The Scottish Government is defying public sentiment with its rapid industrialisation of the country’s seas, causing serious harm to the fishing industry, according to the Scottish Fishermen's Federation (SFF).
Opinion polling carried out for the SFF earlier this year highlighted that 86 per cent of the public agreed that food production is just as important as energy production, and that Scotland’s fishing sector should be protected in the country's ever-more crowded seas.
SFF Chief Executive Officer Elspeth Macdonald criticised what the group said is the Scottish Government’s obsession with pushing ahead with huge numbers of offshore wind projects.
Macdonald said the government's Acceleration and Regulatory Reform of Offshore Wind (ARROW) programme is focused on ways to make it faster, easier and cheaper for the industrialisation of Scotland’s seas, building vast wind farms with very limited understanding of how they will change the environment.
Macdonald added that the government knows through its own assessments that if ARROW goes ahead as planned, "it will do long-term, significant damage to our industry."
SFF said that, 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 the proposed Moray Firth "flow park." This would serve as an area of "wet storage" for components for offshore wind farms and an anchorage of floating turbine foundation units, creating, "major hazards for fishing and other vessels."
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, the federation added.
"How can this be allowed to happen?" Macdonald asked. "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.
