SSPO

Scotland must champion the coastline’s working communities and their economic importance as well as the lovely views

Hamish Macdonell

THIS year has been designated Scotland’s Year of Coasts and Waters. The VisitScotland website has a sizeable section devoted to it. Silhouettes of rocky shorelines vie with images of sun kissed beaches, while visitors are encouraged to try everything from kayaking to cleaning shorelines of litter. All through the site, though, there are beautiful pictures of Scottish seafood – each one showing glistening slices of smoked salmon.

The food that comes from our shores is, quite rightly, a key part of the campaign. Much is made of the langoustines, the mussels, the oysters and, yes, the salmon that is produced in Scotland to global renown, all of which tempt visitors from all over the world.

This is as it should be and this is why Scotland’s salmon sector applauded the plan to champion our coasts and waters when the initiative was announced last year.

And yet – and this is where those lines of Burns come in – not everyone sees us in the way we do ourselves.

At the launch event it was clear that, for some people, the Year of

Coasts and Waters was not about the people who live and work along our shorelines farming our salmon, it was actually about a fanciful image of a pristine and untouched landscape and, more than that, represented yet another excuse to attack salmon farming.

In the farmed salmon sector, we see our role as a sustainer and supporter of local communities, as an economic driver behind fragile coastal areas.

But it is now clear, not only that there are some who see us in a completely different light, but who want to use the Year of Coasts and Waters to collect information which they then hope can be used to put a fresh squeeze on our sector.

Some pressure groups want so-called citizen scientists to dive around the coast during this year-long programme.

Divers are being encouraged to gather video evidence from around – and even underneath – salmon pens which can then be used to attack us.

It is irresponsible and reckless for anyone to suggest such a stunt and it would be incredibly dangerous for anyone to attempt it. But this is the situation we now find ourselves in.

Where we see ourselves as an integral and supportive part of Scotland’s coastline, others see us as a disruptive intruder.

VisitScotland came up with the idea of Year of Coasts and Waters to promote a key part of the tourist network and, as a visitor initiative, it seems to be a good one.

I’m sure, as far as our tourist body in concerned, the scenery and activities along Scotland’s coastline represent one side of the coin, and the quality food and drink produced along those shorelines represent the other.

VisitScotland expects visitors to enjoy the coastline and then feast on its seafood.

What nobody anticipated was for some pressure groups to accept one side of the coin but not the other and hijack this campaign for a thinly veiled bout of anti-salmon farming activism – but that’s where we appear to be going.

This split over the Year of Coasts and Waters actually highlights a much wider divide which has already brought tension to communities up and down the west coast.

There is mounting anecdotal evidence of a simple demographic division over salmon farm developments between long standing local families and newly arrived retirees.

It is in no way definitive, but there is increasing evidence that in some areas, local families, particularly those with children in desperate need of an income, back salmon farms while incoming retirees oppose them.

This is the same divide highlighted by the VisitScotland campaign: between those who live and work along our shorelines and those who want to look out on them, free from any economic activity whatever.

We in the farmed salmon sector know our val

‘ O wad some Power the giftie gie us us!’ To see oursels as ithers see

ue to fragile local economies. We know how important the jobs are that we provide, the money we inject into local economies, the houses we build, the broadband we supply, the services we offer – often for free – and the communities we sustain.

We are an absolutely central part of Scotland’s coastal communities and, as such, we have to be fundamental to any campaign championing our coasts and waters.

And while it can be baffling for us to come across others who not only don’t see it this way, but believe that a campaign to promote our coastlines should be used to attack us, we have to accept that there is a major division here which will take some time to fix.

So while it would be tempting to seize on a line used by Burns elsewhere in that poem and tell our critics ‘Gae somewhere else and seek your dinner’, we would be far better to take the Bard’s concluding advice in that poem.

“There is evidence that local families in need of an income back salmon farms while incoming retirees them” oppose

In To a Louse, he tells us that, if we were ‘to see oursels as ithers see us’ then ‘It wad from mony a blunder frae us, and foolish notion’.

In other words, it is only by recognising the huge disparity between our view of the world and that promoted by others that we can take the first steps to sorting this out. Only by understanding where they are coming from and what they want will we be able to counter the narrow and idealised view of the world they have adopted.

In this instance, it means throwing ourselves into the Year of Coasts and Waters campaign, aware that some people will dislike us for doing so but knowing that only by celebrating the key role we play in Scotland’s coastal communities – while acknowledging their opposing view – will we encourage a more balanced understanding of what is really going on along our coasts.