Seil Chat

I'm interested in local views on scallop dredging. Is it a good thing? Bad thing? Necessary? Sustainable?

At least one person around here has strong views on this:

Scallop dredgers 'lay waste to spectacular reef'

Well dredging has been shown to do severe damage to the seabed and dredging boats can really spoil another fisherman’s day by devastating their prawn gear when engaged in this activity....However, hundreds of people both directly and indirectly manage to feed their families by taking a wage from this method of fishing and how many thousand of us order Scallops in our restaurants??? Just some food for thought...

Hi, this is my first post (have only recently found out about this site) and I was willing to post on anything. Fortunately I have an opinion about clam dredging: Its dangerous. As the "nets" are metal (as well as the chains/cables) when they get snagged they can cause major damage to boat and fisherman. Maybe there's some that aren't as bad, but there you go. First post accomplished.

Disco

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All that holds mankind back is its dependence on fossilized philosophy

Hi DiscoClint and welcome.

Hope you stick around and contribute.

I agree with your observation, however, aren't all methods of fishing dangerous?

Isn't it human greed that's dangerous, leading to ecolically destructive mass-catch methods and overfishing? Fishermen grow, develop or initiate nothing but just thoughtlessly seem to depend on (or demand that) nature should endlessly provide the goodies for their own selfish benefit. In short, they are just short-term opportunist parasites. Unfortunately, there are too few poor fishermen locally. Most locally are multi-home owners, pariahs of the community a curse on the environment. Let fishing communities be self-sustainable and purely locally oriented - can we buy fresh prawns and oysters in the local shop? No, I don't think so. But you can buy local prawns in Spain or Seil oysters in Leith. As soon as you start to catch and export fish/seafood nationally or internationally, then you know that the local ecological situation is basically stuffed.

Scallop dredging is banned in the firth of lorn....... out of interest has any one got an ecologically sound economic replacement?

Dont know the viability of it but can scallop be farmed
if this was possible in a local area
would it not be kinder to prawns and avoid indirect damage to the environment
making happier residents and prawn fishermen

Teddy

leading to ecolically destructive

Still - not a bad idea to destroy E.coli

I understand that the Scottish Government may be considering re-opening the Firth of Lorn to scallop dredging. I'm not sure I would welcome the return of dredgers and fear the damage caused to our sea bed may be permanent. Do the benefits outweigh any loss?

Do the benefits outweigh any loss?

They do to the owners of the dredgers.

I guess that depends on how we value the sea bed and whether or not we care about permanent damage. Long term consequences could also affect the owners of dredgers. However, could any short term gain help to get the economy going again? It seems to be fairly robust around here anyway, especially with all the "stay-cationers" giving it a boost.

Dear, oh dear, oh dear.
I thought we'd all grown up a bit, decided to be less anally-retentive, and stopped highlighting other peoples' typos and belittling them. Obviously not Erica:

Eric the Viking wrote:

leading to ecolically destructive

Still - not a bad idea to destroy E.coli

I can see why Mona considers fishermen to be parasites because they don't create anything, just exploit but if one cares to reread Genesis 1.26 "And God said; 'Let us make man in our image, after our likeness and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea..." then one can see that, in fact, fishermen are merely following orders.
Our newest member "Discoclint" (is that a spelling mistake?) probably doesn't agree, being an atheist:

DiscoClint wrote:All that holds mankind back is its dependence on fossilized philosophy

but she can, of course, be forgiven.

Rev Shanks (really dredging by choice)

Isn't trolling a type of fishing Shanker? You lay the bait in the form of an inflammatory comment and sit back and wait to see who swims along and takes the bait!

on a serious note dredging or fishing of any sort is a dangerous business
whatever your point of view
sympathies must go out to those who lost their lives recently
and their relations


Teddy

Hi and thanks.

While a lot of them are, shore fishing is a fairly safe process.

Eric the Viking wrote:Hi DiscoClint and welcome.

Hope you stick around and contribute.

I agree with your observation, however, aren't all methods of fishing dangerous?

"Unfortunately, there are too few poor fishermen locally." Are you saying that the only good fisherman is a poor fisherman? I agree that mass catch methods are destructive, but you can't throw all fishermen into that group. Many use methods that do very little environmental damage and are recognised as being more sustainable.....trawling and dredging not included. The British government should have been on the ball years ago when its waters were ravaged by foreign trawlers catching every moving shiny thing in sight.

I completely agree that more produce should be sold locally, there should be an outlet for it. It's not really the fault of fishermen that the factories that sell to Spain etc. are the only ones buying. Have the shop offered to sell anything of that sort (I don't know).

In order to sustain your argument one would have to not buy from any source except locally. I think very few people have this luxury. Should people in cities be banned from eating sea-caught products?

MonaLott wrote:Isn't it human greed that's dangerous, leading to ecolically destructive mass-catch methods and overfishing? Fishermen grow, develop or initiate nothing but just thoughtlessly seem to depend on (or demand that) nature should endlessly provide the goodies for their own selfish benefit. In short, they are just short-term opportunist parasites. Unfortunately, there are too few poor fishermen locally. Most locally are multi-home owners, pariahs of the community a curse on the environment. Let fishing communities be self-sustainable and purely locally oriented - can we buy fresh prawns and oysters in the local shop? No, I don't think so. But you can buy local prawns in Spain or Seil oysters in Leith. As soon as you start to catch and export fish/seafood nationally or internationally, then you know that the local ecological situation is basically stuffed.

I can see why Mona considers fishermen to be parasites because they don't create anything, just exploit but if one cares to reread Genesis 1.26 "And God said; 'Let us make man in our image, after our likeness and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea..." then one can see that, in fact, fishermen are merely following orders.
Our newest member "Discoclint" (is that a spelling mistake?) probably doesn't agree, being an atheist.

Guilty as charged. But fear not for I have a fully functioning set of heathen morals.

I think I see your point if it is along the lines of; the fish are there so why shouldn't we catch them. The problem is, I suppose, that where do you draw the line for how much is too much? When you can afford one house, 2 houses, 4 boats?

Hi disco,

I don't think there's any type of fishery that is a "fairly safe process". Unless you mean angling from the shore but even this is very dangerous - I know in Cornwall that it is not rare for anglers to be washed off the rocks...

We should only buy local hand-dived scallops - environmentally friendly and ecologically more likely to be sustainable. No, I don't think fishermen need to be poor but they must surely be restricted in wealth by the limits imposed by the sustainability and diversity of their local marine ecosystem.