Letters / Why did the council back international investors rather than local fishermen?
Shetland Islands Council (SIC) had a choice to make and decided to benefit international investors rather than support local scallop and creel fishermen at Fish Holm in Yell Sound. Another area of seabed is lost to fishermen.
Seabed loss is increasingly an issue that includes losses from subsea cables, pipelines, oil and gas infrastructure, marine protected areas, voluntary closures, off shore wind farms and aquaculture expansion.
Scottish Sea Farms application for a major new salmon farm at Fish Holm in Yell Sound has been approved, possibly the biggest fish farm in Europe, 32 football pitches big.
A decision that local scallop and creel fishermen said will erode their working grounds and threaten their jobs, boats and the long‑term future of Shetland’s indigenous fishing fleet. Fishermen say the decision reflects a wider pattern in which industrial aquaculture expansion is repeatedly prioritised over traditional fisheries.
The approval hands over another area of productive seabed to Scottish Sea Farms, a Norwegian owned company, at the expense of local fishermen who have worked these grounds for generations.
Local fishermen stress that the issue is not salmon farming itself, but the continued placement of new farms directly on top of valuable fishing grounds. Fishermen want better attempts to locate aquaculture sites away from the limited seabed they rely on.
With proper planning, these conflicts could be avoided entirely. Instead, local fishermen in Yell are being pushed out of the way by a foreign company, and with the backing of the local council.
While each development on its own may seem small, the cumulative effect is devastating. Every development sees the loss of seabed, pushing the fishing effort into smaller and smaller areas, the pressure on what is available will become unsustainable.
Fishermen also warn that the environmental impacts of the large salmon farm in Yell Sound have not been fully appreciated. Yell Sound is a high‑flow, high‑energy area. A model showed that waste will be dispersed, but that means that the waste will be spread over a wider area of seabed.
Scallops are naturally constrained by the environment they live in, with around 5.45 per cent of inshore seabed being suitable habitat for scallops, they depend on clean, oxygenated ground, but once the seabed becomes enriched with organic waste, scallop habitat collapses. Fish Holm was noted as a high production site, that seabed is now inaccessible and will suffer from organic waste dispersal.
Another future, and related, issue is that after the election the Scottish Government are consulting on marine protected areas, so potential further seabed loss and restrictions.
SIC should have looked to protect local fishermen and their grounds in Yell rather than international investors. They have an opportunity in Vementry with the Cooke Aquaculture planning application to support local fishermen or Cooke Aquaculture, a Canadian business.
Brian Nugent
Burra
Parliamentary candidate for Sovereignty
