Page 56 - BBC Wildlife Volume 36 #06

Last year I saw my first

cuckoo ray at Arran for 30

years and juvenile cod were Above: a cuckoo ray sits camouflaged on the seabed
within the Arran No Take Zone. Below: juvenile cod
here in record numbers. shelter and feed amongst the flourishing seaweed.

I know that it will never be

the same as when I first

started diving here.But the

No Take Zone shows that if

Above: the seabed
you give nature a chance,it scraped almost bare
after decades of
really can bounce back. dredging. Far right:
dredging involves
dragging scooped
nets along the
he Isle of Arran in the Firth of Clyde off the pondered the future of his country. As he did so, a spider seabed to catch
bottom-feeding
west coast of Scotland is eagerly marketed descended and began to spin its web across the cave
species such as
by its small but dedicated tourist board entrance. Six times the spider span and six times it failed. scallops, oysters,
as ‘Scotland in Miniature’. The Highland Robert made a pact. If the spider was defeated a seventh clams and crabs.
Boundary Fault divides the island in two, time, then he would give up his dreams of a free Scotland Right: marine
biologists and
T separating the highlands in the north from the too. Luckily for the Scots, on the seventh attempt, the
oceanographers
lowlands in the south – just as it does the highlands and arachnid augur succeeded and Robert resolved to continue frequently visit
lowlands of mainland Scotland, on a much grander scale. the fight. Eight years later, the battle of Bannockburn would Arran’s waters to
But this island has another claim to fame. According to be the decisive battle on Scotland’s road to independence, examine the effects
legend, Robert the Bruce retreated here after six defeats and the saying “if at first you don’t succeed, try, try and try of the No Take Zone.
Bottom: Howard
at the hands of the English. At his lowest ebb, Robert hid again” was allegedly born.
Wood, a founder of
in what would become known as the King’s Cave and Perhaps that never-say-die attitude has seeped into the the Community of
famous geology of this island. Because the story of how the Arran Seabed Trust
Recently re-established first Scottish No Take Zone (NTZ) came to be designated in (COAST), on a dive
red maerl provides a the waters around Arran is also a story of a fight against the to study the health
background against odds and preserving a legacy for a proud community. of the ocean floor.
which this curled
octopus can blend in.
WITNESS TO THE DECLINE
Howard Wood was just 15 when he moved to Arran, but it’s
his last years as a teenager that really stick in his mind. It
was 1973 and Howard was learning to dive. He remembers
the experience vividly, reeling of a list of the species he saw
on his first underwater forays: “There were flatfish, cuckoo
and thornback rays, scallops, lobsters and gorgeous, brilliant
blue cuckoo wrasse”. Young Howard was smitten.
But as the years passed, Howard and his dive buddy
Don MacNeish witnessed massive changes caused by the
intensive fishing in the Firth of Clyde. The seabed was
being wrecked. They were seeing fewer and fewer flatfish
on their dives. The cuckoo rays dwindled through the
1980s and then were gone. And the huge plaice and turbot
Howard used to spear for dinner disappeared.
By the mid 1990s it felt as if all was lost. The seas
Howard had fallen in love with were a shadow of
their former selves and in 1994 the once-famous
Lamlash Bay International Sea-angling Festival
held its last-ever event, with catches down
96 per cent on historic records.
But Howard and Don were hatching a plan.
Don had family in New Zealand and on his