C.O.A.S.T Newsletter 3

The Community of Arran Seabed Trust (C.O.A.S.T) have just released their third newsletter.

In one article, legal academic and C.O.A.S.T. co-director Tom Appleby discusses why C.O.A.S.T. is proposing a fundamental challenge to the way Scotland manages its seas through increased community involvement, highlighting that :

• The Clyde fishery has quite simply and quietly collapsed. The Clyde was once the finest fishery in Europe and it is now all but gone. There are strictly speaking no ‘fish’ left in the Clyde for commercial capture and the few fishermen left are reduced to scraping the seabed for scallops and prawns, with an underrepresented few using more sustainable techniques like creeling.
• Community organisations such as C.O.A.S.T. have just as much right to comment on fisheries management as the fishing industry. Successive governments have tended to ignore other coastal industries like tourism, diving, angling and static sector fishermen – all which have suffered because of over-fishing and a lack of management by government.
• C.O.A.S.T believe the close liaison between the catching sector and politicians has not just been wrong for obvious practical reasons, but is also on the very margins of what is permissible in law – the right to fish in the sea belongs to the general public. Simply listening to those with an immediate financial interest in capturing fish does not meet the requirements of good resource management.

In another, C.O.A.S.T show that in recent correspondence with the EU’s new fisheries Commissioner Maria Damanaki, she has commended their activities as ‘important for the conservation and protection of the marine environment’ and suggested that they continue to represent community interests by participating in the EU’s new Regional Advisory Councils.

Commissioner Damanaki was also quick to point out that it is our own national government that has responsibility for all fishing activities within the 12 nautical mile limit. In short, we should also be pushing for our own government to implement the fisheries policies necessary to conserve the marine resource.

Category: Other Organisations