At the Edge of Ireland (39 page)

It sounds like the spirit of Ireland finally snuck into all the proceedings here, and a true sense of
craic
too floated like Guinness froth across all these mutual reminiscences.

But alas! The same cannot be said for the spirit of the American media, most notoriously the
New York Times
, which gave sparse commentary on the event in a dismissive summation matched only by the
Los Angeles Times
, which sighed: “Stick that Ryder Cup optimism in cold storage for two more years, shake hands and say goodbye, because this thing is pretty much out of reach for the U.S. once again.”

The
Chicago Tribune
pointed out that the American players competed on a course that's “‘about as Irish as matzo ball soup'…They may have invented golf in Europe but it's quintessentially the American game and playing it on a sodden course seems a little odd…And so the Cup grinds on, an utter mystery to those untouched by its charms.”

Sports Illustrated
was exasperated: “How do we do it? Every time, whether the matches are in the USA or Europe or on fast greens or slow greens or sloped greens, it doesn't matter! We still lose!”

Jim McCabe in the
Boston Globe
was a little more generous: “The PGA of America is trying to figure out the puzzle that is the Ryder Cup. I don't know what to say, said Phil Mickelson. Well, that's okay, the Europeans have enough spirit and passion to go around for both teams. It is their show now, and they're doing a most beautiful job with it, too.”

I guess if we hadn't been in Ireland, we would have scarcely noticed the Ryder Cup, especially as we are (were) in no way golf aficionados. But watching the highlights in our little Beara cottage, we sensed something important in the players, in the courteous manners of the game itself, and indeed in Ireland herself. Something that might even one day tempt us both to take up the clubs and stroll the fairways bawling out our “fores” and recording our menageries of eagles, birdies, doglegs, drained snakes—and worm burners (you see—we did learn a few things from all that TV watching).

But in the meantime the whole event, despite all the poundings and pontifications of the press, has engendered in the two of us an even deeper love and respect for Ireland and pride in her potential future.

I'
VE HEARD MOST OF THE ARGUMENTS
about “the end of the fishing industry” through Draconian restrictions many times, both here and previously up in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland when Anne and I were recently staying on the island of Harris and writing our second
Seasons
book. But usually the information came through newspaper features or regional TV reports, not directly through the voices and hearts of the fishermen themselves. On this occasion, however, four of them were clustered around one of the tables in the “lower room” of O'Donoghue's. They weren't exactly what you'd call “old salts,” but their young-old faces were pale, suggesting quite a long absence from the rigors of trawler voyages. I wasn't part of this group but close enough to make notes on their conversation, and most revealing it was too…

 

“'S
GETTING WORSE AND
worse with the salmon now. Quota's down to 90,000 fish from over 250,000 five years ago. How the hell do they expect us to make a living…and how can stocks come back if the young sprats are getting caught up as a bycatch of the mackerel?”

“Well—there's always the voluntary compensation packages. Give up y' license and y' drift nets and get a nice sack o' cash from the government. M'be start a B and B or build a guest cottage for rent…”

“Aw, don't y' believe all y' hear about these packages. What's to stop 'em just tightening up the quotas and letting us get driven out of business with no compensation at all?”

“And it's even worse with the cod and whiting. All but disappearing, and even if you can get a decent catch, fish prices don't keep up and sometimes it's hardly worth unloading 'em.”

“Climate shift is movin' the shoals. That's what it is.”

“Well, they've certainly gone from around the Aran Islands and Rosaveel. Prawn grounds on the west are still okay—but there's no mature fish left. It's all overworked. Too much intensive fishing. Stocks are ravaged—wiped out. Tows all end up the same. Under-sized or nothin' at all sometimes. Hardly a sprat for all y' troubles. And all this—and the fuel going up like the very devil…”

“And look at the harbors. Decommissioned boats everywhere. Tied up. Useless. All over the country. Never be used again. Terrible, terrible waste of money and men. So many good lives wrecked…”

“Porcupine Bank's still good, though…”

“And what use is that, for God's sake? We don't have the big boats. Not like the damn French and Spanish. Been there scraping it clean for twenty years…We've always been decades behind…Never got government help…We were all stuck with our smaller boats…Couldn't compete…”

Fisherman's Boots

“Aye, that's Ireland now, isn't that the truth—always at the back of the field, living off the scraps of all those greedy foreign buggers…”

“Ah, s'not that simple. We didn't see what was happenin' with the European Union. Government here gave our fishin' away in exchange for flush agricultural subsidies for the farmers. There just weren't enough of us and too many bloody farmers—and now they get all the cash—tons and tons of euros and we sit here moanin' and groanin' and doing sweet nothin'.”

“Yeah—and listen, I've got this latest thing in the paper…this report on the fishing by Údarás na Gaeltachta…This'll make you moan even more…How's this for statin' the bleedin' obvious: ‘There is no doubt that a range of forces, internal and external, continue to work toward the elimination of drift net fishing in Ireland…'”

“Ah—now there's new news f'y'…bloody stupid gobshites!”

“And were they paid to write this crap too?!”

“Yeah—but listen to this end bit: ‘While we admit we have limited statutory remit in this sector, we acknowledge the importance of the industry, not only for local fishing communities, but for the local fish processing, tourism and restaurant sectors.'”

“And that's it?! That's all it says?!”

“Just about. They end up claimin' they support compensation for relinquishing drift net licenses…which is a load of old garbage we've heard again and again…”

“Yeah, but like Sean said, the government could just sit back and let the stocks get so low that we'll all be bankrupt…without any compensation!”

“M'be—and m'be what that bunch of backside-scratchin' bureaucrats needs is what those French guys gave the British Royal Navy when they boarded one of their boats a few weeks back to check out their catch…”

“And what was that?”

“Pot loads of toilet crap from the johns…all over their heads!”

“The French did that?!”

“Yeah—tough bunch. Don't like foreigners snooping around. And that's our problem too…too many commissions and politicians snooping around, writing reports and such like, tellin' us what we've all known for years like it was a brand-new revelation, and making stupid useless suggestions. And in the meantime, we're all stuck here in port, quotas all finished, no place to take our boats…and just watching the cash get pissed away…”

“It's a real terrible mess and no doubt on that…”

Fisherman with Pot

“No doubt at all…and no way out…”

Silence descended on the group, and even the pints of stout remained untouched, circled around the table like dark standing stones raised up in far-distant eras when the ancients who peopled this island believed the gods would always protect them in their times of need.

Where are those gods today? I wondered…

 

I
SHARED ALL THIS
fascinating new information with Anne and we decided it was time to go looking for these gods and some of their more fortunate recipients.

And despite all the ongoing moans and groans we found a few. Regular rumors abounded of enormous (if occasionally illegal) hauls here, even after a mere couple of days at sea, resulting in mega-hauls of euros too. Figures of 350,000 to 500,000 euros ($525,000 to $750,000) floated about—for a single trip's catch! We knew that the harbor at Castletownbere is one of the largest in the southwest, and it's also Ireland's largest whitefish port, with tens of thousands of tons of fish landed annually. But we had no idea of the cash splashing about! There are regular flotillas of Spanish, Portuguese, and French trawlers here too—enormous creatures—crammed cheek by jowl beside smaller (but much larger than a decade ago) local craft. With so much technology and state-of-the-art know-how on full display every day, surely it wouldn't be that hard, we thought, to see how the whole trawling system worked and decide whether all the cries of repressive quotas, premature bankruptcies, depleted stocks, and anti-Irish prejudices could be substantiated. Our determination, however, was somewhat diminished when we realized that the world of mega-hauling is a rather secretive and cautious one where information is exchanged with reluctance and even the occasional drop or two of wile and guile.

Winks, nods, and knowing—but mainly silent—communication seemed to be the rules of the game. And while we met some of the most delightful people involved in the trade, we still came away sensing that basic truths and solid data continued to elude us.

 

P
EOPLE LIKE
M
ARGARET
D
OWNEY
were the epitome of graciousness. This warm, cuddly grandmother (with a spine of steel, as we later learned) invited Anne and me over for tea and cakes at her large home set on a prominent seashore site overlooking Bere Island. There she regaled us with tales of her family's long association with fishing. Following the recent death of her second husband, Frank, she and her son Kevin were now the primary controllers of a huge new 120-foot-long craft, the
Sea Spray
, which towers over the smaller Beara boats at the nearby harbor. She took us on a tour of this meticulously maintained masterwork of modern navigation. I don't think I've ever seen an engine room quite so clean and gleaming. Ditto the wheelhouse and the crew's quarters. Eerily spit-and-polished. And yet Margaret insisted that the boat was in regular use “during the quota period” but that no matter how arduous and wave-bashed the latest voyage might have been, shipshape appearances in port were obligatory.

As we stood high on the prow of the boat overlooking the square, it was curious—quaint, even—to see in the midst of all this huge high-tech clustering of trawlers, there were still fishermen scattered along the quay mending their nets by hand, as they have done here for centuries. We found this a rather reassuring time-warp glimpse of a far simpler era.

Through a long family association with the sea, Margaret was familiar with all the sagas—the destruction of the Calf Rock Lighthouse in a terrible storm in 1881; the loss of a large Spanish trawler and all nine of its crew in 1984 just at the entrance to the Bere Channel less than four miles from her house; the enormous financial penalties for “overfishing”; the crazy dodgem car antics of trawlers when they're all competing to fish the same shoal, and the illegal “beat-the-quota” selling of catches at sea to other international boats.

“Oh—I'm getting too old for all this,” she said. (We didn't believe her.) “Especially when I go to the cemetery and realize I know just about everybody in it! Only problem is—when I walk into town, with all our scores of new Polish and Lithuanian immigrants, I hardly know anyone!” (We didn't believe that either, but we understood her point. Sometimes MacCarthy's sounded like a Warsaw café and the nearby supermarket boasted a whole section of Polish foods.)