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

“I'm now past the anger stage,” he said. “But I'm deeply upset that someone has the power to stop you providing for your family for three months based on information that they think is correct or want to be correct."

"For the Scottish government to make such big decisions which have very real consequences and then to have a consultation and a discussion afterwards on whether or not it's the correct decision is not a good way to run a country.”

The Clyde cod box, an area in the  Firth of Clyde which had previously been closed to whitefish trawling as a measure to tackle the collapse of cod stocks, was, in 2022, with little notice, closed to all types of fishing for three months of the year.

“The whole process,” McAllister recalled, “left me and my family distraught on the first year of the closure, simply because of the way the Scottish Government went about it. We were told on the February 11, that February 14  you'll be totally banned from fishing for the next three months.

“I thought it was a joke. I thought they can't do that. The government won't do that but obviously, it came to fruition. They passed the legislation overnight, and then went about finding evidence and having a consultation after they'd decided to close it.

“For a government to actually pass legislation like this, and treat its citizens in this way, it's pretty appalling. It was a massive blow. No preparation time. My crew had to go sign on. I couldn't even sign on. It wasn't an option.”

That the ban was being applied to creelers seemed particularly shocking as they are widely seen as the most sustainable and least damaging fishing methods in the industry.

“We are the champions,” said McAllister, “of protecting the environment and sustainable fishing. Back in the day when it was just all trawlers, we were incentivised to go to the creels because it's so sustainable. We target one species and everything else is returned to the water alive.”

Map of the current Clyde cod closures (Image: Scottish Government)

The explanation for the exclusion focussed on disturbance of cod during their mating season, but, McAllister pointed out, disturbance by creelers is minimal. 

"The Rural Affairs committee," he said, "were offered extensive acoustic research on the noise levels of creelers gathered by divers but they never took it into consideration." 

“Also you don't get fish in the creels. We creel for langoustine in the cod closure area, I could seriously count on a hand the amount of cod you would catch in a week or a month, not in a day. Which are returned alive.”

Elaine Whyte of the Clyde Fishermen’s Association described how the new restrictions impacted many of their members, whether trawlermen, creel fishermen or scallop dredgers.

 “One of our long-term static gear members had to give up fishing as he couldn't survive the closure for 11 weeks, and for him that was effectively a 3-month closure annually with no promise of review. When he called to thank us for all we tried to do to have the decision re-considered before he finished.

“Previously he had planned to take a new start on so it was one full-time job and one potential full-time job gone, and that's serious to an area like Campbeltown. These decisions have real life impacts on families and communities, the least they should be is evidence-based.

Other small-scale mobile and static fishermen, she said, were also impacted.  “These are people who want to be sustainable and many have young families, they are all small scale community fishermen who already do take conservation seriously.

“That's why the cod box was there in the first place. Local fishermen asked for it, but for different conservation reasons than some parties choose to approach it from now. It's the same with the weekend ban, No Take Zone, and the creel limit. Fishermen of all gear types on the Clyde have made efforts.”

The extension of the closure followed two consultations, during the first of which 14 out of 16 stakeholders backed the continuation of the arrangements from previous years. 

McAllister has three boats. Two creel in the seasonal closed area. The closure was, he said, initially “a disaster” for him. “I couldn't earn for 3 months. The same for all my crew, and it was just horrible, I struggled with my mental health, and my wife did too. We had just had a newborn at the time. The whole timing was awful.

“We had just gone through Covid and come through Brexit, during which we had a complete collapse of our export, fishery of live product. Then finally, we got back on our feet, and boom, are told, 'We're going to stop you fishing for three months.'"

The closure also damaged community relations as it pushed creelers and trawlers into gear conflict.

“I'd lived in this community for all my life. I know everyone. I'm very friendly with everyone. I have a nice working relationship. I used that to speak with local trawlermen to find a small area where I could then go and fish. Now I'll tell you, it was not nice. My relationship with everyone has become so strained. Things got aggressive and physical. And this was all because of the government’s decision.

“What Marine Directorate said to me was, Why don't you just move your creels outside the box?  But if I did that, that would stop all the trawlers from being able to trawl in that area. And actually they would just tow all my creels away, and I would lose £100,000 worth of creel.”

In year two of the closure, he said, he lost 186 creels “because of the gear conflict”.

“That's something that the Scottish government should look at," he said. "If you're going to disperse people from one area, you need to have some sort of management plan for the areas where everyone is moving to.”

McAllister also expressed sympathy for the trawlers. “They've lost a lot of space, a lot of area where they would tow.”

One of the frustrations of many creelers and trawlermen is that they don’t believe that the box is where the cod are spawning.

Donald Gibson, one half of a duo of brothers who run the last large family-owned trawler in Ayrshire, is of this view. “It’s a nonsense to call it a cod box because there’s no cod in the box, no cod spawning there. What are they actually trying to protect? If they’re not careful there will be no fishing industry left. It’s the fisherman that need protected."

Like most trawlermen, the Troon-based fisherman has gear designed to avoid catching fish - only prawns -  with legally required escape panels, so there are few cod in his hauls.  But, he said, there is the occasional one in his catch. He made an uncertain guess at around 100-200kg a year.

Trron harbour (Image: Colin Mearns)

It's Gibson's belief that climate change is partly to blame. Research shows that Atlantic cod distribution has shifted poleward. “The problem” he said, “is the sea is getting warmer, if you had a stock of 10,000 tonnes of cod and you put them in the Clyde tomorrow, within weeks they would be gone, because the water is much warmer and cod naturally seek out cold water.”

But climate change is only one factor.  There is research too, outlined in another artilce in this series, that indicates that even the small level of bycatch is having an impact on the Clyde cod population.

Gibson also shares a belief, often voiced by both fishermen and scientists, that the closure come too late. “The horse has already bolted."

He and his brother are the sixth generation of a fishing family. “I remember the stories my Dad told us about the crazy amounts of cod in the early 1980s. There were no quotas so you could catch whatever you wanted. If we had a better management plan then there may have been some left.”

Further up the coast, Ian Wightman, who runs a small trawler, under 10 metres long, out of Largs Yach, echoed some of Gibson's doubts about the location of what he refers to as “the mythical cod”. 

Trawlerman Ian Wightman on his boat in Largs (Image: Robert Perry)

“Nobody," he said, "appears to have actually thought that perhaps this cod closure isn’t working because the cod aren't transiting to the area to spawn.”

Wightman is a pioneer, active in experimenting with new technologies to make his fishing more sustainable and lower impact. Nets and gear he says have vastly improved over the years and these days he rarely catches any fish, let alone cod.

But he knows there are cod there because he sees them through the images recorded by the cameras he attaches to his net. “You’ll see fish interacting at the mouth of the net. We see cod. There is a resident stock.”

Like many fishermen, Paul McAllister has called for more scientific research, and also questioned whether the current closure really is, as is claimed to be, based on  “the best available science”

“Best available science - what does that mean?” he said.  This question is also one that was raised in a recent Scottish Parliament (SPICE) article on the cod closure.

What McAllister would like to see is a system where workers in the fishing industry within the Clyde, would have a direct contact with Marine Scotland. “So we can report things we're seeing. I'm all for having cameras on the boat, trackers, creel limits, once you determine the actual sustainable factors of that area.”

"I don't want to keep complaining about this situation. I want to fix it and build relationships between everyone involved, government, fishermen, ENGOs. In order to do that we have to work together. Local fishermen care deeply about the Clyde and we are the ones who have the most information on it, we are here day in and day out. we have a trove of potential data that can be put into practice to make scientific-based plans for the future."

A Scottish Government spokesperson said: “The Scottish Government has a duty to balance environmental and economic issues. The current approach reflects our commitment to maximise protection of cod and minimise their disturbance during spawning, while mitigating socio-economic impacts on our coastal communities.

“The Marine Directorate regularly collaborate with fishermen on science and data collection, including in the Clyde region during the 2024 closure.”