Marine Protection Area

I made a comment in last Thursday's post - here - about the Scottish Fisheries Protection ship Jura going round in slow circles in the Sound apparently doing nothing when the new Marine Protection Areas needed.... protection. Kilchoan Early Bird has corrected me.

He writes, "This is the Jura's fast rib, Jon. They were in Loch Sunart looking for trawlers, checking boats, and informing us that this area is now an MPA." Our area abuts two of the new MPAs - Loch Sunart, and the large Sunart to the Sound of Jura - each of which has different levels of protection.

Our local creel boats are relatively unaffected by the MPAs except that, as Kilchoan Early Bird points out, "Last year I lost 80 creels in the loch to trawlers fishing in there. Now my creels are safe." 

While we won't be seeing the big trawlers and scallop dredgers that used to spend days, particularly in bad weather, going up and down the Sound, which means that sea life should have time to recover, for some of them, such as the Vervine, pictured, a local boat which works out of Tobermory, there are serious implications: she'll have to work much further from home, and in unfamiliar and perhaps dangerous waters.

Many thanks to Kilchoan Early Bird for correcting me, and for his picture of the Jura's rib.