Report of the Working Group on Irish Sea Whiting

(i) Annually, from October to March, the fishermen of both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland wereheavily dependent upon whiting catches taken from the western side of the Irish Sea off the counties Downand Dublin/Louth. The whiting population within this area was found to constitute a seasonal aggregationof juveniles, with a small proportion of adults, which provided recruits, by emigration, to adjacent whiting fisheries (mainly in the eastern Irish Sea) as thefish became older.