https://www.saveoursprat.ie/
Christopher O’Sullivan Instagram Post: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DJwUia4NWO5/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==