MARK PALMER: How Whitehall's eco-zealots are threatening the livelihoods of ... trends now
The fishermen of Holy Island occupy such a central role in the life of the community that they have a side-altar dedicated to them in the parish church of St Mary the Virgin.
It is decorated with fishing nets, sea birds and scallop shells. And, at Christmas, the nativity scene featuring Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus is set not in a stable but in a coracle attached to buoys.
Names of the island’s fishermen who died in the First World War hang from the north wall of the church and every Sunday the congregation sings the traditional seafarers’ hymn, Eternal Father, Strong To Save, with its famous line ‘O hear us when we cry to Thee, For those in peril on the sea’.
But today’s fishermen on Lindisfarne (as it’s also known) – many bearing the same surnames as those on the church wall – are in peril not so much from the treacherous waters of the North Sea off the Northumberland coast but from the Government.
The fishermen of Holy Island occupy such a central role in the life of the community that they have a side-altar dedicated to them in the parish church of St Mary the Virgin. Pictured: Rev Sarah Hills with the fishermen protesting to overturn the pilot scheme which will leave them jobless and forced to move from the island
Defra, the Whitehall department responsible for fishing, proposes to create a Highly Protected Marine Area (HPMA) of 50 square miles (129 sq km) covering the island and parts of the nearby Farne Islands that will have the effect of banning fishing.
‘It will wipe us out and destroy Holy Island as a living and working community,’ says Shaun Brigham, 55, who has been fishing these waters since leaving school at the age of 15. ‘All that’s here is tourism and fishing – so take the fishing away and what would be left? Defra talks about “rewilding the sea” but has produced no evidence that anything here needs rewilding.’
On the contrary, stocks of lobster and brown and velvet crab – which are the only sea-life that can be fished in what is already a highly regulated industry – are greater than they have been for decades, not least because it’s in the long-term interests of the fishermen to abide by strict sustainability rules.
All hen lobsters and crabs ‘berried’ with eggs – the terms used to describe a crustacean carrying eggs – are returned to the sea. Anything landed has to be of a certain size (at least 3.4 inches – 87mm – from the eye socket to the end of the back). Lobster pots have rubber wrapped round their metal bases so as not to disturb the sea bed and only a certain number of pots are allowed to be out at any one time.
A decision on the ban is expected in the next few weeks when Defra will decree which of five pilot HPMAs are to go ahead – but the uncertainty is already taking its toll on the fishermen and the village. ‘We don’t know whether to order in new pots and ropes,’ says Paul Douglas, 54, whose father, grandfather and great grandfather fished off Holy Island. ‘What’s the point in investing in the future if we don’t have one?’
Paul works alongside Johnny Gray, 34, who lives with his partner and daughter on the island. When I ask what he might do if his livelihood comes to an end, he points to a pair of full-length dungaree waders hanging from the ceiling of his fisherman’s hut.
‘I would probably end up like that but with a rope around my neck,’ he says. There are 13 fishermen living on Holy Island (the oldest is 75), who operate from five boats moored in the little harbour overlooked by Lindisfarne Castle.
If they can’t fish they would have to leave the village because the island – which has a year-round population of just 150 – is cut off from the mainland, with no ferry, for at least ten out of each 24 hours. Regular working hours for anyone living on Holy Island are impossible.
If the fishermen go, the primary school attended by their children would also go – and if the school goes, taking families with it, the post office would have no future.
The three pubs and tea rooms, where wives of the fishermen work, would also face a grim future, particularly in winter when the island goes into hibernation. In its consultation ‘fact sheet’, Defra talks loftily about how Holy Island is home to a ‘variety of threatened and/or important species’, but says nothing about the threat to the fishermen.
Indeed, the only mention of them refers to how their displacement to neighbouring ports could ‘lead to an increase in fishing pressure... and the potential to create conflict between fishers due to the lack of space to place additional pots’.
Nowhere in its document does Defra identify any deterioration in the marine environment due to the pot-fishing. Nowhere does it acknowledge how fishing on Holy Island has supported the tiny community for thousands of years. Nowhere does it accept that, without fishing, the village will become just another tourist theme park, albeit one regarded as a cradle of Christianity by virtue of St Aidan founding a monastery here in 635 AD, a status that helps it attract 650,000 visitors a year.
There are 13 fishermen living on Holy Island (the oldest is 75), who operate from five boats moored in the little harbour overlooked by Lindisfarne Castle (pictured)
Debbie Luke, who works in the post office that doubles up as a cafe, says: ‘We’re dealing with pen-pushers in London who have no idea what’s really going on here.
