Declan Coney, a former eel fisher, knew there was something wrong when the famed swarms of Lough Neagh flies failed to materialise. In past years, they would appear around the Northern Irish lake in thick plumes and “wisps” – sometimes prompting mistaken alarm of a fire incident, Lough Shore residents say.
Clothes left out on a washing line “would be covered in them”, Coney says. So would any windshield on a vehicle travelling around the lough’s 90-mile shoreline. Conservationists marvelled at their courtship dances, hovering above treetops.
Last spring the flies never arrived. “This is the first year ever that, if you walked up to the Cross of Ardboe or the area around there, you’d find there’s no flies,” Coney says.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
In past years, they would appear around the Northern Irish lake in thick plumes and “wisps” – sometimes prompting mistaken alarm of a fire incident, Lough Shore residents say.
Last summer, a vast “bloom” of blue-green algae – a thick, photosynthesising blanket that deprives the lake of oxygen, choking aquatic life – brought the lough’s accelerating biodiversity crisis into sharp focus.
“For many years, they would herald the winter coming in,” says Tom McElhone, who lives near a disused freshwater laboratory at Traád Point on the lough’s north-western shore – its last major research facility, which closed in the early 2000s.
The 53-year-old believes, however, that many of the social ties and customs that helped fuse together these shoreline villages, parishes and townlands have unravelled during his lifetime, mirroring a progressive decline of the lough’s central fishing industry.
Along the walls of the Toome Canal, at the north-western tip of Lough Neagh, chalk-like bright blue residue from the algal blooms was visible for weeks after the thick sludge of surface algae had disappeared from sight.
Addressing a rain-drenched demonstration by the same canal in late November, just a stone’s throw from the eel fishery’s headquarters, McAliskey cited talks to bring the lough into a community co-operative trust nearly a decade ago.
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