Ireland closes pollack fishing in ICES Area 7 until 1 December

Irish sea-fishing boats may not fish for pollack in Area 7 from 15:00 hours on 7 November 2026 until 1 December 2026, under Fisheries Management Notice No. 69 of 2026, signed by Timmy Dooley, Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, on 6 November. The notice is published in Iris Oifigiúil No. 90 of 10 November 2026 under the official reference FMN 2026/69.

The instrument is made under section 12 of the Sea-Fisheries and Maritime Jurisdiction Act 2006 (No. 8 of 2006), together with the Agriculture, Food and the Marine (Delegation of Ministerial Functions) (No. 2) Order 2025 (S.I. No. 368 of 2025) — the same statutory basis used by the department’s monthly quota notices. Its official title is the 2026 November Pollack Area 7 Fisheries Closure Notice, and it is signed at 15:00 hours on 6 November 2026.

What the notice provides

Paragraph 3(a) binds the master of an Irish sea-fishing boat: he or she “shall not engage in or cause or permit any person on board to engage in fishing activity for Pollack in the specified area” from 15:00 hours on 7 November 2026. The operative terms are set out as follows:

• Species covered: pollack, defined in the notice as Pollachius pollachius.
• Area covered: “the specified area”, defined in paragraph 2 as Area 7.
• Entry into force: 15:00 hours on 7 November 2026.
• Expiry: the notice ceases to have effect on 1 December 2026.
• Signature: Timmy Dooley, Minister of State, 6 November 2026 at 15:00 hours.

The duty is not confined to the skipper’s own gear: it also covers causing or permitting anyone on board to fish for pollack. The text draws no distinction by vessel length, in contrast with the quota notices issued for the same stock.

A quota that had been tightening

Twelve days before the closure, the same department published the November demersal quota notices in Iris Oifigiúil of 3 November 2026: Fisheries Management Notice No. 65 of 2026 for boats of 55 feet and over, and Fisheries Management Notice No. 66 of 2026 for boats under 55 feet. Both set pollack catch limits for Area 7 — 0.40 tonnes and 0.20 tonnes respectively — and both schedules state that “no directed fisheries are permitted under these catch limits” (stock code POL/07.).

Those figures were already below the levels carried in the three preceding monthly notices — FMN 46 of 2026 and FMN 47 of 2026 for August, FMN 54 of 2026 and FMN 55 of 2026 for September, and FMN 59 of 2026 and FMN 60 of 2026 for October — which stood at 0.5 tonne for the larger vessels and 0.25 tonnes for the smaller ones. The two November quota notices lapse on the same date as the closure, 1 December 2026.

Three days between effect and publication

The closure took effect at 15:00 hours on Saturday 7 November but appeared in print only on Tuesday 10 November, when Iris Oifigiúil No. 90 carried the notice in its official notices section at page marker [G-2]. From that hour, fishing activity for pollack in Area 7 by Irish sea-fishing boats is prohibited; the prohibition is restated in the explanatory note appended to the instrument, which records that it “prohibits fishing for Pollack in Area 7 by Irish sea-fishing boats with effect from hours on 15:00 on 07 November 2026”.

The published text contains no by-catch tolerance, no landing allowance and no exemption by vessel size or gear type, and it sets no reopening date beyond the stated expiry of 1 December 2026.

Why it matters

For skippers working Area 7 — the ICES division that takes in the waters west and south of Ireland — the notice converts a shrinking monthly catch limit into an outright ban on directed fishing for pollack, with four weeks of the autumn season still to run. Vessels that had planned landings of pollack in the second half of November now face the choice of avoiding the stock altogether or stopping, and the three-day gap between the hour of effect and the date of publication leaves the closure operating on a notice whose formal record reached readers only this week.

Source: Iris Oifigiúil, No. 90, 10 November 2026, Section I, p. [G-2] (official reference: FMN 2026/69).