How a pioneering marine reserve is bringing life back to the Clyde

“Initially, catches for the commercial sector went up because they had access to new grounds, but then they dramatically crashed - and basically that was the collapse of commercial fish stocks in the Clyde.”

I’ve come to visit the headquarters of COAST (the Community of Arran Seabed Trust), a charity that aims to “protect and restore a diverse, abundant and beautiful marine environment for everyone in Arran, the Clyde and Scotland.” The organisation is best known for its successful campaign to establish a pioneering No Take Zone on the island’s east coast, but over the years it has also supported dozens of research projects, including nine PhDs, from a total of 15 different institutions.

One of those projects was carried out by Jenny Crocket, who has since moved to the island permanently, married a local, and become COAST’s Outreach and Communication Manager.

She explains that the elimination of the three-mile limit was devastating for coastal habitats like Lamlash Bay, a sheltered inlet between the main island and Holy Isle that provides the backdrop for our conversation, but that the impact of that and similar damage was felt right across the wider ecosystem of the Firth of Clyde.

“Due to the forms of fishing - prawn trawling and scallop dredging - all these precious nursery habitats were suddenly being destroyed,” she says. “So there wasn't that 'seed stock' to have the spill over, or the youth and juveniles to become the adult stock to be caught.

“Over the course of all that happening there was then a transition in terms of what fishing was occurring as well. There used to be a lot of target stock and white fin fishing in the Clyde and then gradually, as stocks reduced, the fishing methods changed to prawn trawling and scallop dredging.

“Today over 95% of commercial catches in the Clyde are shellfish - so prawns, langoustines, and scallops - and two of the most destructive fishing methods that you can possibly have are scallop dredging and prawn trawling.”

She talks about local fishing festivals, such as the one that used to take place here in Lamlash, collapsing because there were no fish to catch, and the impact that this had both economically and culturally in places that had been so closely connected to the seas. While these changes were happening on land, COAST’s founders – Howard Wood and Don MacNeish – were witnessing what they believed were pronounced and profound deteriorations in the underwater environment during their regular diving trips.

The COAST Discover Centre allows visitors to the island to learn about the introduction and management of the No Take Zone and Marine Protected Area (Image: The Herald / Gordon Terris)

Inspired by the example of New Zealand, they set out to create a new marine reserve, talking to “everybody and anybody who would listen” about their proposal to establish protected waters around the Isle of Arran.

“They got more and more people on board,” Jenny tells me. “They worked with scientists from various universities and also the Marine Conservation Society, who run the Sea Search programme, and Howard got registered as a Sea Search diver so he could formally record and report the species he was finding.”

The original plan was to establish the entire bay as a reserve, but including a No Take Zone was an even more radical proposal, offering the prospect of prohibiting even non-destructive fishing techniques as part of broader attempts to regenerate the eco-system.

Discussions with stakeholders, including fisherman, established that there was an “appetite for trying to have some sort of protection”, and ultimately led to the creation of a No Take Zone covering 2.67 square kilometres, which though “quite tiny”, is nearly twice as large as that originally proposed.

There’s also a reason why the specific site, at the northern end of Lamlash Bay, was chosen: it is home to one of the country’s largest maerl beds. This small, coral-like seaweed is the reason for Scotland’s white-sand beaches, but it also provides an ideal developmental habitat for a wide range of marine life. The hope was that restoring this particular environment would support biodiversity across a much larger area.

A velvet crab feeding amongst the maerl beds in Arran's No Take Zone (Image: COAST / Howard Wood)

The ground-breaking No Take Zone was established in 2008; eight years later, it was incorporated into the new, much larger, South Arran Marine Protected Area, which largely prohibits dredging and trawling around the whole bottom half of the island.

But securing protection for local waters is only one part of the process – we also need to know if the scheme is working, and for that we need ongoing research. COAST has helped to gather a huge amount of data on the impact of the No Take Zone, and a new partnership with the “world class” Arran Outdoor Education Centre (which is currently facing the threat of closure from the local council) now enables the operation of a ‘citizen science’ vessel on which members of the public can contribute to a real-life scientific investigation as they learn about life in Lamlash Bay.

So, I ask, after all these years, what does the data show?

“That it’s working,” replies Jenny. “And what is great about the data we've got is it's a long-term dataset, and that allows us to see the natural fluctuations that can happen in an environment.

“So there have been fluctuations over the years but the general trend is so positive. Between 2010 and 2022, the density of king scallops in the No Take Zone had increased four-fold. In the Marine Protected Area, between 2016 and 2022, king scallops had increased by eight-fold.

What this shows, she argues, is that using “zoned fisheries management” to protect a key habitat has been “seeding the other areas” around the island where “only sustainable, low-damage fishing is occurring”.  This process is then contributing to the restoration of the marine environment and supporting the recovery of fish stocks in those locations.

She is keen to point out that the benefits of protecting this particular environment go even further, because it also acts as “a vast blue carbon sink which is retaining all this carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and helping us combat climate change.”

Read more:

The Clyde cod tragedy. Will once common fish ever recover?

Clyde cod: 'I thought closure was a joke. Government won't do that'

The Future of Clyde Fishing – find all articles in series here

It sounds like progress is certainly being made, but Jenny believes that more protections, and better enforcement, are still required – a point that has been reinforced by a recent “incursion” into the protected area.

Last month, skipper Lee MacPherson from John o’ Groats was successfully prosecuted for violating the No Take Zone. Over the course of two days his vessel removed a large number of scallops – potentially “thousands and thousands”, according to Jenny – but in the end the court fined him just £4,175.

The population of scallops in and around the No Take Zone has increased dramatically in recent years (Image: COAST / Howard Wood)

Jenny argues that this is a “tiny fraction” of the potential profit from selling the shellfish which – especially when hand-dived – are considered a premium product. There is obvious frustration at such a light penalty being imposed in response to a deliberate and destructive act, especially as it could have a negative impact on the scientific investigations that are being carried out here.

“It could impact this long-term research, which is then supporting the case for bringing in more, or similar, areas.

“If you extract that many creatures from an eco-system it is going to affect that balance, because that's not a natural disruption. It's not natural fluctuation due to water temperatures or an increase in certain predators. That's natural. This is completely unnatural.”

She stresses, repeatedly, that neither she nor COAST are opposed to all fishing, but is adamant that marine protections must be properly enforced just like any other laws, and that greater penalties are required for those breaching the rules. Ultimately, she says, this will benefit everyone, including those who make a living from fishing.

Jenny Crocket of COAST says that research data shows the No Take Zone in Lamlash Bay is having benefits for the wider underwater ecosystem (Image: The Herald / Gordon Terris)

So might the lesson of Lamlash Bay be that there are lots of potential No Take Zones in Scotland and that, combined with Marine Protected Areas in the right locations, it could be possible to carry out this type of “reseeding” not just across the Clyde but also in other parts of the country?

Jenny believes so, but she also believes that righting a historic wrong is part of the solution.

“What this is effectively proving is that the three-mile limit works,” she tells me.

Does that mean that the sort of universal protection that was stripped away by Margaret Thatcher’s government should be restored?

“Yes. Or something akin to the three-mile limit.”

She says that the detail should be up for discussion, especially as “what’s applicable on the west coast isn’t necessarily applicable on the east coast.”

But she believes that the work done by COAST, and the regeneration of marine life that is happening around Arran, is a transferable model that could transform the health of, and our relationship with, the seas:

“What we’ve got here is a blueprint that could be replicated, whether that’s in the wider Firth of Clyde, across Scotland, or around the world.”