Home to some 120 over 10m boats as well as a sizeable number of smaller boats, the three main Co. Down harbours of Ardglass, Kilkeel and Portavogie handled catches totalling 15,766t with a value of £24.2m in 2012.
Ballycastle, Ballydorn, Ballyhalbert, Ballywalter, Bangor, Carnlough, Cushendum, Donaghadee, Greencastle and Portaferry are among the other harbours in Northern Ireland where smaller quantities of mainly creel caught shellfish (brown/velvet crab, lobsters and whelks) are also landed by inshore boats.
When landings made by Northern Ireland trawlers into ports in Cumbria, the Clyde, along the east coast of Scotland and England, Dunmore East and pelagic landings into Killybegs, Shetland and Norway/Denmark are taken into account, the catch value of the Northern Ireland fleet is increasingly significant.
The ports play a pivotal economic role in the United Kingdom’s fisheries, in addition to the vitally important contribution they make in their respective local communities.
Provisional
