Page 57 - BBC Wildlife Volume 36 #06

LAMLASH BAY

visits there he had been to the world’s first ever NTZ,
a marine reserve established in 1975 around Goat Island.
What Don saw astonished him and sowed the seed of an
idea that he and Howard thought could work back home.
In 1995, The Community of Arran Seabed Trust, or Boat: Scotland:The B g Picture/NPL; marine
COAST, was born – a community-led group whose sole
aim was to fight for a similar zone around Lamlash Bay
on the east shore of Arran.
For Howard, the most important people to get to support
the project were the local fishermen. “Arran’s fishermen
knew that their livelihoods depended on a healthy seabed,”
he says. “They were the easy bit.” With the fishing mages: Howard Wood
community on side, the rest of the island soon followed,
but the decision makers in government and the big
commercial fishing fleets working these waters
were much harder to persuade.
LIFE AFTER DREDGING GIVING NATURE A CHANCE
Finally, after 13 long years of lobbying,
Repeatedly dragging nets across the seabeds arguments, letters and phone calls, Dom
around Arran left the marine ecosystem in a and Howard’s perseverance paid off.
sorry state, but its vitality is at last returning. In 2008, a NTZ was established around
Lamlash Bay. It was by no means huge,
2
just 2.67km , but the knowledge that no
marine life would ever be taken from it
was significant, as was the fact that this was
the first such protected area in the world to be
organised by a community group.
“We know the top-down approach just doesn’t
w
work,” Howard says. “It has to come from the people who
make their living from the sea.” With the protection finally
m
n place, Howard had a hunch that the pioneering scheme
in
would have dramatic and far-reaching impact on the local
w
m
marine environment. He just had to prove it.
A lion’s mane jellyfish
pa
artially conceals
its self among the
ootlace weed in the
bo
re ecovering area.