We live in an empty, denuded world, a faint shadow of its former self. Even "green" Ireland which sells itself as a natural place is an ecological wasteland.
From Whittled Away, by Padraic Fogarty
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In 1623 it was reported chat Ireland was exporting 20,000 tons of pilchard annually.4 To pm this figure in perspective, it is over four times the toal landings for all species from the Irish Sea in 2014 and is exceeded today only by the individual open-water catches of mackerel. horse mackerel. and blue whiting Even if this figure is m exaggeration it gives some idea of the scale of shoals. However, It was not to last. The pilchard began its decline in the middle of the eighteenth century and by 1795 the Baltimore fishery was spoken of in the past tense. After thh, shoals of fish continued to appear, albeit intermittently. well into the nineteenth century. An appearance off Kilmore Quay in County Wexford in 1835 was the first in living memory and 'people did not know their value and there was no means of saving them and great quantities were used as manure'. In 1879 the Baltimore Company was wound up after a number of unsuccessful years and then fell into a terminal decline. The pilchards didn't disappear entirely but subsequent appearances resulted in catches being dumped or used to fertilise fields because demand was nor there to actually eat them. Today, there is no targeted fishery for pilchards and their occurrence in Irish waters is sporadic and of no commercial signifieance.
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