ELECTRO-FISHING
needs of future generations. Bottom dredging has turned fi shing areas like the lower Clyde, which once fed tens of thousands of people and supported hundreds of jobs, into near-deserts where only the species at the bottom of the food chain are commercially viable. Marine Scotland is the Scottish Govern-
ment body that polices the fi sheries (you might remember it as the Fisheries Protection Agency). Research it commissioned makes it clear that electro-fi shing for razor clams can be disastrous for fl ora and fauna in the vicinity. For humans it’s ‘considerably more hazardous than traditional fi shing techniques’. A possible pollution fall-out has not been measured. The 2011 report calls for more research into
the side-effects of electro-fi shing and, if legal- ised, education programmes made mandatory for fi shermen using it. The report acknowledges that the huge increase in razor clam landings – from 40 tonnes a year in the 1990s to 718 tonnes in 2009, a rise of around 1800% – is probably because of illegal fi shing. Yet Marine Scotland has postponed action
and commissioned – you guessed it – another report, despite the fact that everywhere in the world where there’s a commercial, regulated razor clam industry electro-fi shing is banned. The new report will not be available until next year. Meanwhile policing the fi shery is a PC Plod process. The puny fi xed penalty (a maximum £2,000) can only be exacted if boats are caught red-handed. In the last four years, as catches doubled and doubled again, only 11 boats have been fi ned. Meanwhile Scotland’s spoots are being gathered like apples after a storm. Their sweet fl esh has made them favourites of TV chefs from Jamie Oliver to the Hairy Bikers. Flights from Prestwick take them straight to Hong Kong, where they are a much-loved delicacy. Fishermen I’ve spoken with who use the technique are usually scallop-divers, who say that
the pressure on the beds from scallop dredging boats has pushed them into this new and lucrative industry. With prices rising 23% last year, the spoots are a great business to be in: you don’t have to dive to 30 metres to get them, for a start. Once the electricity has forced the razors out of their burrows, all you have to do is pick them up. A day’s haul may be 5,000 animals, which currently retail at £14 a kilo, in their shells. That’s several thousand pounds – way in excess of the penalty and the cost of replacing your gear if it is confi scated.
Divers are people who generally care about the marine environment as they see more of it than most fi shermen do. Those who’ve gone into electro-fi shing will tell you it is a grey area. Done sensitively, it does little or no damage. They quote
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‘Even at low voltages electro-fi shing causes broken spines, respiratory arrest and internal bleeding in fi sh’
a recent report by Seafi sh, the fi shing indus- try quango, that concludes that low voltage electro-fi shing may be more sustainable than dredging. The research doesn’t back that gloss. The best you can say is that the science is still uncertain. Electro-shock necessarily doesn’t kill the razors, because they have to be sold live, like mussels and oysters. But electricity, as Marine Scotland’s own
report says, does terrible things to fi sh nearby, even at the low voltages that enable the spoots to be caught alive. It causes broken spines, respiratory arrest and internal bleeding in fi sh and ‘signifi cant mortalities’ in inverte- brates like crabs and lobsters. Even the report from Seafi sh, which likes the commercial fi sh- ermen who sponsor it, acknowledges legal electro-fi shing for razor clams would be unsus- tainable without careful management. And at the moment there is no management at all. A Scottish Government spokesman rejects
the suggestion that Marine Scotland is soft- pedalling on spoots, promising that the agency is aware of the illegal activity and the threat to stocks and the marine environment. ‘Marine Scotland does not support the practice of electro-fi shing or any relaxation of the rules governing it,’ I was told. I suspect the agency is not catching the boats
– which look like the normal scallop diving vessels they often are – because it is notoriously over-stretched. Recently a Marine Scotland offi cer told me he thought that only in the far north was there a problem with electro-fi shing, but I’ve been logging reports of electro-fi shing this year from yachtsmen and creel fi shermen everywhere from the Solway Firth to Orkney, and up and down both coasts. I’ve also done my own shellfi sh harvesting,
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raking for cockles on a beach where I’ve found them since I was a child (we’ve tried to catch spoots there too, by the old-fashioned method of forcing them to the surface by pouring salt into their breathing holes). This year, two hours work got us just a handful of cockles. Usually we’d have a bucket full. The crofter who lives above the beach nodded when I told him. ‘They’ve been in here with the generators after spoots,’ he said. ‘I think they’ve done every beach on the island.’
ABOVE - BALONCICI, RIGHT - ANGEL SIMON/SHUTTERSTOCK
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