Ministers ignoring public opinion in rush to industrialise Scotland’s seas, warns SFF leader
The Scottish Government is defying public sentiment with its rapid industrialisation of the country’s seas, causing serious harm to the fishing industry.
Opinion polling carried out for the Scottish Fishermen’s Federation (SFF) earlier this year highlighted that 86% of the public agreed that food production is just as important as energy production, and that Scotland’s fishing sector should be protected in our ever-more crowded seas.
The figure will be highlighted by SFF chief executive Elspeth Macdonald in her speech to the organisation’s annual dinner in Edinburgh tomorrow (Thurs), to be attended by Mairi Gougeon, Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs, Land Reform and Islands.
While recognising Ms Gougeon’s strong commitment to Scotland’s food producers, Ms Macdonald will criticise the Scottish Government’s obsession with pushing ahead with huge numbers of offshore wind projects.
“Its ARROW programme – Acceleration and Regulatory Reform of Offshore Wind – is focused on ways to make it faster, easier and cheaper for the industrialisation of Scotland’s seas, building vast windfarms with very limited understanding of how they will change the environment, and knowing through its own assessments, which confirm what we have been telling them for several years, that if the government goes ahead as planned, then it will do long-term, significant damage to our industry.”
She will highlight the proposed Moray Firth “FLOW park” as a recent example of how the fishing industry can be disregarded in the headlong rush to build, often on valuable fishing grounds.
With no consultation at all with the fishing industry, an exclusivity agreement was signed between Crown Estate Scotland and a London-based company with a view to develop this as an area of “wet storage” for components for offshore windfarms and anchorage of floating turbine foundation units, creating major hazards for fishing and other vessels.
She will cite the fact that one of the two proposed sites, between Findhorn and Burghead, will be positioned directly over established fishing grounds used for decades by inshore vessels that do not have the capacity to fish further afield.
As one local fisherman said: “Should these flow parks go ahead, the Moray Firth fishing industry will be finished for good.”
Ms Macdonald will say: “How can this be allowed to happen? How can the people whose livelihoods are at stake not even be consulted on this? Why is there so little regard for people who risk their lives to produce food?”
The SFF has previously called for a moratorium on further consents until the concerns of the industry have been properly addressed.
“If impacts on fishing cannot be avoided, then there must be financial compensation to fishing. The ball is in the government’s court.”
