COAST news
Prawn trawl lobby tries to undermine Scottish Government MPAs as coastal communities bombarded with scare stories and spin.
Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are designed to protect marine species and habitats (many of which are also fish nursery grounds), while at the same time allowing nearly all of the marine activities which already occur in these areas to continue. They are not No Take Zones. The Arran MPA will still allow bottom trawling in 36% of the area and in 51% of the Upper Loch Fyne MPA for instance. MPAs will encourage well-managed creeling and trawling, scallop diving, wildlife tourism and eventually, if managed effectively, a return of sea angling – all activities which used to support a far greater diversity and number of jobs around the Clyde than exist now.
Howard Wood, COAST Chair and a Clyde diver with 40 years of experience, puts it this way: ‘The Clyde belongs to us all and must be managed in the public interest, as Marine Scotland is attempting to do. The South Arran MPA trawling restrictions on priority habitats such as seagrass meadows, burrowed mud and maerl beds equal less than 5% of Clyde waters. Big compromises have been made by the Government and communities like COAST, yet incredibly the mobile fishing lobby continues to make alarmist and unsubstantiated claims that these modest MPAs will ‘decimate’ communities. Ironically, it was bottom trawling which our predecessors (mainly fishermen) fought hard to get banned in the 1890s – to preserve the viability of fishing communities! They were wise. Since bans on bottom trawling in the Clyde were lifted in the 1960s and 80s our white fish stocks have declined to the point of being commercially unviable and sea anglers now go to Norway instead of the Clyde. Poor leadership and a lack of management has cost the Clyde hundreds of jobs and deprived Scotland of an affordable food source. MPAs can play an important part in redressing this situation and Marine Scotland needs our continued support as they finalise management for the entire MPA network’.
And hot off the press, the Marine Conservation Order for the South Arran Marine Protected Area has now been laid before the Scottish Parliament. All going well, in early February, 4 fishing zones will be established – shown in the map below. Dredging would not be permitted anywhere within the MPA.
However COAST holds serious concerns on some of the changes made to other sites (Small Isles, Wester Ross, and Loch Sunart to the Sound of Jura). See here for more details.
