COAST are delighted that the Scotsman has, with the help of Environmental LINK, started a “SAVE OUR SEAS” Campaign.
Link to article http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=1649&id=1762002007
IAN JOHNSTON ENVIRONMENT CORRESPONDENT
WHEN a group of people on Arran decided in the mid-1990s to start campaigning for a marine reserve in Lamlash Bay, they found "people looked at us as if we were mad".
But in the intervening years, increasing numbers of people have come round to their point of view and the Community of Arran Seabed Trust - or COAST - now has a membership of more than 1,700 compared to the island's population of fewer than 5,000. They are currently in negotiations with government officials and fishermen, but are hopeful of finally succeeding in their aim of creating a marine protected area in the bay.
It is an example of how people power can be mobilised to change the prevailing political mood which, if replicated across the country as a whole, would almost certainly guarantee an effective Marine Bill being passed by the Scottish Parliament.
And those with a care for the marine environment can also take direct action themselves to help improve the condition of the marine environment and our knowledge of what happens beneath the waves.
Eating sustainably caught fish, taking litter off the beach on every visit, getting involved in organised clean-ups and reporting sightings of interesting wildlife are all things ordinary people who visit the seaside or go out on to the sea can do.
Lamlash Bay was home to a sea angling festival where catches as large as 5,000 fish, weighing up to a total of 16,000lb, had been recorded, but in 1994 - the last year this was held - the catch had slumped to 200lbs.
Partly because of this, a group of divers and other interested people decided to campaign to get the area closed to commercial fishing in the hope its sea life would be able to regenerate.
"It's been a long, long fight but we think we are coming to the end of the road," said a spokesman for COAST.
The campaigners at COAST on Arran hope Lamlash Bay will provide a good example of the kind of transformation in environmental well-being that could be achieved on a wider scale by a network of marine protected areas round Scotland's coasts.