Lamlash Bay
Positive results in a No Take Zone
The Isle of Arran in the Firth of Clyde off the west coast of Scotland is eagerly marketed by its small but dedicated tourist board as ‘Scotland in Miniature’. The Highland Boundary Fault divides the island in two, separating the highlands in the north from the lowlands in the south – just as it does the highlands and lowlands of mainland Scotland, on a much grander scale.
But this island has another claim to fame. According to legend, Robert the Bruce retreated here after six defeats at the hands of the English. At his lowest ebb, Robert hid in what would become known as the King’s Cave and pondered the future of his country. As he did so, a spider descended and began to spin its web across the cave entrance. Six times the spider span and six times it failed.
Robert made a pact. If the spider was defeated a seventh time, then he would give up his dreams of a free Scotland too. Luckily for the Scots, on the seventh attempt, the arachnid augur succeeded and Robert resolved to continue the fight. Eight years later, the battle of Bannockburn would be the decisive battle on Scotland’s road to independence, and the saying “if at first you don’t succeed, try, try and try again” was allegedly born.
Perhaps that never-say-die attitude has seeped into the famous geology of this island. Because the story of how the first Scottish No Take Zone (NTZ) came to be designated in the waters around Arran is also a story of a fight against the odds and preserving a legacy for a proud community.
WITNESS TO THE DECLINE
Howard Wood was just 15 when he moved to Arran, but it’s his last years as a teenager that really stick in his mind. It was 1973 and Howard was learning to dive. He remembers the experience vividly, reeling of a list of the species he saw on his first underwater forays: “There were flatfish, cuckoo and thornback rays, scallops, lobsters and gorgeous, brilliant blue cuckoo wrasse”. Young Howard was smitten. But as the years passed, Howard and his dive buddy Don MacNeish witnessed massive changes caused by the intensive fishing in the Firth of Clyde. The seabed was being wrecked. They were seeing fewer and fewer flatfish on their dives. The cuckoo rays dwindled through the 1980s and then were gone. And the huge plaice and turbot Howard used to spear for dinner disappeared. By the mid 1990s it felt as if all was lost. The seas Howard had fallen in love with were a shadow of their former selves and in 1994 the once-famous Lamlash Bay International Sea-angling Festival held its last-ever event, with catches down 96 per cent on historic records. But Howard and Don were hatching a plan. Don had family in New Zealand and on his
Last year I saw my first cuckoo ray at Arran for 30 years and juvenile cod were here in record numbers. I know that it will never be the same as when I first started diving here. But the No Take Zone shows that if you give nature a chance, it really can bounce back.
visits there he had been to the world’s first ever NTZ, a marine reserve established in 1975 around Goat Island. What Don saw astonished him and sowed the seed of an idea that he and Howard thought could work back home. In 1995, The Community of Arran Seabed Trust, or COAST, was born – a community-led group whose sole aim was to fight for a similar zone around Lamlash Bay on the east shore of Arran.
For Howard, the most important people to get to support the project were the local fishermen. “Arran’s fishermen knew that their livelihoods depended on a healthy seabed,” he says. “They were the easy bit.” With the fishing community on side, the rest of the island soon followed, but the decision makers in government and the big commercial fishing fleets working these waters
were much harder to persuade.
GIVING NATURE A CHANCE
Finally, after 13 long years of lobbying, arguments, letters and phone calls, Dom and Howard’s perseverance paid off. In 2008, a NTZ was established around Lamlash Bay. It was by no means huge, just 2.67km2, but the knowledge that no marineae lifee would ever be taken from it was significant, as was the fact that this was the first such protected area in the world to be organised by a community group. “We know the top-down approach just doesn’t wwork,” Howard says. “It has to come from the people who mmake their living from the sea.” With the protection finally inn place, Howard had a hunch that the pioneering scheme wwould have dramatic and far-reaching impact on the local mmarine environment. He just had to prove it.
Bryce Stewart of the University of York remembers meeting Howard a few years before the NTZ was officially put into effect. “I just thought, wow… how on Earth are you going to pull this off?” he laughs. But once his scepticism had been proven unfounded, Bryce and a team from the university set to work documenting the changes that were already underway.
THE SEABED BOUNCES BACK
Using methods such as dive surveys, baited fish cameras and photographic sampling, ing, the scientists collected huge amounts of data. Just a few years into the project t the results were extraordinary. “The majority of evidence appears to be pointing ointing in the same direction,” their r 2013 report states. “The Lamlash Bay y No Take Zone appears to be promoting the recovery of scallops, lobster, fish and d seafloor habitats.”
The results showed that at scallops were around 50 per cent more e abundant within the NTZ than outside tside and the lobsters were significantly ly larger. Even the seafloor was recovering, covering, with seaweed, maerl (a type ype of red algae that grows in carpets), arpets), sponges and hydrozoids (colonial relatives of coral) all twice e as abundant. Overall, biodiversity versity in the NTZ was half as abundant again compared d to the surrounding areas. The he marine science community y started to take notice.
“It’s no exaggeration to say ay that what Howard and COAST have achieved chieved has been felt across the world,” Bryce says. “What they’ve done is extraordinary.” Today, the legacy of COAST continues to grow. After much lobbying, in 2016 a Marine Protected Area (MPA) was implemented around the whole southern coast of Arran. An MPA doesn’t have the same protections as a NTZ, but covers a far larger area, with certain types of fishing banned in different zones.
This summer a new education centre will be opened on Arran, teaching the next generation about the value of their seas. The island’s tourist industry is finding ways to take advantage too, with kayak and snorkel tours starting to take of off. Meanwhile, the University of York team has just had its funding confirmed for a full survey of the NTZ, and Bryce i is itching to return and catch up with the man he calls an “inspiration”, who has “changed the face of marine conserv conservation both in Scotland and across the UK”.
KEEP UP THE FIGHT
Back on A Arran, Howard and Don still meet to discuss COAST a and how best to protect the seas they love. The last time they caught up they were reflecting on what had gone before and wondering how they could keep going. Dom reminded H Howard that 20 years ago there were just two of them, yet n now there are dozens, all fighting for the same thing. Des Despite the plaudits, however, you get the sense that Howard w would probably rather be in the water. “Last ye year I saw my first cuckoo ray at Arran for 30 years,” H Howard tells me. “Juvenile cod were here in record numbers numbers. I know that it’ll never be the same as when I first star started diving here. But the NTZ shows that if you just giv give nature a chance, it really can bounce back.” Perhap Perhaps somewhere on Arran, the ghost of Robert the Bru Bruce is watching from his cave, nodding in agre agreement. “If at first you don’t succeed…”