The war over scallops and the future of sustainable fishing in Scotland

Sporting an apron emblazoned with a multi-species shoal of fish, Watt beams with delight as she exhibits off a tray of shelled scallops, palm-sized pale fleshy discs nonetheless hooked up to the blazing crimson roe some customers discover too pungent.

The shellfish, typically known as plain “clams” in Scots, by no means used to this in style. Simply sixty tonnes of the species had been landed at Scottish ports in 1960. In 2019 the equal determine topped 15,000 tonnes, down 2% from 2018 however nonetheless price practically £36m.

The growth, nonetheless, has sparked a typically bitter conflict between environmentalists and the fishing business over how scallops, which develop on the seabed, are harvested.

Some “clams” are sustainably lifted out of the ocean by divers who cost a premium to take action.

Most, nonetheless, are dredged, scraped off the ocean flooring by bottom-trawlers.

Diver-fishermen and campaigners say dredgers are successfully ploughing by way of delicate marine environments to create a scallop monoculture off the Scottish coast.

Trawlers counter that they too fish sustainably; that they keep away from environmentally delicate areas; and that seabeds get well.

In Oban that is no educational dispute. Watt’s scallops are dredged. So are these offered at one other fish hut on the harbour, a inexperienced one whose signal grandly declares Oban the “seafood capital of Scotland”.

Practically half of Scotland’s shellfish comes from the west coast. So right here divers and dredgers dwell and work cheek by jowl. However not at all times simply.

Divers have been recording harm they are saying is completed by industrial scalloping.

There have been 48 experiences of suspected unlawful dredging – when trawlers enter marine protected areas or MPAs, the tiny proportion of Scotland’s seas put aside for nature – between the summer season of 2019 and 2020. Most experiences, nonetheless, are virtually unimaginable to substantiate or, for that matter, unsubstantiate. What occurs at sea is “yonder awa”, out of sight.

Divers and environmentalists imagine Scotland’s fisheries watchdog, Marine Scotland, is simply too lax, too near business. Dredgers assume the regulator is simply too powerful, its SNP masters too near the Greens.

Stef Cooper is a diver who has blown the whistle on dredging harm, serving to to doc the tell-tale tramline tracks left after such fishing.

He dives from a ship known as the Compass Rose, now berthed at Oban harbour.

The 39-year-old can take residence £300 a day – albeit a long-long day of as much as 13 hours – if he picks 100 kilos of scallops, sufficient to fill his large inexperienced internet – the scale of a potato sack, twice over.

“It’s like being a hunter-gatherer,” says Cooper, echoing a time period additionally utilized by trawlermen.

Two boats down the marina from the Compass Rose is a scalloper, a dredger. What does Cooper consider what it does?

“I’ve combined emotions,” he replies. “It’s a bunch of men attempting to earn a crust. And no person can have something in opposition to anyone doing that.

“However when they’re on the market simply bulldozing the seabed,” he trails off, takes a deep, snorkellers’ breath and provides: “If this was a nationwide park being bulldozed by a personal firm there can be outrage. However no person sees it: it’s invisible.”

Cooper has been diving for scallops for a decade. Off Orkney, Mull and Oban. “It’s heartbreaking, he says describing the seabed after dredging. “It’s just like the distinction between being in a wild wooden or in a ploughed subject.”

How are relations between dredgers and their critics? “There isn’t any RAC or AA at sea,” Cooper says. “So we depend on one another.”

Nonetheless, reporting alleged wrongdoing has make issues awkward.“It’s at all times going to trigger points as a result of it’s seen as a betrayal of the fellowship of the ocean,” says Cooper.

“There isn’t any enforcement, it’s only on paper. “Even once they have been caught throughout the MPAs, they get a parking ticket degree of advantageous.” Cooper’s view is backed by sustainable seafood charity Open Seas. It desires to flip the steadiness of sea use. As a substitute of roughly a twentieth of inshore Scotland waters being protected, they assume most needs to be, with areas put aside for bottom-trawling if they’re deemed resilient.

Dredging was banned inside three miles of the Scottish coast from 1889 to 1984.

At Oban Harbour David Fraser – nicknamed Toastie because of a long-lost vacation tan – scoffs on the very concept of going again to these days. He dredges for prawns, not scallops, however he has accomplished his time fishing for the latter species too. Now 61, has been going to sea for 35 years.

“I’ve fished proper round Britain,” he says as he hundreds crates on to his 45-year-old 11.5m prawn boat, the snub-nosed, wooden-hulled Lady Errin. “And I’ve at all times accomplished so sustainably or I’d not have a business.”

Fraser has stayed in port due to the climate – it’s a dreich December morning. He usually provides native companies like Carol Watt’s fish store and – as he demonstrates with a sweep of his arm – the upmarket Eu-usk seafood restaurant throughout the harbour.

“These guys can afford to take a seat and faucet away on their keyboards whereas I’m attempting to become profitable in a authorized and sustainable approach,” Fraser says.

“There are individuals from cities and cities who know zero about this environment telling me the way it needs to be run. All they do is faucet faucet faucet.”

Saying he’s “very offended”, however hardly ever resting what appears like a permanently-fixed pleasant grin, Fraser disputes that bottom-trawling harms delicate options. Why? As a result of dredgers don’t, he says, danger their worthwhile gear by dragging it over something apart from sandy flat beds of scallops.

“What most people don’t realise in regards to the seabed is that it has valleys and troughs and deepwater,” he explains. “So scallopers fish in a tiny proportion of the seabed.

“You aren’t going to tow by way of the kelp forest, the kelp blocks up the gear. We don’t wish to drag our gear over a rock – it breaks.”

Fraser used to dive. Like Cooper, he has seen the underside after dredging. However he tells a unique story.

“It isn’t a sterile desert: it’s all life,” he says. “When you drag over a sandy financial institution; it can have an effect however it will disappear in a few weeks. The scallops come again in the identical locations yearly.

“That, in my e-book, makes it sustainable.”

The cost from environmentalists is that the dredging is creating areas for scallops – however not different species. Nick Underdown speaks for Open Seas – one of many individuals Fraser accuses of “tap-tap-taping”. He thinks the harm being accomplished to the seabed is being ‘normalised” and that that is dangerous for the long-term way forward for fishing.

“Many throughout the dredge fleet have fished this manner for many years now,” he says. “The modifications over this time are plain – fish shares will not be recovering, and authorities scientists are confirming that seabed habitats are nonetheless in decline. These will not be simply fairly habitats, they’re fish nursery grounds and a public asset.

“A lot of our seabed might be teeming with life if left alone, relatively than dredged as a monoculture for scallops. It’s a tough factor to say – however dredging is undermining the viability of different fisheries, different doubtlessly extra sustainable livelihoods.”

Open Seas has accused vessels belonging to giant industrial operators of “stealing” in to MPAs. This stance infuriates John “The Dredge” MacAlister, who talks on the species for the Scottish White Fish Producers Affiliation and owns and runs one of many nation’s greatest fleets of scallopers.

Talking on a gangway exterior his Oban base overlooking the harbour, The Dredge lets rip at Open Seas. “They put stuff to the media with no sound backing by any means,” he says. “They’re placing our companies on the road with unfair allegations and unfair analysis.”

As his gold medallion, within the form of a ship’s wheel, glints within the midwinter solar, MacAlister denies any of his skippers have ever been in any bother with Marine Scotland.“We’re not inflicting the harm they declare,” he says. “That may be in opposition to my curiosity.

“We’re seeing higher indicators this yr than we now have seen in a decade. Extra younger scallops.”

No person in Scotland has scalloped greater than MacAlister, who skippered his first boat at 17. He has been within the commerce for 50 years – “five-oh” he clarifies – and insists the identical underwater options that had been there when he began are nonetheless there now. Campaigners will not be satisfied he’s proper. The clam wars will not be over.