Jane lives on the sea front in North Berwick with stunning views over the sea, east to the Bass Rock and West to the Edinburgh skyline. We looked out from her balcony as the sun set behind the Pentland hills at the recently revealed concrete line of the sewer usually covered by xxx feet of sand all washed away by Storm Ciaran. Jane has seen all this devastation before – as she says – ‘the sand comes and goes and it will come back in time…’ Her property was clearly designed for high water events as her back wall has drainage holes so if breached by the sea, the water can drain back out rather than forming a swimming pool.
She has known North Berwick since she was brought here as a child for summer holidays and found she was captivated by the sea and finally moved here permanently 20 years ago. Her passion for the water led to a dramatic career change and she qualified as a Commercial Coastal Yacht master and now runs Braveheart boat trips out of the NB harbour taking photographers, film makers, researchers and fishermen out onto the Forth. I definitely plan to book up a fishing trip in 2024.
Early on Jane teamed up with Janet Brown – Editor of The Grower aquaculture publication (www.assg.org.uk) – as a result of a mutual interest in oysters and they were considering the west corner of the Bass Rock as a possible site. Interestingly this was a site identified by Joe Terburgh in one of our earlier Shoreline Meets…
Jane has been a force for innovation in North Berwick – in 2006 she became a founding member of the North Berwick Harbour Trust (NBHT) and which she now chairs and in 2010 she and others with support from the Coastal Communities Fund founded the Firth of Forth Lobster Hatchery – an educational and conservation charity located in the Harbour adjacent to the Seabird Centre. The first baby lobsters were released in 2015. The local Dale family lobster fishermen bring berried females to the hatchery and the eggs are nursed to juvenile lobsters and then released into the Firth of Forth to restock the local lobster population. A female lobster can carry in the region of 20,000 eggs under her abdomen but only one of these is expected to survive in the wild. Jane talks about the older females i.e any females over 150mm having better quality eggs leading to better survival rates. In Orkney this is also recognised and these females are referred to as Big Berthas. This is critical information in terms of sustainable management going forward. (More info and a film of their work: https://www.firthofforthlobsterhatchery.org.uk/ ). The NB Hatchery release their juveniles within a mile of the centre but they also supply stock to other sites on the East coast.
This is a cute mini lobster – perfectly formed at 1cm but capable of eating its brothers and sisters so the job of the hatchery is to keep them separate while they grow.
The lobster hatchery and the Lobster Shack along with other local businesses really put North Berwick on the map and are a brilliant example of community innovation, sustainable seafood and local economic benefit with 6 local people employed every year.
Jane has tremendous knowledge of sustainable lobster production. She is in touch with the National Lobster Hatchery in Padstow and the European Lobster Center of Excellence (ELCE) in Norway (https://eurolobster.svinna.is/). She tells me that Norway was the first country to experience a total population crash in lobsters due to overfishing. Jane and her colleagues are working to ensure that this does not happen off the North Berwick coast but she notes that there are no quotas for lobsters in the Firth of Forth and little enforcement of legal restrictions. She describes the fishery as ‘a free for all’. She says that ‘most fishers are trying their best to comply with best practice but there are known individuals who do not conform, are not licensed to sell but who manage to find a local market’. Jane thinks there may be some benefit in an accreditation scheme for the lobster fishery. This would be complex and would require the support of Scottish Government. The Marine Directorate who are responsible for enforcement of legislation acknowledges that there is anecdotal evidence suggesting a significant issue with hobby/unlicensed fishermen illegally selling their catch on a commercial basis but also state that… ‘By its very nature this is difficult to measure…’
Source: https://www.gov.scot/publications/unlicensed-hobby-fishermen/
And just for info these are the legal, daily limits for hobby fishermen and none of this can be sold:
The Shellfish (Restrictions on Taking by Unlicensed Fishing Boats) (Scotland) Order 2017 sets daily restrictions on taking by unlicensed boats as:
Species | Daily catch limit (per vessel) |
Lobster | 1 |
Nephrops | 10 |
Crab (any species) | 5 |
Scallops | 6 |
Asked about the future Jane would like her house to remain standing in the face of climate change and sea level rise and would also like Government support for the work she and her colleagues have been pioneering.
LEONIE ALEXANDER
December 2023