The cry of gulls, the blazing dawn, the surging tide... and a way of life that forever enchants us

TWENTY years ago, on a soft May evening in the Bays of Harris, I became briefly a fisherman. Not with rod and line but a merry hunter of the silver darlings, as word shot from house to house that there were herring in Loch Scadabay, shoaling deliriously in the turquoise inlet.

There were four of us in an open boat within minutes – myself and Alasdair Dan and Domhnull Norman and his grandfather John Norman MacKinnon – ‘Dory’ as we called him. And though I did little more than hold a rope for a moment, under that sixtysomething’s command we shot and drew a net, and within minutes we were back ashore, pink and laughing and splattered with scales, and that night every house on the road enjoyed a fry of prized spring herring.

‘Dory’ was buried last month, last of a highly respected band of brothers (all, endearingly, called John) whose immaculately maintained smack, the Constant Friend, was one of Scotland’s last driftnetters – a sustainable form of fishing that harvested only mature herring, with no damage to fry or spawning grounds.

But the MacKinnons had grown up, watching helplessly, as their waters were poached time and again by rapacious East Coast trawlers. Through the 1970s they warned (with many other island men) that the crazed overfishing of herring was irresponsible and ruinous.

By 1978 they had been proved right and the experts wrong. The herring vanished and are caught today in negligible quantities. Communities such as Inveraray and Mallaig, Kyleakin and Castlebay and Lochboisdale have never recovered.

In a maritime nation where most of us now lead sedentary and desk-bound lives, fishermen are still held in great affection – it’s a real man’s trade, braving the elements for our supper, imperilling their lives on an inscrutable sea.

Terrible disasters – such as that off Eyemouth, Berwickshire, in October 1881, when 189 men were lost in one frightful storm – are still darkly recalled. Only in January, two fishermen drowned in Loch Fyne and, in April 2016, three Hebridean lads were lost off Barra. The very leader of the free world is named after his fisherman great-grandfather Donald Smith, who was only 36 when he drowned, off Vatisker Point in Lewis, in 1868.

FISHING is statistically the most dangerous job in Britain. All four of my great-grandfathers fished and it can never be discussed without much emotion in the room. Passions flared in abundance when, on Monday, it emerged that Britain’s fishing interests were signed away for another two years as part of the ‘transition deal’ the Government has finally concluded with the EU.

In exchange for a short-term fudge on the Irish border and the United Kingdom’s right immediately to negotiate international trade agreements, our fishing fleet (and waters) will remain under EU control, as we forfeit all say in the matter.

Scotland’s fishermen had confidently expected to take back our coastal waters next spring, as Ruth Davidson and the Scottish Tories assured them at the general election.

‘This falls far short of an acceptable deal,’ stormed Bertie Armstrong of the Scottish Fishermen’s Federation. ‘Our fishing communities’ fortunes are still subject to the whim and largesse of the EU for another two years.’

Scotland’s new Tory MPs – many of whom snatched coastal seats with fishing communities from the Nationalists last June – are beside themselves with embarrassment and rage. Although Miss Davidson has publicly resigned herself to the transitional terms, it has been made clear that Scotland’s Tory MPs will vote down the final Brexit deal if there are any more concessions to the EU about fishing.

The only crumbs of comfort are that no national election is imminent and, thanks to Nicola Sturgeon’s fatuous lovein with the EU, the SNP may struggle to exploit the issue.

Yet this ‘sell-out’ was predictable. Britain’s fishing industry is no longer significant. Like the Borders woollen mills or the Clyde shipyards, it is noble, much esteemed – and, for the most part, over.

In 2016, the fishing industry (including processing and retail) amounted to only 0.12 per cent of Britain’s economic output. Only about 5,000 people harvest the sea in Scotland. Just 8,000 are employed ashore in handling the catch or supporting the fleet.

Those numbers were never sufficient to pull up a Prime Minister in a tight fix, desperate for a transitional Brexit agreement that would allow immediate trade talks (lest the 63 hard Brexit Tory MPs bring down her government) and kick the ‘dreary steeples’ of Fermanagh and Tyrone into the long grass (lest she be sunk by the Lambeg drums).

By contrast, Scottish construction employs 140,000. Two million toil in the service industry and 100,000 Scots earn their crust in banking and insurance. A Brexit deal that prioritised the interests of fisherfolk over the millions employed, for instance, in Britain’s finance sector would be senseless – and electorally suicidal.

BUT there are other sobering points. The myth goes that it was the great factory trawlers of Spain, France, Denmark and so on that have emptied Scotland’s waters. It was 1983 before a single craft from what was then the EEC was allowed to wet a net in them and, by then, Scotland’s fishermen had done a good job of despoliation themselves.

It was we, not dastardly Continentals, who obliterated the herring and so reduced stocks of cod and haddock that per pound they now cost more than steak. Purse and seinenetters long ago emptied the Minch. Had only drift-netting been permitted, the herring would still be round our coasts in abundance. Only last spring, shocking underwater footage showed how a single scallop dredger had wrecked a beautiful flame-shell reef in Loch Carron. The old saw goes that you never met a fisherman with foresight, and you never will.

It makes no more sense than a cider farmer harvesting his apples by chopping down his trees. Westminster Environment Secretary Michael Gove warns we are ‘still fishing more than science would dictate’.

Quotas must continue, and even the industry accepts the EU fleet must be allowed some permanent access, unless we want hefty tariffs on all the fish we sell to the Spanish and elsewhere.

And there is another inconvenient truth. Fishing is an industry that young men are loath to join. Recruitment is such a serious problem that Lithuanians and even Filipinos crew many boats. Local lads – and still more their wives and girlfriends – increasingly shun a trade with good odds of being maimed or drowned.

The cry of the gulls, the blazing dawn and the surge of the tide… a way of life that will always enchant us. But on no account can it hold the nation to ransom.

You can email John MacLeod at john.macleod@dailymail.co.uk