Brexit and Fisheries - Where are we at now?

This coming week, from Tuesday 12th, among the Brexit negotiations there will be a series of video conferences on fishing. By the end of the week there will be just six weeks left before the self-imposed deadline of having fishery matters settled by the end of June.

Until two days ago the United Kingdom had refused to produce a draft of the required legal agreement setting out how it sees a future fisheries agreement working in practice. That means that matters rested on the extremely vague principles set out in a document issued last February and that doesn’t seem to have been changed since.

A triumph of aspiration over detail, that document contained phrases such as:

“The UK is ready to consider an agreement on fisheries that reflects the fact that the UK will be an independent coastal state at the end of 2020.” and

“Overall, the framework agreement on fisheries should provide a clear basis for an on-going relationship with the EU, akin to the EU’s relationship with other coastal states, one that respects the UK’s status as an independent coastal state and the associated rights and obligations that come with this.”

Further, the proposal was

“for annual negotiations on access to the parties’ exclusive economic zones and fishing opportunities (total allowable catch and shares).”

From the start, the position of the EU has been that they are not prepared to deal with issues piecemeal. It has also seemed that, while they denied it, that was precisely the position of the UK team, led by Mr David Frost, the Government’s self described “Sherpa” in charge, incidentally neither a civil servant nor a politician.

Michel Barnier’s Statement of 24 April only confirmed what the EU has been saying from the beginning:

“Finally, we made no progress on fisheries.
On this essential topic, the UK has not put forward a legal text.
We have made no tangible progress despite the Political Declaration stating that we should make our best endeavours to reach an agreement by July. This is necessary to provide sufficient clarity for EU and UK fishermen, and also for all businesses linked to fisheries.
The EU will not agree to any future economic partnership that does not include a balanced, sustainable and long-term solution on fisheries. That should be crystal clear to the UK.”

It seems that last week the UK was, unsurprisingly, the first to blink. In tweets yesterday, David Frost declared

“I would also like to make clear that the EU have from us a full set of draft agreements” including

“A Fisheries Framework Agreement.”

What Mr Frost didn’t make clear was that, astonishingly, although a draft text has been sent to the EU negotiating team they are apparently not permitted to send it out to the EU member States. Also, it seems most unlikely that it has been shared with the Scottish Government or the devolved administrations in Northern Ireland and Wales.

I don’t think any further comment is necessary.

Response to the Wrasse Consultation

Until very recently there was no commercial demand for wrasse, because they have never been seen by the British public as a food species. They are said to be tasteless and bony and have, it seems, traditionally mainly been fished for sport from small boats. Their habitat is close inshore, rocky inlets, harbour mouths etcetera. I live at the head of Loch na Cille in Loch Melfort and was interested to note the arrival of a couple of small fishing boats setting traps around the shore, apparently in the hope of catching them. At that time the possibility of their use as sacrificial cleaner fish in salmon cages was beyond the contemplation of anyone outwith the aquaculture industry.

I am not a scientist, but have over the last forty years or so observed the environment of our coast and researched the changes that have taken place caused mainly by the arrival of aquaculture in mid Argyll, in particular the sealoch system comprising Seil, Shuna and Melfort. The lesson that we should all have learned long ago is that interfering in the balance of the ecology is something that we do at our peril.

Research done by others, notable SIFT, has shown that when commercial fishers moved into wrasse fishing catches were initially high, but quickly tailed off. There are a number of factors peculiar to wrasse that suggest reasons for this. They are extremely slow growing and long lived, also have strange hermaphrodite behaviour, starting out as female and some becoming male when a certain size is reached. This suggests that there should be very strict limits on minimum size of catch and that fishing should take place only outside the normal breeding season, rather than when it suits aquaculture.

I am aware that environmentalists elsewhere, for example in Devon, became extremely concerned some years ago at the arrival of “rogue” fishers in numbers, stripping out wrasse from inshore waters. The latest report suggests that when strictly controlled certain amounts of various species of wrasse can be removed sustainably, but also highlights the problems even one non-conforming fisher can cause. See:

https://www.devonandsevernifca.gov.uk/…/Comprehensive-Revie…

A number of factors suggest that rogue fishers are likely to appear: this is a non-standard type of fishing, using baited traps set from small boats with the capacity to work close inshore, plus the rewards are enormous with ongoing very high wrasse prices. The situation lends itself to new entrants to fishing with concern only to make quick profits.

What this report was unable to assess was the impact of the removal of quantities of cleaner from the environment, which is most unlikely to be beneficial. The report also evidences the need for the wrasse fishery to be looked at on a UK wide basis. Strict regulation in one area would only cause the fisheries to move elsewhere.

Environmental Impact Assessments by law are only required for potentially damaging activities at a particular location. Aquaculture already benefits from this with wellboats, whose use is damaging but unregulated. Wrasse fishing appears to be in the same category. The lesson is that there should be a pause, while a proper comprehensive assessment of all impacts, not only on sustainability of the actual fishery but on the residual effects around the shoreline, before this fishery is allowed.

I have not touched on the aspect of animal cruelty involved in removing a wild species from its habitat to a new life in salmon cages, where they are themsleves the victims of sea lice and disease and where they are eventually killed off at the end of the cycle. In the modern, enlightened Scotland that we all aspire to live up to and that is actively promoted by the First Minister the wrasse fishery has a nasty look.

The Aristocrats versus the Billionaires

A small but interesting illustration of just how far the mainstream media, typified by the Murdoch Press, has sunk can be found in the puff piece that appeared in the London Times on 5 May, over the byline of Ms Jenny Hjul. The full piece can be read below, along with the detailed response sent to the paper by John Aitchison of Friends of the Sound of Jura.

Those of us who have spent years, in some cases decades, trying to protect the environment and the wild fauna and flora of Scotland’s coasts are very used to being accused of self-interest. Ten or so years ago I was constantly the victim of anonymous trolls, one of whom described me as a “tweed clad aristocrat” (my genealogy as a Glaswegian descendent of those whose migration was not entirely voluntary can be supplied on request). Resort to ad hominen slurs is despicable, but also signals the lack of a proper argument. Not as irrelevant is the connection between Ms Hjul and the industry that she purports to be impartially commenting upon; she is the editor of Fish Farmer Magazine!

Ms Hjul may find it difficult to believe, but there are people around who truly care about things like dumping toxic waste on the seabed, allowing unnaturally large populations of sea lice to spread along the mouths of salmon rivers and importing non-native fish stocks, many of which escape each year and breed with local salmon.

Scientists internationally have established beyond any doubt that escaped caged salmon can and do interbreed with wild ones. It is for this reason that Norwegian regulators do not allow their industry to cultivate Scottish stock there. And yet, at a meeting I attended with Marine Scotland in 2018 in response to a direct question from me, one of their senior scientists, under the steely glare of his Civil Service minder, said that “there is no evidence of interbreeding in Scotland”.

Interbreeding is deadly for the survival of wild fish precisely because of the latter’s genetic programming to return to the spawning river. In this one regard Henry Williamson, author of Salar the Salmon, was right; don’t be distracted by his enthusiasm for human eugenics!

Of course all this is of concern to those who own rivers and want to preserve their main asset, the salmon in them. Of course it's they who have stumped up the cash to pay for what was no doubt very expensive research, which, in anticipation of industry whining, they had peer-reviewed. They have been very open about who they are, unlike Ms Hjul.

In his letter John Aitchsion refers to the 2018 parliamentary inquiry, which concluded that the status quo is not an option. Virtually nothing has happened since, while the target of doubling production by 2030, which we now know is government and not industry led, continues.

The decline of wild salmon in Scotland is now so well advanced that our sub-species may be close to extinction. Soon the only reminders of what we once had may be the photographs of salmon leaping in remote Highland waterfalls that the industry habitually uses in advertising.

Alastair McIntosh describes what is happening along our west coast as nothing other than a twentyfirst century land grab. Our seabed and the creatures that live on and above it are one of Scotland’s greatest assets, yet are being auctioned off to foreign owned companies taking advantage of the fact that Scotland’s regulators refuse to act in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence. It can thus be seen that rather than being a class warrier against the aristocracy Ms Hjul is in fact an apologist for, mainly Norwegian, billionaires. The ongoing official dishonesty is intolerable and obscures what is a straightforward choice between monoculture and diversity, between giving away or keeping control of our land. There should be an open, public debate about this, free from attempts to smear the issues with class.

Ms Hjul’s Article

“Scotland’s salmon farming industry has come under attack yet again from its regular detractors in the wild fish lobby. Normally, criticism from this quarter might be shrugged off by salmon farmers, who have long been the target of the angling community, which blames the decline in wild stocks on fish farms.
But both the grounds and the timing of the latest campaign leave a nasty taste. In a new report, the anti-salmon farm group Salmon and Trout Conservation Scotland and the Sustainable Inshore Fisheries Trust demand the government cuts support for the sector because its economic value and the number of people it employs have apparently been exaggerated.
This is quite a claim for a Scottish success story that is worth more than £1 billion a year to the economy, creates thousands of jobs and produces the UK’s biggest food export. The report’s authors base their logic on unchecked statistics (they even contradict their own figures) and the premise that the growth of salmon farming comes at the expense of others, including creel fishermen, recreational fishers and divers, and sea wildlife tourists.
Nowhere do they provide evidence that salmon farm sites — which if placed together would occupy the area of just two 18-hole golf courses on our vast coastline — cannot coexist happily with all other marine users. But it is not only the report’s unfounded assumptions that are so objectionable.
Fish farmers have toiled throughout the coronavirus crisis to maintain a steady supply of salmon to the supermarkets. Their role is vital, as is that of the fish processors, boat crews, hauliers and sales and distribution teams. Undermining all their efforts are wealthy river owners, motivated by their determination to protect their riparian inheritance and too blinkered to see how shameful their defence of privilege looks at a time like this. Their grievances have for years played on environmental concerns but with wild salmon depleted in east coast rivers as well as in England, where there are no farms, they have had to change tack.
A report that pits hard-working food producers against silver spoon sports fishermen is a massive own goal, one that will be remembered the next time the angling lairds take aim from their estates.

Mr Aitchison’s Response

“Jenny Hjul seems to have swallowed the salmon farming industry’s PR line, that only ‘silver spoon lairds’ care about the impact of their fish farms, or about the dodgy economic figures that they and politicians have used to support a doubling of production to 300-400,000 tonnes of farmed salmon by 2030. Doing so will also double their pollution, pesticides, parasites and diseases, which directly impact jobs in coastal communities that depend on the health of the sea. The harm caused by doing this has not be assessed.

All the pollution from Scotland’s 200 plus fish farms is dumped into the sea. People in our communities know that it spreads very far and is toxic to life on the seabed, including the crabs, lobsters and prawns our fishermen depend on. Fish farmers also shoot seals and illegally disturb porpoises and dolphins with deafeningly loud ‘seal scarers’, and their open-net cages release billions of parasitic sea lice, which are deadly to wild salmon and sea trout.
Many of the thousands of people we represent work as fishermen, scallop divers, wildlife guides and in accommodating visitors to our coast. Few are anglers and none are lairds. Every job here matters, and they are threatened just as much by COVID-19 as jobs in fish farming.

Deciding whether to allow this industry to expand should be based on the facts, including a full accounting of the costs, and not just the claimed benefits. This largely foreign-owned industry exports its profits and does not pay to clean up its pollution or the impact of its sea lice. Official statistics show that only about 1200 people work directly on Scotland’s fish farms. The Economic Contribution of Open Cage Salmon Aquaculture to Scotland report shows that inflated figures have been used to justify expansion, exaggerating new jobs by 251% and economic benefits by 124%.

Fishermen are now so concerned about the ‘significant effect on fishing and marine life due to sewage and chemical pollution’ affecting their livelihood that the Clyde Fishermen’s Association is calling for ‘an immediate moratorium on any new marine open cage fish farms and any expansion of existing fish farm sites’ in the Firth of Clyde, ‘as any expansion of the industry will be unsustainable and may result in irreversible damage caused to the environment’. The CFA has 200 members.

According to Fisheries Management Scotland, wild salmon and sea trout are now at crisis point, with populations at an all-time low. Sea lice from farms are not the only problem but they can have a huge impact:
Scottish Natural Heritage agrees: ’we believe there is now significant scientific evidence to conclude that population level impacts are possible’. Marine Scotland adds: ‘Salmon aquaculture can result in elevated numbers of sea lice in open water and hence is likely to increase the infestation potential on wild salmonids. This in turn could have an adverse effect on populations of wild salmonids in some circumstances.’
Its website quotes research that found a ‘reduction in the catches and counts of salmon on the west coast correlating with increased production of farmed salmon’, and ‘showed that rivers with farms had significantly lower abundances of juvenile salmon than those without farms’. It also quotes a study on the River Errif, in Ireland, that ‘estimated that returns of salmon after one year at sea were 50% lower, in years following high sea lice levels on nearby salmon farms during smolt migration.’ The authors considered that ‘the reduction in returning salmon numbers due to sea lice could affect the viability of the salmon population in the long term.’ Other Norwegian and Irish work also ‘indicated that salmon lice can influence the population status of wild salmon’.

Last week an expert group convened by the Scottish Government, including the Scottish Salmon Producers Organisation, published its recommendations to Ministers on the impact of fish faming on wild fish. After years of prevarication, the SSPO has finally acknowledged ‘the potential hazard that farmed salmonid aquaculture presents to wild salmonids’, and that the ‘finfish aquaculture regulatory regime should be reformed to ensure that it is fit for purpose …(and) … should protect wild migratory salmonids’. Perhaps the fish farmers didn’t tell Jenny Hjul.

In 2018 a Scottish Parliamentary Inquiry said that ‘urgent and meaningful action needs to be taken to address regulatory deficiencies as well as fish health and environmental issues before the industry can expand.’
Two years on the expansion is in full swing but little has been done to address the environmental issues.
Thoughtless caricatures like Hjul’s help no-one except this dirty industry, which is clinging to its old-fashioned methods because they are cheaper. Fish farming must be cleaned up before allowing it to double in size.”

Quota and Property Rights

In the early years of this century, when the use of the seabed was still regulated by the Crown Estate, the sea lochs of mid-Argyll were affected by a rash of speculative applications for the installation of mussel farms. The Crown Estate were not then charging fees for scoping applications, with the result that anyone could apply to site anything, anywhere, for free. One of the would-be entrepreneurs who latched on to this was a Scottish sea captain, who whiled away his shipboard time making numerous applications in our immediate area. Had these been granted, several bays that are in constant use by kayakers and boating people would have effectively become out of bounds, with considerable impacts on the local micro-economy, which relies heavily on summer visitors and the leisure industry.

Some of us locally organised a petition and the resultant publicity put a stop to this nonsense, with one exception. A Swiss-owned company called Celtic Sea Limited, owned by Dr Philippe Heiniger and Cornelia Heiniger of Aarau, Switzerland, managed to obtain revival of an old consent to instal a unit near Asknish Bay, curiously and in breach of Crown Estate guidelines without their application being advertised.

The Heinigers obtained financial support from the then Scottish Executive to establish their project. While the latter no doubt felt it laudable to encourage a new enterprise, even when it damaged existing ones, one has to consider the chances of a Scottish entrepreneur getting consent to try something similar on a Swiss lake.

The original lease of the Asknish site had been obtained many years earlier, but the unit there had failed due, it seems, to the prevalence of curious creatures known colloquially as sea squirts. These are disgusting, jelly-like things, that quickly colonise any available ropes and render them uninhabitable by other creatures. This was why the original consent had lapsed. The result is that we now have a single line of unused floats, several hundred metres long, which is left in place to ensure that the statutory consents are not lost. It’s a fact not much remarked upon that in our neo-liberal age any consent, be it a planning permission, a Crown Estate lease, or a fish quota has a commercial value.

Regarding the last of these, when concepts such as Total Allowable Catch and Fixed Quota Allocation were first developed about forty five years ago as part of the European Common Fisheries Policy it was left to individual countries to regulate how these would be administered. Quota was initially distributed, free of charge, on the basis of what the various fishing fleets had been doing historically. It would have been competent, legally, for governments to insist on it being surrendered on leaving fishing, but successive United Kingdom governments have allowed anyone retiring from the industry to sell his quota to a new entrant. Further, it’s not essential for the purchaser actually to own a suitable vessel, or to be in any way local, or to have any intention himself to fish. The result is that 80% of English quota is now owned by other nationals, mainly Dutch or Danish, Scottish less so, but concentrated mainly in five or six North east families. It’s extremely difficult to find out who is ultimately in control, because the larger vessels are invariably owned by companies, with shareholders frequently entities in tax havens.

The effect of this is that if you wish to do some actual fishing and catch a quota species your required permission will cost you more than your boat. As was remarked by a retired fisherman at a meeting I was at, “it’s like cutting two rungs off the bottom of the ladder”.

It seems that most countries have a similar problem; it would be interesting to know if any has insisted on surrender rather than sale. In Canada these non-fishing investors are termed “slipper skippers”. Under the European Convention on Human Rights, much reviled by the Brexiters who supported “getting back control” of fishing, such quota is a right of property, which cannot be taken away without compensation.

Michael Gove is insisting on a deal on fisheries being in place by 30 June, which is eight weeks away. To date the United Kingdom has not yet tabled its proposed solution. Things haven’t moved on at all since the Greenpeace article referred to.

Unearthed- The Millionaires hoarding UK Fishing Rights

Viruses and Atlantic Salmon

“Aquaculture escapees carried the most viruses of any group we studied and frequently had multiple infectious agents present. Our study looked at returning adult wild salmon, the survivors, so we weren’t able to see how out migrating smolt were affected as they passed near sea-cages in a critically vulnerable period of their life. This type of research will help us better understand the disease risks where wild and industrial fish overlap.” – Jonathan Carr, V.P. Research and Environment, Atlantic Salmon Federation

This week we have seen an extremely important report from the Atlantic Salmon Federation confirming what campaigners have known for years, but have to date been unable to prove, the link between the presence of viral diseases in farmed salmon and the decline in the wild populations of salmon and salmonids such as sea trout. The summary reads in part:

“The results confirmed that intercontinental transmission of infectious agents is likely occurring in offshore waters near Greenland between Atlantic salmon of North American and European origin. Analysis also showed that among the groups analyzed, aquaculture escapees had the highest prevalence of viruses and multiple infections were common among both cultured and wild fish.”

There is no reason whatsoever to suppose that what has been happening on the West side of the Atlantic Ocean hasn’t also been happening on our West coast. It is also the case that the major cause of the mass mortality events that happened in mid-Argyll last Autumn were largely attributable to another, but similar, viral disease, salmon cardiomyopathy. We have written about this before; briefly it’s a new arrival in Scotland that came from Norway a few years ago, is incurable and gives no external signs of its presence until the salmon are on the point of death. When it was detected MOWI took the decision to cull all remaining stocks in most of its “farms” in mid-Argyll, before the disease took them, at which point they would have moved from being a marketable product to Category Two waste that cannot by law enter the food chain. The event has made it into the current Private Eye, see above image.

It’s beginning to look as if the problems for this beleaguered industry aren’t confined to sea lice. With this year having already seen unseasonably warm days there’s no reason for any wishful thinking that viruses won’t return. We hope that Marine Scotland and the Fish Health Inspectorate will read the study and appreciate that viruses, like salmon, don’t know about borders.

The study can be found here: Atlantic Salmon Federation

Congratulations, STCScotland and SIFT

After months in preparation and peer review the report commissioned by Salmon and Trout Conservation Scotland and SIFT is finally out and makes damning reading. To read it click this link:

Salmon and Trout Scotland

For years objectors have been trying to persuade local planning officers and committees that the claims made by the aquaculture industry, backed by Scottish Government Ministers such as Fergus Ewing, regarding jobs and other positive economic impacts are grossly exaggerated, but time and again we have been ignored and applicants have been allowed to make outrageous claims about the "benefits". We have been told, variously, that aquaculture accounts for 12,000 and more full time equivalent posts. On top of that, of course the jobs are always said to be in the most fragile areas economically.

In truth, relying on nothing other than the Scottish Government's own figures, in turn based on facts such as income tax and NI figures, the total directly employed seems to be no more than 2,600.

To hike this up to the numbers claimed it has been necessary to do a lot of constructive arithmetic. Anyone with the most basic understanding of economics knows that when jobs are created there is a multiplier effect; it's obvious that when people receive income they spend it, which in turn creates work for others to supply that demand.

We have consistently argued over the years, to planning officers, committees and others, that the industry has been claiming credit for every single job on the West coast, including public sector workers, our doctors, nurses, carers, and all involved in keeping our communities running, bins collected, roads clear, the police force etc. But they also include the numerous micro businesses, village shops, bed and breakfasts and craft shops, hotels, marinas and boatyards, canoeing, wild life tours, cruises, you name it! In short hundreds of small to medium enterprises whose very existence is threatened by the damage open cage aquaculture does to the environment and the landscape, the very things that they depend on. Remember, tourism and leisure make up the great bulk of our Scotland's private sector economy.

The report, which has been subject to rigorous peer review, demonstrates that in looking at the economic "benefits" the researchers appointed on behalf of government looked at aquaculture employment in isolation. No attempt was made to look at the negative impacts on other businesses.

There are two government studies, Imani from 2017 and Marsh from 2019. The Report shows that instead of adopting the cast iron government figures described above, the consultants accepted figures supplied by the fish farming industry itself.

The Imani report was commissioned and paid for by, among others, Highlands and Islands Enterprise and Marine Scotland, the former quasi-governmental, the latter actually a branch of the civil service within Scottish Government. It is 100% clear from the briefest look at it that one of the main objects, perhaps the main one, was supporting the policy of doubling aquaculture capacity by 2030.

The Marsh report similarly looks based on guesswork rather than in depth analysis. It's an astonishingly short 4 pages.

In the past I have described this target as an "orphan policy", because when asked directly politicians have always said it came from the industry. True, it was backed by Food and Drink Scotland, but they are technically a non-governmental organisation backed by private and public entities with a Board picked from both sides. Now we know that people like Ben Hadfield of MOWI were speaking the truth when they have denied that. Well done, Ben!

Why is this important? Simply because a government policy with such massive, very obvious impacts both on the economy and on the environment should have in term of correct process the fullest Strategic Assessments into the negative effects of both.

The truth is now out and STCS and SIFT are to be congratulated for doing what government should have done long ago!

Covid 19 and Brexit

It’s clear that the fishing community on our West coast is facing a crisis from which many businesses will never recover.

Even before the virus arrived there were no indications that anything serious was being done regarding the fisheries negotiations between the UK and the EU. Today the reliable Tony Connelly of RTE has confirmed that nothing whatsoever has been done to date. Remember, the UK’s self-imposed time scale of 30 June is just eleven weeks away - eleven weeks ago we were celebrating Rabbie Burns; it seems like yesterday. There’s no sign of either side seeking an extension.

The issues peculiarly affect the smaller, inshore fishing fleet and the non quota fishery. This page has already explored questions regarding quota - see the post from 16 February, for example. In the absence of anything radical happening very soon my guess is that the big companies that currently own quota will see very little change after 30 June. Most, perhaps 80%, of English quota and a fair percentage of the Scottish is owned by entities from outside the UK, also many vessels are owned by limited companies that are in turn owned by other companies registered abroad and often in anonymous tax-haven jurisdictions. Legally their holdings of quota have effectively become rights of property and we can assume that the owners won’t have them interfered with readily.

Oddly, given the enthusiasm some hard line Brexiters have for rejecting everything “foreign” one avenue of recourse would be under the European Convention on Human Rights:

“Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 – Right to property

1. Every natural or legal person is entitled to the peaceful enjoyment of his possessions. No one shall be deprived of his possessions except in the public interest and subject to the conditions provided for by law and by the general principles of international law. 2. The preceding provisions shall not, however, in any way impair the right of a State to enforce such laws as it deems necessary to control the use of property in accordance with the general interest or to secure the payment of taxes or other contributions or penalties.”

Subsection 2 means that you are entitled to receive proper compensation if your rights are taken away in pursuance of the policy of a State.

For the West coast fleet matters are very different. Prior to the arrival of Covid 19 it was already clear that the great majority of inshore vessels were facing supply chain disruption and costs due to Brexit. Those issues have all been rehearsed before on this page and elsewhere. Briefly, they include the costs and practical problems with certification and problems freighting highly perishable fresh fish and shellfish to the markets around the Mediterranean and elsewhere.

Because there have as yet been no negotiations the position regarding re-registering and shifting your boat to Northern Ireland seems to remain a feasible option, for anyone willing to move, but it’s unlikely to be taken up until matters are finalised - there’s too much upheaval and any deal may change things.

Two weeks ago the Scottish Government announced the rescue package for the under 12 metre fleet. A total of £5 million is available and, it seems, has mostly been allocated on the basis of a payment of one half of two months wages/profit based on last year’s fishing, full time fishers only, with a maximum of £27,000 per business. Split among 650 businesses the average payment would be just over £7,500. A further £10 million is apparently available for fish processors. Scottish Government can only distribute the money allocated from the total UK fund and it’s obvious that these payments won’t hold off starvation for very long. Families are already suffering, desperately.

It doesn’t look as if anything will change soon and as noted above for fishing Brexit is settled on 30 June. It seems unlikely that the boats currently tied up, with crews in many cases looking for other work or having returned home, will return to sea anytime soon.

There are signs on social media of attempts being made along the coast of cottage distribution networks being established. Owners of some vessels are trying to set up local sales operations, while residents in some areas are setting up joint purchasing efforts. With the best of intentions these efforts can only nibble at the problem.

For decades almost all of our most precious shellfish has gone to Spain and France. Will we all start to change our eating habits and start eating lobsters on a regular basis? Will we see velvet crabs, a major export to Spain, as a food stuff? Prices are said to have plummeted; will they revive to levels that make fishing worthwhile?

Please feel free to comment on these issues. It’s important that all ideas are aired.

Finally, it seems that the aquaculture industry may not suffer as much as its owners are currently suggesting. Certainly there’s been a catastrophic drop in exports to places like China, but these will recover post Covid 19 and will be unaffected by Brexit. Domestic sales will be booming, especially if the collapse in the seagoing fleet makes salmon the only fish on supermarket shelves.

The companies concerned, almost all hugely wealthy Norwegian or multi-national owned, will assuredly survive. Almost nothing has been published by Scottish Government about the extent to which these non-taxpayer giants may also benefit from any rescue money going.

SEPA has awarded the fish farms relief from the maximum biomass limits that are in place currently to restrict the amounts of waste material that can be dumped on our seabed. Perhaps more worryingly a number of farms are also being allowed to use more of the deadly Emamectin Benzoate, that SEPA has been anxious to see removed entirely from the water column and seabed. It’s used to kill the sea lice that predate on the salmon, but is also fatal to lobsters and other crustaceans and stays active for many years.

We could be looking eventually at a seascape that’s devoid of activity apart from industrial level aquaculture, taking place over a polluted, toxic seabed devoid of wildlife.