The world's second-largest factory trawler - a giant floating fish processing vessel - is currently fishing off the Irish coast – and could be heading to waters off Northern Ireland.
The ship's movements off the coast of Ireland have raised huge concerns among environmentalists, the Irish fishing and food sector and recreational anglers.
The giant FV Margiris is equal in length to 14 regular-sized trawlers and drags vast nets stretching the distance of six football pitches. It has been called, by critics, a "floating Death Star" and a "threat to fishing communities and their seas".
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Critics including Greenpeace say it clears large swathes of ocean of virtually all marine life, including pods of dolphins that Greenpeace claim have been pictured caught in its nets.
The vast nets are dragged at mid-depth level (rather than on or close to the sea bed) and fish are pumped aboard using a vacuum system.
The Lithuanian-registered, Dutch-owned and operated Factory Trawler is hugely controversial, capable of catching and freezing up to 250 tonnes of fish a day, using 'mid-water' nets that target species such as horse mackerel and pilchards. Its operators have been accused of leaving many tonnes of unwanted and dead fish in its wake, the so-called 'bycatch' that is not commercially valuable.
The FV Margiris and factory fishing ships like it have already been banned from Australian waters and fishing sector and environmental groups in Ireland, the UK and elsewhere in Europe have called for these giant "vacuum cleaners of the seas" to be banned outright to protect stocks and marine environments.
The Blue Planet Society, which campaigns on ocean conservation, has warned that these types of ships can wipe out both stocks and sustainable, local fisheries such as the ones Ireland is trying to foster off our coasts.
“The capacity of these trawlers is equivalent to dozens of small-scale fishing vessels, and sustainable small-scale fisheries cannot compete with industrial super-trawlers," warns the group.
"We think these vessels will undoubtedly come into contact with short-beaked common dolphins, endangered bluefin tuna and over-fished sea bass.”
However, the company which operates the FV Margiris, Dutch fishing giant Parlevliet & Van der Plas, has insisted that the vessel does not create the amount of bycatch it's critics claim and that by targeting shoals of fish at mid-depth in the sea rather than dragging a net across the seabed, it can actually cause less damage to marine environments that traditional trawlers.
The company says it has an “excellent reputation for sustainable fishing”.
Ocean conservation groups and Irish fishermen are expected to continue to monitor the FV Margiris as it makes it's way up the west coast of Ireland.
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