Prawn Wars: Landward Special Landward

This is the dramatic West Coast of Scotland,

one of the most stunning seascapes anywhere in the world.

It attracts hundreds of thousands of tourists every year...

..but this isn't just a picture postcard environment.

It is a place where people live and work.

Come on, you're not even trying.

We've got it.

The often-tempestuous waters provide one of the few

sources of income in this part of the world...

..prawns.

Traditional creel boats

and modern industrial fishing machines battle with nature

to bring this catch home, driving tempers to boiling point.

He might have got a broken nose had he said no.

I could lose two or three hours' fishing time,

which is hundreds of pounds to me and my crew.

This is what it takes to put one of the world's

finest foods on our tables.

This is a tale of tradition versus profit,

of cheap food versus expensive,

of fishermen versus fishermen.

This is the story of the prawn wars.

THEY CHAT

It is the 24th of March.

Skipper Alistair Philp, known as Bally,

is bringing his boat into port.

I'll put her in astern and then I'm going to knock her out of gear.

It will just take the momentum.

Kyleakin is a small harbour village

just over the Skye bridge from Kyle of Lochalsh.

It is a gateway to the thousands of square miles that make up

the north-west fishery.

Bally typically fishes in the Inner Sound

between Skye and the mainland,

but not today.

I need her sort of parallel to the wall.

Just let the momentum take her now.

There's a type of paint that you put on the bottom of the boat

each year and that stops seaweed and barnacles

and things growing on the bottom of the boat.

We haven't done it in a lot of months,

so the bottom of the boat is covered in growth, we call it,

and it slows us down and it causes us to burn a lot more fuel.

Just take a turn, Dochus.

Bally's crewman, Dochus Dochan, has been learning

the ropes for the last four years.

Their boat, Nemesis, is crucial to their survival -

both physically and financially.

Nemesis needs regular maintenance.

They use the tide to get the boat high and dry.

Considering that we didn't actually put antifoul on last time

we pressure washed, there is hardly any growth at all.

If the whole hull is covered in barnacles,

it creates a huge surface area,

so it works best when it's smooth, like a surfboard underneath.

This is one of the best dry harbours in the area.

You can see from the paint marks all the way up the harbour wall

each boat in the fleet makes a pilgrimage to this harbour

once a year to do their own antifouling.

The biggest concern here is because this is a spring tide

and not only is it a normal spring tide, it is a March royal,

so it is the biggest spring tide of the year until October.

If we go too high up the beach and the tide goes out and comes back

in again, it doesn't come in quite as far,

they call that being neaped.

The danger would be that you are literally stuck here

till October, unless a crane comes and takes you out.

The boat... There's a boat on the slip who did exactly that.

He went to the top of the tide yesterday,

painted the bottom of his boat and when the tide came back in,

he intended to float it off but the tide didn't come in as far.

However, as time and tide wait for no man,

Bally and Dochus need to get a move on.

In six hours' time, the harbour will flood again.

Between November and March, we barely got 20 days at sea

and most of them haven't even been very productive.

The prawns have been what they call off,

which basically means they are hard to catch.

So, yeah, we are hoping that once we have done the maintenance

on the boat and... In the next couple of weeks,

hopefully the prawns will come on and we will be ready for them.

That's the plan.

-I think you missed a bit.

-Where?

-I'm teasing you.

-Shut up! I'll be scraping your paint.

I'll put the kettle on for you, how about that?

Don't say I'm not nice to you!

Oh, that is very, awfully kind of you.

Almost 20 miles south is the town of Mallaig.

Sitting on the westerly tip of the North Morar Peninsula,

it has been a fishing port since the mid-19th century.

This harbour is home to the Rebecca Jeneen.

She is the newest boat in the Mallaig fleet

and very, very good at catching prawns.

The Rebecca Jeneen is a trawler - a much bigger,

more powerful fishing boat than the Nemesis.

I have always been proud all my life to be a fisherman.

Fishing is a hard life but it is a good way of life,

it has always been a good way of life.

It is something you probably have to be born to -

there's very few people come into the fishing industry

that aren't born in a fishing community.

Robert Summers has been at sea for 30 years.

Seven years ago, he built his £1 million state-of-the-art boat.

RADIO: Stornoway Coastguard, Stornoway Coastguard,

here are the new gale warnings.

Hebrides, gale force eight.

Increasing - severe gale force nine later.

Winter storms have battered the West Coast for months,

keeping the fleet in port.

It is now spring and the Rebecca Jeneen

needs to start catching prawns.

There is a mortgage on this boat and wages to pay.

The crew are at sea for four days at a time, trawling 20 hours a day.

This boat here is the best fishing tool I have ever been at sea in

in my life. This boat is capable of catching more prawns

and it's better at fishing than any boat I've ever been in,

and we are catching less prawns now.

15, 20 years ago in an old boat, in an old engine, with no sensors,

no monitors, we caught a lot more prawns than we do now.

So there is a decline in the stock,

but there is a decline in stock all up and down the Minches.

I don't know what is causing it.

It is not overfishing, I know it's not overfishing

because there's not the boats about to overfish the stock.

But on this trip, there are plenty of prawns heading into the hold.

Scottish fishermen target langoustine,

a species also known as Dublin Bay Prawns or Norway Lobsters.

They are bigger than most other prawns,

have got claws and are pink when they're caught.

Trawled prawns are kept on ice and stored in the hold

until they reach port a few days later.

Back in Kyleakin, the tide is rising.

Nemesis and her new paint job are heading to sea once again.

The general plan is, on the computer

my gear is marked in red from the last time I hauled it.

We came out of Kyleakin Harbour through the Skye bridge here

and we're heading roughly north past the Isle of Crowlin,

which you can see out the window,

and then our gear is another half a dozen miles north of Crowlin again.

We have got four fleets here. That will take us to nearly lunchtime.

Unlike the Rebecca Jeneen, Nemesis is a creel boat using baited traps.

They fish in different ways but both are after the same catch -

prawns.

So, this is 60 creels and they are all connected together

on the same rope with a buoy at each end.

This is the mud on the seabed and this is the top of the sea.

We have a buoy and then a large end rope

and then it goes to a single creel, and then there's a joining

piece of rope and then another creel

and a joining piece of rope and another creel,

and this goes along the seabed for several hundred metres

until it gets to the far end, where there is another riser

or end rope and another float

and we have a choice to pick up either float.

The beginning of a haul is always a tense moment.

Empty creels mean empty wage packets.

If you don't see a prawn in the first three creels,

you kind of get an idea of what's going to happen.

So, that is our first prawn of the day.

It is not a great start, but the few prawns Bally has caught

in this haul go into what are known as tubes.

Unlike trawled prawns,

creel-caught prawns are kept alive for the premium market.

It is like a factory job in some ways, you know?

Like on a conveyor belt, you get fast.

Yeah, probably not even a kilo of prawns came out of there.

Not even a tenner's worth. Probably a fiver's worth.

That was a short fleet and it is just as well it is a short fleet

because it was... HE MOUTHS

Once we have hauled a fleet of creels,

we are going to redeploy them.

The prawns seem to move around and there is not much rhyme or reason

to it, so we have moved a little bit - only 100 yards or so -

and we have moved shallower and harder and hopefully...

..we will see an improvement.

Bally really does need to see that improvement.

Recently, stormy weather has made it difficult to fish at all.

He has bills to pay - the cost of the boat, the fuel,

the wages, the bait.

It all adds up.

Unless we can catch over £300-worth of prawns in a day,

we won't even get £50 wages.

Last time we went out, we caught about £100-worth of prawns

and we didn't even pay for the fuel.

So we may not get anything for today, but we have to try.

The bait gets eaten out of the creels within ten days or so

and so if we don't put fresh bait in the creels,

then there will be definitely no point in going out next time.

And there's another problem on the horizon -

the 1st of April is just days away.

For the last six months,

Bally and the other creelmen have had the Inner Sound to themselves.

From April through to early autumn,

they will have to share it with other boats -

trawlers hunting prawns and dredgers hunting scallops.

These waters are about to get very crowded.

But this isn't just a problem in the Inner Sound.

All the way up the West Coast,

there are different rules for different places.

But it hasn't always been this way.

I am off to meet the man

who has been fishing these waters for over 70 years.

Iain MacDonald first put a boat into Gairloch back in 1944 aged just 16.

He has witnessed how the fish stocks have changed

and has adapted to that change.

It is said he was the first man to realise the potential

of langoustine, that are now so prized throughout the world.

I started myself and a dinghy

and I had a couple of old herring nets and I went out behind the house

here and there was a lot of herring going, so I filled the dinghy

three days running with herring,

rowed it to Gairloch Pier and sold it.

That's how I bought my first boat.

So when you started fishing all those years ago back in 1944,

how abundant were the waters around here?

If you fell out in the sea,

you wouldn't sink with the amount of fish that was in it.

-It was terrific.

-And what was in the water, then? What kind of fish?

-A lot of cod.

-Yeah.

-Tremendous amount of cod.

They came in here in the spring to spawn.

I crossed to Stornoway once...

and sold it on the pier in Stornoway...

..in little bundles - they all bid on it -

and then sailed back here.

We only did the one trip

because the boat wasn't suitable for that sort of runs.

In terms of actually sustaining communities,

how important was the sea when you were a young man?

Oh, very, very important.

At the end of the season, when the fishing started to go off,

there would be four crew in a boat and we had heaps of fish

and each one took so many fish home and split them and salted them,

that they'd have themselves for the rest of the year.

Over time, catches of fish fell.

Iain realised there was something else in the loch

that might provide an income - prawns.

I used to get an awful lot of them in the gill nets.

-This size of prawn.

-Right.

Just...

A good lobster size.

And, erm...

Then I started with the creels.

You let all the small ones go anyway

and next year there was prawns there again for you.

And eventually the locals started eating them.

I had a market in Edinburgh for them.

I used to send them down to Edinburgh, but just as tails -

we tailed the prawns then.

The tail was that size and that in the round.

And they were sold in America and Canada

as baby lobster tails.

That's how the whole thing started.

The creelmen of Gairloch fished undisturbed until the mid-1980s.

Up to that point, trawlers were not allowed in inshore waters.

They were restricted to fishing more than three miles from shore.

The Thatcher government changed all that

and opened the waters to everyone.

Tell me about when the three-mile limit laws were lifted.

What impact did that have?

That was the stupidest thing they ever did.

They had such a bonanza, the trawlers did,

and they came into all the inshore grounds and everywhere.

OK, they did awful well for a couple of years...

..sweeping up everything. But it didn't last.

It was a disaster, that, and for years and years,

I was able to be left in peace until they started lifting my gear

and towing it away and dumping it so that they could trawl.

Trawling was a very destructive method of fishing.

That is why I went for creels.

Leave something for the next generation,

that's the way I look at it.

Because if you don't,

what is the point of being here?

That decision in 1984 set the scene for a conflict

that is still being fought today.

RADIO: Shore waters forecast.

General situation - Atlantic weather fronts will become

slow-moving across the United Kingdom today.

The beginning of April and it is a free-for-all in the Inner Sound.

Creelers and trawlers are now battling

for the same catch in the same place.

The danger is that as the trawlers tow their nets along the bottom,

they can become entangled in fleets of creels.

You can see the trawlers in the distance and you can see

the buoys here in the water, which are marking creel fleets.

One of the problems is that these trawlers are working only half

a mile off the shore, which means that the creels now have to be within

half a mile of the shore or else they're in the way of the trawlers.

It just leaves a significantly less area of ground

for the creel boats to fish on, such so that the creels then start to

trip over each other and often you are fishing somewhere

just because it is safe,

not because you want to fish there or because there's prawns there.

In some areas, it is literally war.

Bally sets about hauling the last fleet of creels

from this lucrative stretch.

I mean, this pot is quite a good one.

It has got one, two, three prawns and a large prawn.

If they were all like that, we would make a living.

It will be another six months before Bally fishes here again

but wherever he hauls, he's selective about what he keeps

and what he throws back.

The prawns themselves, the squat lobsters,

the starfish...

..and almost all the fish that we catch can go back alive.

Literally it swims away again.

The only time that is not the case is if the birds manage to get it

before it gets away.

I mean, technically these are legally landable

and some fishermen do land them.

But for us, we can catch them again later,

so it makes far more sense on the smallest grade,

which is practically worthless,

to return them.

I mean, that is a legally landable prawn.

Personally, I would like to see the law changed on that.

For that smallest grade...

..I think it is like £5 a kilo

whereas if we wait till it gets larger, it is worth £15 a kilo...

..and it takes far fewer prawns to make a kilo.

Not only that, you know,

they are not mature for the point of view of reproduction.

A prawn this size will have reproduced -

it will have had eggs and spawned new prawns...

Whereas the smaller ones may not have yet bred...

and it just seems a bit mad to catch and kill them

before they've even bred.

Scottish langoustine are luxury items, prized the world over.

The vast majority of live prawns go abroad, but the French and Spanish

are prepared to pay top dollar for these West Coast delicacies.

My favourite bit of the day - getting home!

This blue van putting his reversing lights on now, that's for us.

See, we're catching that many prawns, they thought they'd film it.

OK, cheers.

I'm catching a lift with John Maroney, just one of dozens of

van drivers who are the first link in the langoustine logistics chain.

We're going coast to coast - our destination, Dingwall.

So, John - how many ports do you actually pick up from?

Um, we've got about 30 boats and, er...

..probably about 15 or 20 places over Skye and Lochalsh.

So it can be a bit complicated to actually make sure you get to all the right places.

Yes, there's a bit of logistics going to get everything organised

and fitting the timing, the times with the boats.

And you also have a situation where you're travelling to

lots of different ports in the day.

Yes, we can have some really busy days.

And how do you coordinate between the drivers and the boats?

Er, a lot of phone calls!

Two hours after they've been landed,

the prawns make their first stop on their journey to the continent.

The langoustine are put into seawater tanks for storage,

but this isn't just any seawater.

Not only do the prawns come from the West Coast of Scotland,

-but all the water comes from the West Coast as well.

-Really?

So you've got the Cromarty Firth just out there

-and you're not using that water?

-Yep.

For whatever reason, the prawns want West Coast water,

so we do what the prawns want.

Keep the prawns happy and the customer will be happy, right?

Exactly! Exactly.

Once the prawns have had an overnight soaking,

preparations begin for their onward journey.

Managing director Ben Murray talks me through the process.

What's happening here, Dougie, is once the prawns have been taken out

of the storage tank, we open up the fishermen's tube

and we do two things - we're checking the quality of the product

and also making sure the grading is accurate for the end customer.

We take them out of the tubes and repack them

into polystyrene boxes with cardboard tubes again - and again, that is

-to protect the products so they don't fight with each other.

-Sure.

It's important they go to the customer live, right?

That's the whole idea behind the live shellfish sector,

that's the barometer of high-quality product.

It's arriving live at the chef's kitchen.

So where are your markets, where are they going to go to from this point?

France is our single biggest market, about 50%.

Spain about 20% and the UK about the other 30.

So when people are eating in the best restaurants in Paris

and thinking that the prawns and langoustine

-come from the Mediterranean, potentially they're Scottish?

-That's correct.

Is that a frustration for you?

Would you like to encourage more people in this country to eat them?

I'd like to encourage more people in the UK in general to eat them.

There's still a market, I believe, in the UK that people could

consume the Scottish langoustine rather than sending it abroad.

These langoustine will be on a dinner plate on the Continent

within 36 hours.

But my langoustine lunch is a bit closer to home.

For those of us who do want to eat langoustine, they can be found

if you know where to look, not just at the most expensive restaurants.

I'm told this pub here has some of the freshest sea-to-plate

seafood anywhere in the country.

I've arranged a lunch here at the Plockton Inn.

It's owned and run by former fisherman Kenny Gollan.

Also joining us is crewman Bally.

Now, Kenny - why did you give up being a fisherman

and become an owner of a restaurant?

Too old for fisherman, too tired...

All told, there's probably more money in selling prawns rather than

-catching them.

-Really? As simple as that?

-Yes.

What about yourself, Bally?

You're obviously loving this,

you spend your time catching these things.

Yes, I'm really enjoying this cos I don't have to pay for them!

Creel-caught prawns catch a premium price and so, you know,

when you catch them and sell them off, it breaks your heart

having to go and pay for them again, so this is good for me!

I mean, we don't eat enough of these in our own country.

Especially creel-caught prawns - they're far more expensive

than trawl-caught prawns and in other countries,

they queue up all day and pay fantastic sums of money for these,

so it's good to see that they are still eaten locally.

But we could do with a lot more of it - it would

make our industry far more sustainable

if more people in Britain ate seafood,

especially if they ate premium, sustainably-caught seafood.

Kenny, do you ever worry in the future because of the amount creels are worth

and the trawling that's going on, maybe out there,

-there won't be enough in 10 or 15, 20, 30 years' time?

-Well...

Firstly, in 30 years' time, if I'm worried about that, I'll be...

Seriously worried! But, er...

No, I think we've been talking about this for 40 years now, that

prawns are going to run out.

People tell us prawns are going to run out, and they're not.

Not everyone shares Kenny's optimism

and for the scores of villages and towns on the West Coast,

a sustainable fishing industry is crucial

to prevent them from becoming nothing more than tourist towns.

But in some places, it's already happening.

Fishing alone just isn't enough to survive.

I think if I went to see a bank manager and asked him

to borrow all the money I needed to buy a boat and a licence

and all the gear to go with it, and then told him how much I'd actually

expect to make in a year, I don't think he'd lend me the money.

On Dry Island, on the edge of Gairloch, Ian McWhinney

is the sixth generation of fisherman in his family.

He still creels for crabs, prawns and lobsters, but to make ends meet,

he's had to diversify into holiday cottages and shellfish safaris.

Want to see what's coming up, Angus? This is a crab creel here.

It's called a parlour creel.

'Today, Ian has his first safari customers of the season.'

It is called a kitchen, here. This is where you have the bait

so the idea is they wander in one of these eyes here, on either side...

Has something to eat here, in the kitchen

and then leaves into the parlour here.

This is the parlour bit, where everything gets trapped

until we come along to lift it.

This is what we're trying to catch here - a nice cock crab here.

So what we do with this is, when we catch them...

I'll make it safe for you, first. When we catch then...

We have to cut their claws, like this.

This is so they can't fight with each other, yeah?

We're going to pop him in there like that.

On Dry Island,

Ian is running a lifestyle business based on his heritage.

Elsewhere, fishing happens on an industrial scale.

Mallaig, the night of 7 April.

Another player is about to enter the fray.

The scallop dredger Vikingborg

is one of the oldest boats in the fleet.

She steams through the night towards the island of Eigg.

At first light,

the crew are summoned on deck by experienced skipper Bill Simmonds.

There's many different ways we can set up these dredges

for different styles of fishing, different types of ground.

There's a tension in the spring, you can slacken this off,

tighten it up, put tension on, take tension off it.

This drags along the bottom. And this works backwards and forwards...

It should filter a lot of stones out of the way,

so we leave the stones on the seabed,

or as much as we can.

-What about the clams?

-And the clams...

The clams should just flick into the bag.

They should just be flicked up into here, then down into the back of it.

It's not just creelers and trawlers that come into conflict over prawns.

Scallop dredgers can also have an impact.

Both prawns and scallops live on the seabed,

albeit on slightly different ground.

Even as far out as the Small Isles, where Bill is today,

there's the potential for trouble.

Mobile gear is... in direct conflict with static gear.

There's a lot of...

creels being towed away and there's a lot of people not happy about it.

Albeit, some of us get on very, very well.

We can cooperate with each other.

Bill has decades of experience in these waters,

but there's always new fishing grounds to explore.

I'm just marking out some ground,

this is the first time I've ever shot here.

I'm going to take a gamble and try it.

If I'm not catching, the crew aren't getting paid.

Eight at the winch, seven in the water.

Eight at the winch, seven in the water is the offset for the gear,

the two sets of gear.

We'll have...

80 fathom of wire...

At one point and seven... 75 at the other.

We always work a 5-fathom difference in the gear.

If not, it jumps on top of itself.

If we don't watch what we're doing,

the gear will hit the propeller and bend the blades. So I rely...

I rely on my crew being vigilant...

and keeping the gear away from the propeller.

This industrial method of fishing for scallops is often

criticised as unsustainable and detrimental to the seabed.

This footage of a working dredge was filmed more than ten years ago

by researchers at Plymouth University.

It's not the Vikingborg's dredge.

Dredging is a controversial method of fishing and for that reason,

some restaurants won't serve scallops caught in this way.

They will only buy scallops that have been hand-picked by divers.

Back on the Vikingborg, Bill evaluates

the catch from the newly-dredged stretch.

Well, it's mediocre. No, it's...

It's not something I want to concentrate on.

So you can see our by-catch is minimal,

there's just two or three starfish.

The rest are stones, some clams...

You know, we're really not doing that much damage to the seabed.

As some people might make out.

Anyway.

My father and mother are scallop divers.

We do have that joking love/hate about us,

you know - they don't favour scallop dredgers because...

..we take away their clams, but we do try and give them the space.

As well as sharing the seabed,

Bill feels he puts a lot into the local economy.

I maybe spend 30,000 a year on fuel,

10-15,000 on food.

I'm constantly repairing this vessel.

Last year, I put the new engine and gearbox into it.

That was 40,000 it cost me.

This year, I'm putting a hydraulic crane onto it,

that's another 15,000.

My winch there was 20,000.

This is all money that's going back into the economy.

Into the local businesses, you know?

So we do a lot.

I feel I do, anyway.

A week later, and the misty waters south of the Misty Isle are busy.

The Rebecca Jeneen is an inshore trawler,

built specifically for these waters.

But at over 50 metres long, there are places she's not allowed to go.

She's too big to fish the Inner Sound, east of Skye,

so mainly trawls to the South and the West.

She does this with what's known as a twin rig.

The twin rig is basically a two-net system.

We've got two smaller nets, so you tend to take less fish

the way they're rigged and more prawns than you will with one net.

As the nets are shot, they sink to the seabed where

they are towed for four hours along soft, muddy ground -

the favoured habitat of langoustine.

But wherever he's trawling, Robert has to be vigilant for creels.

Not easy, as the only signs are the small buoys at either end.

It's not as bad as it was.

For a few years, it was really bad, a lot of creelers.

There was that much creels in the ground about here, they were

fighting with each other for the ground, never mind the trawlers.

You get creelers, they know how to keep their gear out of my way.

I know how to keep out of their way. We work the same areas all the time.

I know where to expect to see creels,

I know where I expect to not see creels, but you get creelers

that are just shooting them in the wrong place, trying to close off

the area to get it to themselves,

which causes a huge rift.

Now, we stop fishing as soon as we catch creel,

so we're losing money as soon as we catch creels.

I could lose two or three hours' fishing time, which is

hundreds of pounds to me and my crew.

If we catch creels, we'll haul them up, I won't spend two or three

hours clearing them - it's too much of a cost to me.

I'll cut that creel away.

If I'm at fault, I would pay for them, but how you define fault,

if a creeler has shot creels in my way intentionally to stop me

working, then I will not pay anything for them.

This is breakfast.

At lunchtime!

Cos the crew needed their sleep.

Working time directive aboard here...

They have to sleep 14 hours a day.

I'd better not say on TV that this is women's work,

my wife wouldn't take that very well!

Robert's good mood doesn't last long.

Oh, dear.

It snapped. We'll have to haul arse for ten to get there,

to get to the middle.

75 fathom with the middle wire lying on the bottom.

The gear has just snagged

and snapped the middle of three hauling cables.

What is that?

Broken.

-Snapped.

-It's quite a weight on there, then.

That wire was getting dumped.

We knew it was getting worn,

but we thought it would last no bother for another day.

Whoa! If it's not going to get hit, take it up.

It's all right, hold on - I'll get it.

That's dug in. That's destroyed it.

With only two cables, Robert has to use the boat's winch to help bring

in the gear, including the roller clamp and sensor, worth £13,000.

Some turn, eh?

Come on, Gilbert,

you're not even trying - it's only three quarters of a tonne!

Where's the sensor?

Is the sensor on the outside?

With the sensor safely on-board,

Robert's crew continue recovering the gear.

15 April, back in the Inner Sound.

The sea may be calm, but just two weeks into the trawling season,

tensions are rising.

So the fleet that got towed is that white buoy and that yellow buoy,

but it used to be that the white buoy was 100 yards this way

and the yellow buoy was 500 yards to the north again.

So the fleet has been dragged,

you know, half a kilometre.

It's a creeler's worst nightmare -

Bally has discovered that one of his fleets has been towed.

We know that there's a good chance that we've lost the shot,

which over time accumulates

and we're going to lose the time that we have to spend recovering this fleet

and if the rope is too badly damaged,

I'll have to replace the rope,

so it's already cost us... Possibly hundreds of pounds.

If there's too many creels gone, then it's potentially thousands of pounds.

We'll find out in a minute how that pans out.

Just watch out for slack rope coming off this, because it's quite shallow.

If we're unlucky, then we only get part of the fleet back.

It depends - I don't know how many pieces it's in.

Here we go...

Something happening now.

See, that's a physically ruined creel.

It's never going to catch prawns again, that one.

Sometimes accidents happen and normally it's in bad weather

when visibility is poor.

Then it's hard to blame the trawler,

but this happened in good visibility to a boat that had been fishing

next to the gear for several days, so he knew fine well the gear was here.

And, er...

Sometimes it happens when they're pushing their luck

and they want to fish where you're fishing,

but this time, the boy I spoke to on the radio said to me

that they've dragged it out of the way because it was in their way.

What that means is they wanted to fish where I was fishing,

so they just chose to drag my gear out the way

and they openly admitted it.

There's no recourse for this sort of thing.

There's never been a conviction for gear conflict or gear vandalism

in 30 years, since the 3-mile limit was opened.

So....You know, they can tow my gear with impunity.

The only thing stopping them towing my gear is...

..is fear that we might do something personally about it,

but there's certainly nothing we can do about it in the law.

I mean, obviously if he hadn't handed them back to me,

I'd have requested he compensate me,

which he's under no obligation to do.

But he might have got a broken nose had he said no.

We're doing pretty well so far, though.

That's nearly half the fleet up.

Losing a day's work and over £1,000 worth of fishing gear is

becoming all too common for Bally.

It's a source of huge frustration.

I think if you were starting from scratch and there was no

fishing vessels, no fishing fleet, no people to get made unemployed,

you would never do it the way it's done now.

You would have small,

locally-owned fleets working out of communities that had rights to

certain areas of the seabed and they'd be responsible

for managing that and they would be answerable

to their local communities who could find other ways to harvest

that resource if the fishermen didn't manage it properly.

But as it stands,

we've inherited a system that was once based on a free-for-all.

We've inherited a system which has traditionally been very badly managed by governments,

where governments have allowed over exploitation to take place...

And we've inherited a system where when we go to try and fix it,

they put people out of work from very small, fragile communities.

Nobody wants to do that.

I think there are solutions, but they're not easy,

it's not straightforward, it's never as simple as people first assume.

But there is a place where a solution may have been found.

Just under 300 miles north-east,

Shetland fishermen have taken control of their own destiny.

Shetland's inshore fishermen have been given devolved powers

by the Scottish government to manage and police

their own waters and I've come here to see how it works.

In the 1990s, the inshore waters around Shetland had little

management, with no quotas, no restrictions

on types of fishing gear and no limit on days at sea.

-The harbour looks pretty busy - is this normal?

-Yes, that's right.

There's always boats in and some of them at sea, as well.

Ian Walterson,

chairman of the Shetland Shellfish Management organisation,

explains the catalyst for change.

Well, the fishermen themselves recognised with an ever-increasing

fleet of large shellfish vessels,

especially in other areas of the UK, with large scallopers

and large crabbers being built almost every week, there was

recognition that those big vessels had potential to move

further from their home ports, home grounds

and come up to places like Shetland and if that happened, there was

certainly a risk of stocks being overexploited.

So what did you actually do?

People decided to apply for a regulating order to give

Shetland control of its own shellfish stocks

from shoreline up to six miles.

And do you think something like this,

that seems to be working here and working well in Shetland,

is something that could and potentially SHOULD be rolled out around the rest of the country?

It probably works better here because Shetland is geographically isolated.

Other areas, where they have one area neighbouring with the next,

it could be more problematic, I suppose.

But, yes, I think it is a very good example of local

management of a fishery and this has potential for other areas, certainly.

I'm on my way from Lerwick to Collafirth on the north-west coast

to spend the day with skipper Richard Grains of the Valentia.

-Hi, Richard - how you doing?

-Not too bad.

-Good stuff.

-Can I come on board?

-Yes, welcome aboard.

Nice to see you.

'Richard operates the Valentia on his own.

'It's a small 9½m boat,

'but ideal for his type of fishing.'

This is very impressive, this - is this all for single operation?

-Yeah!

-It's brilliant.

Richard is a creel fishermen, targeting crabs and lobsters.

Prawns are not as common here as on the West Coast.

Today, we're hauling on the fringes of the north Atlantic.

So how much are you selling a box of crabs?

Like that, if that was full, how much would you sell that for?

Hopefully get about £40 for it.

The fact these waters are managed here in Shetland,

what does that mean in terms of what you can actually catch?

The creel numbers,

you're only allowed the maximum number of 600 creels.

It just kind of restricts you getting too big...

Um...

As I said before, you can only work 600 creels,

um...that are bought.

That's only really enough to sustain one man, maybe two.

How difficult is it to get a licence and to keep it?

It's quite a difficult thing to get, yes.

There are stock assessments every year and if they're low,

or not as good as they were the previous year, they reconsider

maybe dishing out licenses,

but it's quite hard to get into, yes.

Some of the older guys,

have they said that the management of these waters has improved stocks?

In the past few years, it's been

exceptionally good lobster fishing.

Sometimes, when you're speaking to any older guys,

and you tell them what they're hiding,

they think that it's pretty good.

They reckon it's far more to do with the hiding...

-Is that right?

-Sometimes they say that, yes.

-Sure.

Okey dokey...

-Got it.

-Cheers, man. Thank you.

The system seems to be working well in Shetland,

but back on the West Coast, there's trouble for Bill.

There's something wrong.

The wire may have snapped, I don't know.

It's 21 April.

The scallop dredger Vikingborg is just off the Isle of Muck.

Aye, it has, it's snapped.

Take this slow, I might need to mark this.

Just take it slowly.

Part of the wire.

-Has it become snagged?

-The gear has snagged.

I told you that bit of ground belonged to Satan.

One minute, we're doing quite well...

Now my fishing gear is lying in the bottom,

I don't know if I'm going to get it back now.

It sucks, it's going to be a challenge, this.

So I'm going to put out a creeper and we're going to try

and get my gear back, because...

A lot of money's worth lying down there. It's a big loss to me if I don't get it back.

With £5,000 of gear sitting on the seabed,

Bill needs to hook it with the creeper.

These hooks should snag any loose bit of gear that's down there.

All these spikes... will hopefully hook it in.

There's plenty down there in the gear for this to snag on, but...

I've just got to get on the gear, you know?

Let's just hope it's not too embedded.

If it's impaled into the ground, I'm going to struggle to get it back out, you know?

Loss of fishing time, loss of earnings, loss of fishing gear.

Let's just see how good I am.

We've got it.

Here she comes.

Oh, look at that, eh?

Look at that... Whoa!

That's not bad.

I couldn't catch that any better.

That's what 25 years' worth of experience does for you.

Am I good, or am I good?!

Not only do I catch it first time, I catch it the right way up!

They'll see they've been caught and just run away.

Maybe.

There's too much stuff in the bottom already.

It's a shame it's not so clear.

Back in Kyleakin, Bally is passing on his experience to Lachlan,

his 10-year-old son.

Bet you'll catch one.

If I catch one, I'll be catching more than you!

Yes!

And if you catch three, it's a free ice cream

and if you catch four, you've got my job!

It's a good offer, but Lachlan is sceptical.

If I get the chance to be a rocket scientist, I'm going

to be a rocket scientist, not a fisherman!

But otherwise, if I can't find anything else,

I'm just going to be a fisherman.

Yes, I didn't really spend any time at sea when I was young,

so with mine, I'm hoping by the time he leaves school,

he's got a pretty good idea what the job is all about.

Quick, get him in! Yes!

-Whoo-hoo!

-Off he goes.

-He's running away!

-Be quick, whatever you do. That's it. You've got him.

Well done.

A lot of kids around here

don't have anything to do when they leave school,

there's very few sources of employment in the Highlands.

So, er... yeah, for the few jobs that they can do,

it helps if they've got a bit of background, a bit of experience.

-One more for that ice cream, son. Have you given up?

-No.

-All right.

-When was the last time you checked that line?

-Er, a few minutes ago.

30 years and I'm still the YTS in the camp!

Over in Mallaig, it's back to basics for Robert.

He's torn his nets and now has to fix them.

The perils of getting your net stuck in the ground means you lose

fishing time.

Hundreds of pounds lost in the town,

a thousand pound for the net...

It's just risk and reward - take the risk

and you either get the reward or you don't.

Sometimes this is what happens, this is part of life.

But, as it's a Friday, Robert has given his crew some downtime.

I says to him, "I'll get you a bottle of whiskey!"

They spend the afternoon relaxing in the pub.

But...

there is much more than a game of pool at stake for the crew

of the Rebecca Jeneen.

Their very existence could be under threat.

There is a radical proposal to stop Robert fishing

anywhere near the coast.

A report prepared for the Scottish government has recommended

the reinstatement of the ban on trawling within three miles of land.

This ban was lifted in the mid-1980s.

It's just a proposal, but it's got trawlermen extremely worried.

I've been a fisherman for 30 years.

I've never seen fishing here, I've never had it explained to me

why we would need to bring the 1 to 3 mile rule,

which is to allow fish to return to the grounds.

We're doing everything we can to stop catching fish.

Anyone can see... Anybody who comes aboard the boat can see

that we don't catch any fish, we've never got any fish in here.

I've been told it's to help the creelers. Well...

I do understand why the creelers need help, but the creelers

are the only unregulated fishery left in Scotland.

I've got days at sea,

I've got a monitoring system that I have to pay for,

I've got square mesh panels fitted in,

I'm only allowed to go to sea so many days,

I've got a quota that I've had to buy to enable me to catch.

The creelers are totally unregulated,

they work a tiny mesh in their creels.

They can go to sea 24/7, they can work as much gear as they want,

they can work anywhere they want...

So they'd be shutting down a whole way of life from an inshore sector

to benefit who? I don't know, so...

It enrages me that somebody is wanting to stop me.

I bought this boat specifically to work in this area.

This is a £1 million investment to me and my family

and I would love for somebody to give me

a valid reason why I should stop working here.

It's not just prawn trawlers that would be banned from inshore waters.

That would end my fishing career.

Period.

I'll be finished as a fisherman if they bring in a 1 to 3 mile limit.

No doubt about that.

On this style of dredger that we do,

we rely on being close to shorelines,

close to islands for shelter,

to get away from the swell and the poor weather.

If you take that away from me, it's going to put me in harm's way

and put me further out.

And jeopardise me, my boat and my crew and I don't want to do that.

I've never had to do it, I don't want to do it,

it's just an unsafe, hazardous environment.

In unprotected waters.

The campaign to have the three-mile limit reinstated is being led,

not surprisingly, by the creel fishermen, who have most to gain.

Bally is one of the most vocal campaigners.

You weren't allowed to drag gear across the seabed

within three miles of land over 100 years ago.

That persisted for nearly 100 years until nearly 1984,

when shockingly, the government of the time

removed the three-mile limit.

Since the three-mile limit was removed,

almost every single commercial species of fish within three miles

of land has been brought to what you would call commercial extinction.

Certainly, nobody in the creel industry wants to put

anybody in the trawler industry out of work.

It would be interesting if we could find a way that

everybody could be accommodated, but the reality is that what we're

doing now is unsustainable and we have to figure out how to

get from where we are now to something that is sustainable.

We have to find a way of getting there that puts the least

amount of people out of work, that facilitates the transition period.

The Scottish government says the recent report and the

reintroduction of a three-mile limit has been carefully considered.

However, they currently have no plans to reintroduce

a blanket restriction on the use of mobile fishing gear around Scotland.

On a day like today, it's hard to imagine that these

waters could be so turbulent, both literally and metaphorically.

I used to have a fairly simplistic view that small was good

and big was bad, but now I can see it's a much more complex picture

and I really don't envy those that have to make decisions

about the future of this industry that has survived for centuries.

Since we filmed, Bill has not had the best of times.

Catches are down and so is his income.

Robert is enjoying a boom, but the abundance of prawns has

attracted trawlers from all over the country.

And last month, Bally had another fleet of 30 creels towed away.

He didn't get any of them back.

But he's now hauling lots of prawns and making decent money again.