‘My song marks a fight for survival, a Mayday call we cry,’ sings Donald Francis MacNeil, a fisherman from Vatersay in the Outer Hebrides. ‘We will stand for the rights of our children; we will not let our islands die’. Invoking the Highland Clearances of the 18th and 19th centuries, the social ramifications of which still reverberate today, isn’t something MacNeil does lightly. Earlier this year, proposals to reform regulation of Scotland’s marine waters provoked a ferocious backlash from communities from the Mull of Kintyre on the west coast all the way north via the Outer and Inner Hebrides to Orkney and Shetland. The Scottish government was forced into a humiliating retreat, announcing in June that it was abandoning the plans.
Many islanders viewed the plans for a network of highly protected marine areas (HPMAs) as being as existential as the events of 200 years ago, when thousands of people were evicted from their land at gunpoint. The proposal may now be in tatters, but the whole affair picked at an open wound.
The emotive lyrics were written by MacNeil’s fellow fisherman Angus MacPhail, who also happens to be a founder member of the Scottish band Skipinnish. ‘These proposals cannot be allowed to go ahead,’ says MacPhail, who fishes out of Barra. ‘They must be opposed and sunk. They pose the biggest peacetime risk to our communities since the Highland Clearances.’
When the Scottish government announced plans for the HPMA network, it seems it had little idea of the reaction they would trigger among its coastal communities. The government’s aim was for at least ten per cent of Scottish waters to be designated as HPMAs, in which any fishing and aquaculture activity would be banned, by 2026. By setting aside such areas, the government argues, nature would be able to recover to a more natural state, allowing the wider ecosystem to thrive.
The reaction, from Shetland to Orkney and the Outer and Inner Hebrides was visceral. Critics say the HPMAs would drive fishing communities – many of which are struggling to remain viable – either to bankruptcy or to relocate, accelerating the wider trend of island depopulation. Not just trawler fishing but creels, inshore lobster and crab catching, shellfish processors, even tourism activities such as paddleboarding or boat trips, were threatened by quotas or outright bans, they feared.
For now, at least, that immediate fear has been paused. For while the net-zero secretary Mairi McAllan confirmed that HPMAs as proposed wouldn’t be pursued, she said the government was firmly committed to enhancing marine protection and that it would consult further with the industry, communities and conservation organisations about what she called ‘a new pathway and timetable.’
A suspicion prevails among local fishing communities that whatever measures or restrictions eventually become law, some larger players, such as the aquaculture industry, will be allowed to continue business as usual and offset any perceived damage caused by activities such as salmon farming, perhaps by purchasing permits that are beyond the means of small-scale or artisanal fisheries.