“It’s about justice,” says Angus MacPhail, a creel fisher off Barra, in the Outer Hebrides, about the marine protection plans that he believes will devastate island cultures like his own.
“Our lives are being dictated by people who know nothing about the areas we live in or the jobs we do,” says MacPhail, whose main catch is crab and lobster. “Most of us fishing around islands like Barra are small-scale operators and you don’t get much more environmentally friendly than that.”
In recent months, coastal communities have united in furious opposition to Holyrood government proposals that would impose strict limits on human activity such as fishing, aquaculture and tourism in at least 10% of Scotland’s waters, which would result in a virtually total ban in practice.
The outcry over these highly protected marine areas (HPMAs) – a key part of the Bute House agreement that brought the Scottish Greens into government with the SNP in 2021 – has been heartfelt, with accusations that the policy is poorly evidenced, weakly consulted and dismissive of local experience.
A protest song penned by MacPhail and performed by his band Skipinnish, The Clearances Again, reached No 9 in the iTunes download charts 24 hours after its release in April.
He insists the historical comparison to the Highland clearances is “no exaggeration” – he says closing these inshore fishing grounds won’t just destroy the fleet but the already fragile island infrastructure that relies on it, from net makers to schools bolstered by fishers’ offspring.
Advocates insist that “no-take zones” are a moderate step, widely used across Europe, and essential for the recovery of depleted coastal fish stocks and seabeds. Local attempts to “rewild” the sea have shown startling success, they add, and the UK government has already designated three pilot HPMA sites in England, despite the Scottish Conservatives opposing Holyrood’s plans.
Marine conservationists are equally critical of Scottish ministers failing to engage with coastal communities. They warn that some wealthier parts of the fishing sector are exploiting the anxieties for their own ends and the policy may end up pushing out lower-impact fishing methods.
No-take zones have been repeatedly shown to have “massive benefits” to the environment, and often for local fishing too, says Phil Taylor, the director of the conservation charity Open Seas. A no-take zone established in 2008 in Lamlash Bay on Arran shows a “statistically significant” increase in scallop density, for example.
Taylor goes on: “If policies are brought forward in ways that don’t also resolve the lack of public engagement in decisions about our seas and fisheries, or which restrain low-impact fishing methods in places where they are acting responsibly, then clearly those policies could do more harm than good”.
One concern raised by MacPhail is that this increasingly toxic row misses “the real targets”, such as international supertrawlers fishing within UK waters, or non-fishing related multinationals who pollute the oceans with micro plastics.
Taylor said there is “danger of complete entrenchment because of how this has been framed”. He says: “That’s partly because Scottish ministers have failed to reassure and enthuse local communities, and partly because the better-funded parts of the fishing industry, which also include those higher-impact forms of fishing, have sought to use this policy as an argument against restrictions.
“It’s vital that the government recognise the difference between different types of fishing and listen to what actual communities want, and not just industry voices”.
The plans have also exposed significant tensions within the SNP, in particular over the influence of its Green governing partners on controversial policy. A recent Holyrood vote on the topic produced the first backbench rebellion since Humza Yousaf became first minister, with the former rural economy secretary, Fergus Ewing, theatrically ripping up the consultation document in the chamber.
In the same debate, the current secretary, Mairi Gougeon, pledged the government would “not steamroll or impose on any community a policy they are vehemently opposed to”, while Màiri McAllan, the net zero secretary, has committed to meeting coastal and island communities this summer, with further consultation planned once sites are proposed.
One of those backbench rebels was Kate Forbes, the MSP for Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch, who promised to scrap the plans during her campaign to become leader of the SNP, which she lost narrowly to Yousaf at the end of March.
“The opposition to HPMAs is pretty much unanimous across the fishing industry,” she says. “In the past, trawlers and scallop dredgers objected to being singled out. But the proposed ban is for everything, so scallop divers and creelers are just as opposed because they can’t see the logic in banning everything.”
The issue has also become a lightning rod for accumulated rural grievances: “It’s very rare that a fishing issue filters through to my inland constituents, but I’ve had Highland schoolkids asking me why we are banning them from swimming at their local beach. There’s a feeling of hopelessness that anonymous bureaucrats in Edinburgh can impose policies without thought to rural needs, whether that’s ferries, roads, housing or schools.”
• This article was amended on 5 June 2023 to clarify Angus MacPhail’s comments on the “real targets”.
