BOOM AND BUST: THE CLYDE FISHERIES
In the 1800s, herring fisheries around the Isle of Arran were booming, so much so that in 1889 large-bottom trawling boats were banned from the Clyde in an attempt to stop overfishing. Nevertheless, the tonnage of herring landed in the Clyde still crashed, from up to 40,000 tonnes in the late 1940s to an average of just 2,400 tonnes in 1978–84. New dredging techniques allowed a switch to scallop and prawn fishing, providing some alternative employment. But by the mid-1980s the situation was pretty desperate. In 2010, worried scientists analysing the area’s historic fishing records declared that the Clyde ecosystem was about to become a marine desert.