Inside a bothy overlooking the Summer Isles in north-west Scotland, the lilting sounds of a traditional Gaelic duo fill a room packed with musicians, storytellers, artists, locals and revellers, decorated with fish-shaped lanterns and “Happy Birthday” signs. It’s no ordinary birthday. On a windy night in Achiltibuie, a string of coastal hamlets and villages north of Ullapool, these people have gathered in the small cabin to celebrate an important milestone in the community’s history: a hard-won battle to protect their waters from the destruction caused by scallop dredging. Through the bothy’s windows, the coastline appears metallic grey, dotted with beds of one of the UK’s most biodiverse and carbon-rich habitats — a 9,000-year-old pink seaweed called maerl, two beds of which are a mile long. This rare, fragile and threatened seaweed produces hard, chalky, coral-like skeletons that serve as nurseries for scallops and fish. Now, 10 years after locals, divers, activists and creel fishers ran a successful campaign to ban scallop dredging by law across a 600 sq km (150,000 acre) zone now designated a marine protected area (MPA), they say they have already seen a dramatic revival of marine life. Locals say the transformation of a seabed damaged by decades of dredging has allowed scallop populations to recover and ended the bitter territorial battles between industrial dredge fishing boats and the smaller, more sustainable creel boats. View image in fullscreen Highland life moves at a sedate pace in Achiltibuie, looking out over Badentarbat Bay. Photograph: CW Images/Alamy View image in fullscreen Herring eggs on maerl. The rare seaweed site is 9,000 years old. Photograph: Chris Rickard/BHA The community rowing club and nearby tour operators report more sightings of whales, porpoises and dolphins. A large spawning ground for herring — once plentiful here but since overfished — has been spotted nearby, as well as in prawn and lobster creels, or pots, laid on the seabed. Diyanne Ross, 65, the local artist who made the lanterns, is part of the Blue Hope Alliance (BHA), a coalition of groups using citizen science to protect marine ecosystems in the north-west Highlands. She says the community’s achievements in protecting underwater habitats are the “most amazing thing to happen to the Summer Isles. It is an archipelago that is made in heaven for breeding fish.” View image in fullscreen Orfhlaith McDevitt, who runs Coigach Community rowing club. Photograph: Samuel James-Griffiths/The Guardian As a child, Ross remembers going out to sea for “boxes” of haddock, ling, pollack and cod — before populations declined. But she has seen recent signs of recovery. “There is more variety of fish being caught here than before,” she says — anglers are catching haddock and cod. Outside on the pier, a hardy angler on holiday from Glasgow who has braved the wind to catch what he can is rewarded with three fresh mackerel. View image in fullscreen Local artist Diyanne Ross. Photograph: Samuel James-Griffiths/The Guardian The recovery of scallop stocks, says Alasdair Hughson, a scallop diver, chair of the Scottish Creel Fishermen’s Federation (SCFF) and one of the BHA’s founders, has been “massive” and the seabed transformation like “night to day”. A decade ago, a boat supplying hand-dived scallops to his company, Keltic Seafare, would spend just two weeks in the Summer Isles. Hughson, whose firm supplies shellfish to UK restaurants, admits his business stands to gain from the dredge ban, but says hand-diving is more sustainable — a claim backed up by research from Open Seas. The marine conservation organisation found that low-impact fishing methods, such as diving and creeling, are not only more sustainable than dredging or trawling but also keep more of the revenue generated in the local economy. Now, the Donna Marie creel boat, skippered by Ullapool-based Gary Lewis, runs to the Summer Isles almost all year. Lewis, who used to haveBefore the dredge ban, they would travel farther, to Skye and the Western Isles. “It’s not just the catch that’s improved, but the general health of the seabed,” he says. At the heart of the weekend-long Maerl-Herring festival, which features storytelling, artworks and film, is the public launch of a BHA report covering a decade of citizen science studies. Jason Hall-Spencer, a professor of marine biology at Cyprus University of Technology who wrote the report, says it shows the dredge ban in Wester Ross’s MPA—set up to protect the slow-growing maerl habitats and other marine features—has done its job. It has “protected the maerl to a massive extent,” he says.
Alasdair Hughson, a scallop diver, SCFF chair and one of the founders of BHA, is pictured. Photograph: Samuel James-Griffiths/The Guardian
Hall-Spencer, author of the Conservation Status of Maerl Habitats in north-west Scotland, partly funded by NatureScot, has carbon-dated the maerl in the bay as 9,000 years old. “If scallop dredgers had spent the last 10 years going up and down here, the habitat would be obliterated,” he says. A single pass of heavy towed gear, such as that used by scallop dredgers, can crush or bury up to 70% of maerl. “The seabed is now incredibly rich. Maerl is a very important habitat, chock full of bivalves which provide food for skates and rays.”
Peter Drake, 73, a retired prawn fisherman from Polbain, a hamlet that is part of Achiltibuie, was part of Sea Change Wester Ross, a campaign group supported by SCFF that grew into BHA. “It’s good to remember what we have achieved here,” says Drake. “There’s already an improvement in fish populations, but it will take time.”
Orfhlaith McDevitt, 25, who has lived here for two and a half years and runs Coigach Community rowing club, says: “People from the club say they see more minke whales, dolphins and porpoises than they did 10 years ago.”
Years before Ocean, David Attenborough’s documentary, sparked outrage by showing footage of scallop dredgers bulldozing the seabed, causing damage that could be seen from space, Sea Change and the SCFF compiled a body of evidence of the devastation scallop dredgers were doing to fishing grounds and seabeds in Wester Ross.
Sara Nason, in the bobble hat, chats to guests at the Maerl and Herring festival. Photograph: Samuel James-Griffiths/Guardian
The dossier was presented to Scottish ministers in parliament. In 2016, despite fierce opposition from the dredging lobby, scallop dredging was banned by law in the Wester Ross MPA, now the biggest protected area in the world for maerl. Prawn trawling is permitted in designated areas, while hand-diving for scallops and creel fishing by local boats under 150 gross tons are also permitted. The maerl’s three-dimensional structure allows high levels of oxygen, essential to scallops, and emits a chemical that attracts them.
But threats to the ecosystem remain: the BHA surveys also highlighted damaged maerl in some locations—from illegal dredgers and from invasive algal growth that scientists believe could be caused by nutrients from salmon farms.
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“We know that salmon farms put more nutrients into the water,” says Sara Nason, a journalist and documentary maker who founded Sea Change, which later became the BHA and organised the Maerl-Herring festival. The BHA has now launched a three-year project with more than £153,000 of support from the National Lottery Heritage Fund and additional funding from members of the North & West District Salmon Fishery Board, to continue its work.
Elsewhere, the battle for Scotland’s sea rages on. The Scottish government, which was criticised in June by the independent watchdog Environmental Standards Scotland for not fulfilling its legal duty to restore and protect the seabed, has launched a public consultation on improving protections for marine habitats andTheresa Ross, who runs Achiltibuie Stores for the community of about 250 people living along this stretch of coastline, says the MPA is “fully supported” by local people as it “ensures fishing is more sustainable.” But for a rural coastal community, where the sea supports livelihoods and few jobs exist, there are competing concerns, she says.
View image in fullscreen
The venue for the evening’s celebrations at the Maerl and Herring festival in Achiltibuie. Photograph: Samuel James-Griffiths/The Guardian
“There are more people working on the fish farm here than fishermen,” says Ross, whose husband is one of about six fishers in the village, while her son is one of 10 working on the farms. “I support the status quo. But the fish farms are full-time jobs, guaranteed employment and well paid,” she says. “They are not weather dependent, like fishing.”
Nevertheless, Nason is one of many who are delighted that the end to dredging has been such a success, describing the protection of the maerl beds as “beyond priceless … We’ve achieved recovery of the whole ecosystem.”
Frequently Asked Questions
FAQs How Stopping Dredging Saved the Seas of Scotlands Summer Isles
Beginner Questions
What is dredging
Dredging is the practice of dragging heavy metal gear across the seabed to scoop up shellfish like scallops and clams It scrapes up everything in its path not just the target species
Where are the Summer Isles
Theyre a small group of islands off the northwest coast of Scotland near Ullapool in the Scottish Highlands
What was being dredged there
Mostly scallops Boats dragged heavy dredges along the seabed to collect them
Why was dredging a problem
It destroyed the seabed habitatflattening reefs smashing corallike maerl beds and wiping out the marine life that lived there It also killed young fish and other creatures as bycatch
What does Beyond Priceless mean
Its the name of the campaign that argued the Summer Isles seabed was worth far more alivefor wildlife fishing and the communitythan the shortterm profit from dredging
Did stopping dredging actually help
Yes After protective measures were introduced the seabed began to recover Marine life returned and the area became healthier for fish wildlife and local creel fishermen
Intermediate Questions
What kind of habitat was being damaged
Maerl beds flame shell reefs and other fragile seabed communities These take decades or centuries to form and are easily destroyed
Who pushed to stop the dredging
Local creel fishermen conservation groups like Open Seas and community members who relied on a healthy seabed They argued dredging was incompatible with the areas longterm future
How was dredging stopped
Through campaigning and legalpolicy pressure the Scottish government introduced a ban on scallop dredging in specific inshore areas including around the Summer Isles
What were the benefits of the ban
Seabed habitats started recovering
More fish and marine wildlife returned
Local creel fishermen saw better catches
The area became more attractive for tourism and diving
Was there opposition
Yes Some commercial dredging operators opposed the ban arguing it hurt their livelihoods The debate was about shortterm profit versus longterm sustainability
