by Danny Renton, from Seawilding
I have been reading about fisheries in Argyll and the biodiversity that’s been lost from our sea-lochs and inshore waters.
In ‘Autumns in Argylshire with Rod and Gun’, a gentleman naturalist writing in 1900, describes the extraordinary abundance of life in Loch Craignish: ‘Herons, gulls, and terns rising with glittering herring fry in their beaks. Curlews and oyster-catchers run along the shores and the hooded crows too are busy among the seaweed. Cormorants spread out their wings, drying themselves on the rocks…’
He drags a small dredge along the sea bottom and the list of creatures – brittle stars, maerl, sea fans, sea pens, giant native oysters, bushels of scallops – reads like a west coast version of the Galapagos. Yet, now, almost all this rich biodiversity has gone from Loch Craignish. The culprits?
Poor fisheries management, over-fishing, dredging from scallop boats, pollution and chemicals from aquaculture, and toxic run-off from agriculture, industry and housing.
It’s the same pitiful story for almost every sea-loch up the west coast.
For example, in 1803, there were at least 500 large herring boats employed on Loch Fyne. The shoals of herring were miles wide, coating the sea with fish oil and attracting feeding frenzies of seabirds and cetaceans. By the 1850s the drift net fishermen between Furnace to Achgoyle were complaining bitterly about the trawl net fishermen destroying the herring spawning grounds from Silver Craigs to Loch Gair.
By the 1930s, the Loch Fyne herring fishery had collapsed.
It’s even worse now. A few months ago, in the so-called Loch Fyne Marine Protected Area, I photographed a fishing boat, yards from the shore, scraping the sea bottom for prawns. Now that white fish are commercially extinct on the west coast, fishing at the bottom of the food chain – for scallops, prawn, crabs and lobster – is all that’s left.
Yet there’s no hope of recovery while Marine Scotland permits scallop dredgers and bottom trawlers to fish right up the sea lochs, destroying the last of the inshore fish spawning and nursery grounds.
In countries like Norway, where inshore fishing is managed sustainably, everyone goes rod fishing for species like haddock, cod, and halibut within sight of the shore. Here, you’d be lucky to catch a saithe or a mackerel.
In Oban, ‘Scotland’s Seafood Capital’, the docks stand empty of trawlers.
Our charity Seawilding, based at Loch Craignish, is our community’s attempt to reverse these fortunes and restore biodiversity back to our sea-loch. We are restoring a million native oysters to the seabed during a five-year period, where they were once prevalent; and during the next two years we will be planting nearly a hectare of seagrass – a vital marine habitat that sequesters carbon and nurtures a multitude of marine species.
We believe that by restoring biodiversity and creating green jobs along the way, we can create a viable alternative to the poor management regime of the past.
We are being contacted by coastal communities across Scotland keen to take back ownership of their sea-lochs and restore lost biodiversity. If you want to learn more, visit us at www.seawilding.org