"Scotland is celebrated worldwide for her natural beauty..." "..her wild glens and moors... ..her deep lochs..." "..her rugged mountains and magnificent coastline..." "It's hard to imagine man has made any impact at all, but every square inch has been affected by centuries of human activity." "I'm going to look at how man made Scotland's landscape and how this history has shaped the present." "This week, how our hearts not our heads have ruled the least understood landscape... ..the sea." "Out of sight, out of mind, the sea has always been a place of mystery, but also of human indifference." "For most of our history, the world beneath the waves was largely unknown..." "..an alien landscape." "We saw the sea in simple terms... ..as an endless and plentiful resource that would never run dry." "But in the last few decades, we've started to look differently at the sea and the creatures that live in and around it." "And some of the very animals that we once hunted to the verge of extinction are now protected and transformed into environmental icons." "But it's been a lottery." "Human sentiment has ruled and still rules this fragile marine environment." "And it's the fickle nature of public pity that has decided their fate." "While some species, usually ones with the charm factor, have been pronounced untouchable..." "..others have been fished into extinction." "So how have we, an island nation, allowed this to happen?" "Man has lived by the sea for thousands of years." "But we didn't always exploit its vast resource of fish." "I'm 25 miles north of the main island in the Orkneys, and I'm heading over to that island there, Papa Westray, to find out just why it was we developed our taste for seafood." "I'm taking the plane for the short hop, a distance of just 1.7 miles." "The scheduled flight time, including taxiing, is two minutes." "This is the shortest commercial flight in the world." "The earliest Neolithic inhabitants arrived here 5,000 years ago." "But it wasn't until much more recently that we started to take big catches of fish from the sea." "On the northwest side of the island, coastal erosion has revealed a midden... ..a huge pile of discarded fish bones and limpet shells." "For the last ten years, Jen Harland has been analysing tens of thousands of fish bones from around Scotland." "Hi, Jen." "Hi." "So this is where you've hidden yourself away?" "Indeed." "I couldn't find you." "You're busy!" "Indeed." "So this is a rubbish dump of fish debris, really?" "That's right, yes, it's a fish midden." "There's hundreds of thousands of fish bones deposited here, so if you get your eyes in... you can just see this row..." "Yeah!" "There's four cod bones articulating there from a cod tail, something like that." "I love how just say it's from cod!" "I can barely see that it's fish bones and you're saying cod!" "They are very distinct." "You can normally tell between species quite easily." "What time period is this?" "12th and 13th century for the main band, for the dense layers of deposition in this midden." "And that's fairly typical." "We get fish middens of that date like this throughout Orkney and Shetland and northern Caithness as well." "So why was it that around this time there was this sudden explosion in the exploitation of fish?" "There's a large number of factors, but one of the main things is the Christian religion." "Right!" "Because..." "Seems odd, doesn't it?" "Christian fasting means that you have to eat fish, not just fish on Fridays but on a lot of other days as well." "And if you can't eat beef or lamb, you're eating things like fish, so it creates a huge demand all over Europe." "That's intriguing." "So as religion sweeps across the land, suddenly people start eating fish in a big way." "Yes, indeed, yes." "During the 13th century, there were roughly 140 holy days per year when the eating of meat was banned." "And that led to a huge demand for fish." "But back then the seas were full of fish - so easy to catch, you didn't even need a boat." "Most people driving by don't even give a second glance to this rather ordinary-looking pile of stones, but although no-one really knows how old these are, they are sure that they were used to catch fish." "There are hundreds of these simple U- and V-shaped structures around Scotland's coastline." "And they have led experts to speculate that Scotland's waters were one of the easiest places to catch fish in the world." "The waters were so rich that shoals were herded like sheep into these traps at high water, and when the tide went out the fish were trapped by either nets or wicker gates." "Whoa!" "Ho-ho!" "It's a bit gusty!" "It's hard for us to imagine what the waters around Scotland would once have contained." "So much has changed since back then, but the variety of sea life around our shores was staggering." "The list was endless and included some real surprises, like bluefin tuna that once chased the herring..." "..swordfish... ..three species of shark..." "..and even grey whales." "Scotland's seas were overflowing with life." "And with some of the largest seabird populations on the planet," "Scotland's waters were as rich in birds as they were in marine life." "The reason why our marine habitat was so rich is partly explained by geology." "The British Isles sits at the edge a continental shelf which plummets from 250 metres to oceanic depths of 2,000." "This is one of the longest geological structures on the planet." "Every winter, storms mix nutrients from the seabed deep below with surface waters." "And in the spring, sunlight causes an explosive growth in plankton, microscopic organisms that drift with the currents." "Scotland's seas are some of the most fertile on earth." "Twice a day, powerful tides sweep clockwise around Scotland, carrying plankton-rich water into the sea lochs of the West Coast... and across the banks of the North Sea." "You know, a single bucket of Scottish seawater might contain as much as four million tiny plants and animals." "The abundance of plankton made Scotland's waters teem with life." "These tiny single-cell plants use the sun's energy to grow." "They are the smallest creatures in the sea, yet are the basis for all other marine life forms." "Vast armadas of fish, including sand eels, squid and herring would feed on the plankton, and, in turn, they're food for cod, salmon, puffin, seals... and, ultimately, man." "After the Middle Ages, the fishing boats got bigger and faster." "But it wasn't until the 19th century that the demand for fish exploded." "Grab the yarn!" "Put your back into it!" "Suddenly, the country needed cheap, abundant food and Scotland's seas met the demand effortlessly." "Out the block there." "Keep hauling." "One of the most prolific species was herring." "Vast schools would reach the shores of Britain in a series of waves, and as the herring chased the plankton, the fishermen chased the herring." "By 1850, there were thousands of Scottish boats." "They started every season on the west coast and finished on the east as the herring fed off the flow of plankton." "My guide here on the Firth of Forth in this beautifully restored Fifey is historian Christopher Smout." "It seems to me as if Scotland's been blessed with the perfect physical conditions for fish to flourish." "It's really the case here in the Firth of Forth with incredible numbers of fish." "The sheer abundance in the 19th century was unbelievable." "If you take, for example, the head of the Forth, the sprats and the herrings, they wanted to tell them apart, and the fishermen said, "Well, it's easy." "You just put your oar in the shoal." ""You can tell from the resistance which is which," because they swim in a slightly different way." "That sounds like there was more fish than water, almost." "Doesn't it?" "Almost more fish than water." "That's incredible!" "When they first discovered where the herring bred, where they dropped their eggs off the Isle of May, they said they were lying "one tier upon another" on the bottom over square miles, and they found a shoal of whiting, small whiting, which stretched for 36 miles... 8 miles beyond the Isle of May to the Oxcars Lighthouse..." "Yeah." "That's further than we can see today!" "And they reckon it contained 230 million fish." "Those figures are just astronomical, aren't they?" "That's what the natural abundance was." "Herring was caught in driftnets like these which would hang down from these floating buoys and the fish would be caught in the holes." "It's a really simple but effective technique that's been around since the 13th century." "Thousands of miles of driftnets were set every night among the North Sea herring schools during the mid-19th century." "But at around the same time, a new method of fishing caught on - trawling." "It caught fish of every shape and size." "Up until this point, fishing had been on a modest scale." "Trawling changed everything." "The trawlers used a net held open by a large beam that is dragged along the seabed." "Capable of catching vastly more fish than the boats they replaced, this new method was controversial from the very beginning." "Very soon after trawling became widespread, the traditional driftnet fishermen noticed that rich fishing grounds were being cleaned out in just one season." "Concerned about the impact of this new method on the marine environment and about their future livelihoods, the anger of the driftnet fishermen soon hit boiling point." "Forced by the growing number of complaints, the government of the day appointed one of Britain's foremost professional scientists to investigate the problem." "Thomas Henry Huxley was himself a bit of catch." "He was well-connected, rubbed shoulders with Charles Darwin and was paid handsomely for his work on the state of British fisheries." "Huxley's commission toured Britain, taking evidence from hundreds of witnesses." "Can I get a pint, please?" "He was, however, a landlubber, and rather than go to sea to gather evidence, he heard the fishermen's accounts in town halls and hotels." "The statements came thick and fast." "It's incredible, all this testimony from fishermen all around Britain!" ""We are all unanimous at this place that fish is fast diminishing in the North Sea..." ""..and we believe it is owed to this reckless and destructive mode of beam trawling." ""I believe trawling to be one of the most destructive things that go into the sea." ""We cannot get anything on the lines now." ""We used to get things they called coxcombs and the trawlers have swept them all away," ""the same as they have swept away all the best fishing."" "But the fishermen's concerns fell on deaf ears." "Huxley's commission coincided with the advent of steam trawling, a technological marine revolution was underway." "Freed at last from the restriction of the wind, steam-driven boats could voyage further afield." "They trawled back and forth relentlessly, bringing home bigger and bigger catches." "It was fish galore!" "At a time when the population of Victorian Britain was growing fast, fish was cheap, nutritious and bountiful." "Huxley wasn't going to stand between the nation and one of its basic food supplies." "As a result, fish stocks suffered." "But the complaints and protests about the destructive nature of trawling didn't go away." "Not only were the traditional fishermen still concerned about overfishing, they also claimed that trawling destroyed the seabed." "So did the fishermen have a point?" "To find out what effect trawling has had on the seabed, I've come to Scotland's west coast, to meet Jason Hall-Spencer." "As well as being a marine biologist, Jason is an experienced open-water scuba diver." "Today we take underwater exploration for granted, but back in Huxley's day, the seabed was largely unexplored." "150 years ago, what did people know about what was down there?" "Very, very little, because they couldn't see the seabed." "There was no fishery science and people hadn't invented scuba gear." "People hadn't seen the seabed." "It was like trying to guess what's on the other side of the moon." "So really, in terms of scientific data, I guess there just wasn't any, really." "They'd started taking measurements of temperature and salinity and so on, but they didn't know what fish stocks were there." "They assumed that they were almost inexhaustible, but you see nowadays that that was completely wrong." "'During Huxley's investigations, 'one fisherman told how the awful signs of destruction brought up on deck by the trawl 'was enough to make an angel weep." "'I'm starting to understand what he meant.'" "It's like a barren desert." "There are tiny bits of life maybe here and there, but..." "This just shows what a century of fishing can do to seabed habitat types." "What we can see around us is very little that's old and what's here... many of the shells, for example, are broken." "And there's none of the rich variety of life..." "All the ecosystems that are fragile and long-lived are smashed up by the effects of the heavy gear that drags across the seabed." "It leaves behind a desolate scene." "Huxley just couldn't see this because they were not able to dive to see with their own two eyes what was on the seabed at that time." "But now we know, without a shadow of a doubt, that dragging heavy fishing gear across the seabed causes long-term damage." "So this is what trawling does?" "It's not looking good, is it?" "Keen to show me what much of the seabed would once have looked like," "Jason led me to a small area that has escaped the ravages of industrialised fishing." "In the shallow waters of Loch Sween, where trawlers have been unable to operate, a purple-and-pink carpet covers the seabed." "Known as Scotland's coral, maerl is a calcified form of seaweed." "After the vast expanses of mud and gravel we've just seen, this is like entering an underwater paradise." "It is wonderful stuff!" "It's a fantastic slow-growing organism." "Right..." "so how slow-growing are they?" "It only grows one millimetre per year." "It's very, very slow-growing." "Wow!" "That's quite slow." "They look absolutely stunning." "I had no idea." "I mean, this is just a few metres offshore and look at it!" "Fantastic!" "If you just look at these lumps and look carefully, you can see hundreds and hundreds of species hidden amongst the cracks." "There's so much life just within my hand here, probably a hundred species all crawling around..." "It's just pretty incredible." "I'm so pleased there's some areas like this left." "You can see how fragile this stuff is." "If you plough through it with fishing gear, it smashes it to pieces, causing thousands of years' worth of damage in one afternoon." "These are the sorts of landscapes we need to protect." "Absolutely, absolutely." "It's incredible to think that much of Scotland's seabed was once covered by that beautiful carpet of maerl and coral, and that just over a century of trawling has decimated those habitats and with them the fish stocks they depended on." "Huxley not only rejected the fishermen's concerns, he argued that trawling helped the seabed." "Just as the farmer's plough turns the soil to bring nutrients to the surface," "Huxley argued that the trawl did exactly the same." "Based on the commission's recommendations, the Sea Fisheries Act was passed and allowed trawling whenever, wherever and however the fishermen pleased." "Outside the fishing communities, the commission and its findings went virtually unnoticed." "Our marine landscape remained out of sight, out of mind." "Meanwhile, above the surface, Scotland's 11,000-mile coastline is as rich in seabirds as it once was in fish." "All of these birds depend on smaller creatures like sand eels that feed off the plankton." "So the same rich habitat that sustained abundance fish stocks also supports some of the biggest populations of seabirds on the planet." "Today, Scotland's coasts are home to over five million birds." "That's nearly half of all the seabirds in Europe." "And one of the main reasons for this abundance above the waves, is that seabirds and their breeding sites are protected by law." "So why is this?" "The answer is to be found 110 miles west of the Scottish mainland." "The remote islands of St Kilda." "One day, in July 1840, five men set out from the main island on a fowling raid to the neighbouring sea stacks." "For St Kildans, seabirds were absolutely fundamental for survival." "The birds provided the islanders with food, oil and feathers." "But on this particular day when they ventured on to the sea stack, they encountered a strange-looking bird." "As they climbed up they found, lying asleep, a great auk which they caught and took back to their bothy." "Flightless like the penguin, great auks were good swimmers, but clumsy and slow on land, making them easy prey for hunters." "Huge numbers were killed in the North Atlantic for their meat, and by the 19th century, the population had declined so dramatically that the great auk had become a rare visitor to St Kilda." "So when the men took the auk to their bothy, it was very likely that they'd never seen one before." "They kept it alive for three days, but meanwhile a great storm reared up." "Unable to get back to the main island, they hunkered down with their newfound friend." "But then a thought crossed their mind." "Perhaps this wasn't a bird at all, perhaps this was a witch that could conjure up great storms." "They decided to kill the bird." "The loss of the last great auk in St Kilda was followed by the killing of the world's last pair in Iceland four years later." "Eventually the extinction of the great auk would have a fundamental effect on the future of all seabirds, but at the time nobody cared." "In fact, nobody really cared about birds at all." "Back on the mainland, they weren't killing seabirds to eat... ..they were shooting them for sport." "In the late 19th century, cheap shotguns created a revolution in the affordability of recreational killing, and ordinary tourists were able to take part in shooting trips, which they did all over Britain." "At the Bass Rock in the Firth of Forth, even the Prince of Wales, the future Edward VII, took part." "He went there in 1859, and it was reported," ""The Prince enjoyed some shooting and brought down a number of gannets."" "During the 1800s, 70% of the gannet population on the Bass Rock alone was obliterated by hunting parties." "And it looked as if there was no end to this meaningless slaughter." "But then, one day, a chance discovery by a Cambridge University don changed everything." "Professor Alfred Newton received a box." "And inside he found the bones of an extinct bird." "It was a great auk." "It seems so obvious now, but it dawned on Newton that if the great auk could be hunted to extinction, then the same could happen to every living bird on the planet." "He decided to act." "Newton inspired a new thinking, of conservation." "He was so appalled about what happened to the great auk that he started a campaign to stop the killing of seabirds by their nesting sites." "He began by targeting ladies who wore seagull feathers in their hats." "The shooting of seabirds wasn't just for pleasure - it was also big business." "The populations of great crested grebes and kittiwakes had been decimated for their plumage." "It was going to be a difficult campaign for Newton, one determined academic versus the plume trade, as well as unthinking trigger-happy sportsmen and members of the Royal Family." "The odds seemed stacked against him." "But Newton's strategy cut across the class divides." "He appealed directly to the human heart." "In a speech to fellow scientists, he warned... .."Fair and innocent as the snowy plumes may appear in a lady's hat, I must tell the wearer the truth." ""She bears the murderer's brand on her forehead."" "Moved by the plight of young birds left to starve on the nest after their parents had been shot for plumage," "British women turned to fruit and flowers rather than feathers." "Newton had taken a must-have fashion accessory and made it deeply unfashionable." "Newton's campaign was a success." "His actions led, in 1869, to the first-ever conservation law which banned shooting during the breeding season." "Newton's campaign also paved the way for the founding of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds." "These crucial first steps had moved the public to change their attitudes to seabirds." "The birds were far from saved, but it was a start." "Today, when the idea of cruelty to animals is abhorrent, we accept animal conservation as a fundamental part of everyday life." "The setting-up of the RSPB was a major step forward for the protection of birds, but for the seemingly abundant creatures that lived under the waves, there was nothing." "Here, the story continued to be take, take, take." "As the technology and efficiency of finding and catching fish improved, come the 20th century, virtually every species became a target, however small or however big." "BLAST OF HARPOON GUN" "Growing up to ten metres in length, the basking shark is one of the wonders of the Scottish seas, and the second-biggest fish in the world." "The sharks feed on plankton concentrations near the surface, filtering up to 1,800 tons of water every hour through their cavernous jaw." "Seen as a valuable resource, their sheer size made them a target." "The waters around the tiny island of Soy off Skye became a killing ground on a grand scale." "Now abandoned, this basking shark station was set up by a former Special Services officer, just after the Second World War." "This must be where the truly awful business happened of hacking up those huge beasts with axes, saws and knives." "It must've been a bloody mess." "These pickling tanks were used to store the shark's flesh before export abroad, mainly to starving Germans in British-occupied Germany." "But it was the oil from the shark's huge liver that was the main prize." "At a time when dairy products were strictly rationed, shark oil was an essential ingredient for the butter substitute, margarine." "It's just so odd to think that all this carnage took place in such an idyllic setting, set against the backdrop of the Cuillin Mountains." "It just seems so peaceful here." "Before the butchering could begin, you needed to find your shark." "For that, you required a sturdy boat, a keen eye and a harpoon." "The basking shark was a tricky target." "The helmsman and the harpooner had to work hard to keep the boat close to it." "The gun itself was positioned here in the bow where it could get a really good shot." "They designed harpoons like this with these retractable barbs." "Basically, once that went in, there was no way it was coming out." "The man behind this enterprise was a surprising figure, known today more for animal conservation and otters than shark hunting..." "..Gavin Maxwell." "Grandson of the Duke of Northumberland and brought up on the hills of southwest Scotland," "Maxwell spent much of his youth stalking wild game and was an expert shot." "At sea, he proved to be as successful a fisherman as he was a hunter of game." "He and his crew killed hundreds of sharks." "But he was a poor businessman." "Maxwell never turned a profit, and the ill-fated endeavour lasted just three seasons." "The only good thing to come out of the venture was his first book, which became a critically acclaimed hit." "There are moments in this book where you glimpse Maxwell the conservationist rather than Maxwell the hunter, like this quote where he's talking about the ethics of their killing methods." ""All this harpooning has its unpleasant side," ""no matter how much it may be forgotten in the excitement of the moment." ""If a warm-blooded animal were concerned," ""and more especially if it were a warm-blooded land animal," ""ninety-nine people out of a hundred would hold it to be unthinkable cruelty."" "He recognised that these animals endured a slow and cruel death." "Maxwell's experiences changed him forever." "A few years later, he embarked on a project of a different kind." "Drawn more and more to the seductive beauty of the landscape and wildlife," "Maxwell stayed on Scotland's west coast, but his interest turned from hunting to animal conservation." "In 1960, Maxwell published Ring Of Bright Water, an autobiographical account about how he raised a wild otter." "He shared his food, home and even his bed with the otter which he called Midge." "Their adventures together touched the hearts of readers and the book became a bestseller." "You know, Maxwell was ahead of his time in his love for otters." "In the 1950s, most people still considered them a pest that ate too much fish and should be exterminated." "What transformed this perception was Maxwell's writing about the human qualities of this wild animal." "What Maxwell recognised was that by bestowing human characteristics, a personality and a name on the otter, the public would respond to wildlife quite differently." "During the course of the 20th century, it was also human sentiment that was to transform the fate of another marine animal, from near extinction to a global environmental icon." "Over centuries, the grey seal had been slaughtered on an astonishing scale to supply demand for oil and skins." "Unlike other seals in the UK, the grey seal comes ashore to breed, making it an easy target for hunters." "As a result, grey seals had to find places further and further away from man." "North Rona is a small uninhabited island 50 miles northwest of Cape Wrath." "Known as one of the Lonely Isles, this is the remotest and least-visited nature reserve in Britain." "Home to thousands of visiting seabirds the island also hosts one of the largest breeding colonies of grey seals in the UK." "It was here in 1938 that Frank Fraser Darling, an eminent ecologist, carried out the first-ever in-depth study of grey seals." "Fraser Darling had quit his comfortable salaried life, working in animal genetics in Edinburgh, uprooting his wife and eight-year-old son to travel to North Rona." "It was inside this old sheep pen that Darling built three timber huts for his family to shelter." "I mean, they had corrugated iron roofs!" "With this wind, it must have been a noisy old place to be, but this was where he wrote his detailed journals about seal behaviour on the island." "Darling studied the social and breeding behaviour of grey seals, but during the research, he also observed that seals have a great deal in common with human beings." "When he writes about seal pups, he says," ""There is no creature born, even among the greater apes," ""which more resembles a human baby in its ways and cries than a baby grey seal."" "There's no denying the appeal of the seal pup." "This is an animal that tends to stare into the face of its killers with big soppy eyes as if asking for mercy." "It's one of a handful of species with the X factor, that innate ability to tug at the heartstrings of the world's most sophisticated, dangerous, illogical omnivore...us." "And it was this X factor which would ultimately be the saving grace for the grey seal." "In the late '70s, seals were blamed for falling fish stocks, and complaints from fishermen in Orkney led to the Government sanctioning a cull." "In Gavin Maxwell's day, just 40 years before, a brutal event like this would have been less conspicuous." "But when images of seal culling were broadcast into sitting rooms up and down the country in 1978, there was a public outcry." "Nature's future was about to be determined by human sentiment." "Another reason for the public outcry was the appearance of a fledgling but determined conservation group." "The Greenpeace Foundation had made their name trying to stop the killing of whales on the verge of extinction." "Now they turned their attention to the Orkney seal cull." "Greenpeace, seen as the popular heroes of animal welfare, skilfully launched a clever public relations exercise, designed to appeal to the hearts of the British people." "They fed the press and media with images from around the world of man's brutality to seals, as well as questioning the accuracy of the scientists' figures used to justify the seal killing." "40 years after Frank Fraser Darling compared seal pups to human babies," "Greenpeace used precisely that imagery to press the emotional button in the British public." "Suddenly that image of a grey-seal pup with eyes that shed tears, cloaked in white fur and with that innocent, inquisitive face, about to be bludgeoned to death by a cruel hunter, became too much to bear." "PLAINTIVE CRY" "The Greenpeace approach worked." "Downing Street received 14,000 letters in protest and announced a halt to the cull." "An opinion poll at the time revealed that the huge majority of the protesters weren't aware of any of the arguments for or against." "They just wanted the killing stopped." "It would seem that the emotive power of the seal pup had won the day." "Before the 20th century, man's response to the grey seal was to use it as a resource for food, for oil, its skin for waistcoats and sporrans." "By 1978, the grey seal had been embraced as a treasured part of our natural heritage, our very first environmental icon and a powerful eco symbol." "This transformation of fortune for seabirds and seals only happened when they were hauled into public view and people became outraged." "But the rest of marine life, under the sea, remained out of sight, out of mind." "Over time, the sheer quantity of fish taken from the sea by trawling began to have dramatic effects on fish stocks and the wider maritime environment." "While the trawlers along with their nets just got bigger and bigger, the fishermen turned to sonar imaging to track the fish." "There was nowhere left to hide." "As fish populations began to plummet we did try, through EU quotas, to turn back the clock," "But we didn't try hard enough." "In the North Sea, we now land half as much fish as we did 150 years ago." "Fishermen and scientists are still at odds as to just how depleted fish stocks are, but no-one doubts the decline has been massive." "And it isn't just fish stocks on the east coast that have suffered." "It's the same story in the west." "Loch Fyne in the Firth of Clyde was once known for its abundance of halibut, cod and herring." "Today, they've almost all gone, as have the communities and livelihoods that have depended on the sea for centuries." "A result of too many boats with too much technology chasing too few fish." "This fish-finder tells its own story." "This is showing you a picture of the seabed, so you've got the depth going down there, and, as you can see, the seabed..." "not much left..." "'Ruth Thurstan is part of a team of marine biologists 'that have been looking at the state of fisheries in the Firth of Clyde.'" "I mean, I'm amazed..." "This is Loch Fyne!" "This is one of the great fishing..." "Famous fishing grounds." "Yeah." "And it's absolutely..." "We've been looking at this for minutes and nothing's come through." "Yeah." "Very different to how it used to be." "Yeah." "Over the last seven years, there have been virtually no commercial whitefish landings on the Firth of Clyde." "The only creatures left in any abundance are the prawns which thrive in an environment devoid of predators like cod." "It sounds like fishermen have been working their way down the food chain." "Yes, they have been." "They started with the predatory species and now they are really at the bottom of the food chain, and we are now eating species that we wouldn't have considered eating many years ago, prawns and clams and those sorts of species," "which is worrying because if those species decline then there isn't much left for people to catch, so we do need to start thinking about how we can recover other species." "I mean, why do you think people have been so reluctant to conserve fish?" "People...for centuries, I suppose, have felt quite disconnected from the seas." "They've not, until very recently, been able to see what is down there properly, and fish for many years have been seen as a resource." "They're not seen as wildlife." "What is the future?" "It sounds very bleak." "Er...it depends where we go from here, really, and we do have a choice." "We either carry on fishing the way we are doing, and that means we're probably likely to have very little left in quite a short period of time, or we can start protecting and managing the seas well." "The best way to do that is if you create areas where you halt destructive fishing practices and some areas where there is no fishing at all." "Fortunately, exactly this advice is taking root." "After decades of neglect, there are signs that our marine landscape is no longer out of sight, out of mind." "As part of a UK initiative, Scotland's Marine Act came into law in March 2010, promising to create a series of protected areas around our coasts." "And there is one such area in Scotland where this has already happened." "Concerned about the damage caused by the trawling community, campaigners on the island of Arran spent 15 years lobbying Government for a no-take zone, a designated area of sea and seabed from which no marine life can be removed." "Approved in 2008, Scotland's first no-take zone is a small area, just over one square mile, in Lamlash Bay." "It really is a drop in the ocean, but a significant achievement nevertheless." "The seabed here is now a haven for nature to start recovering... ..a manmade sanctuary protected from the biggest predator in the sea..." "..ourselves." "We have an island of less than 5,000 people." "Mmm." "Yet nearly 2,000 of them have joined..." "'Howard Wood, a local resident and recreational diver, 'is one of the figures behind the groundbreaking project.'" "I've been diving since 1973, and it was quite obvious through the late '70s and the early '80s that species that we could see like plaice and skate and rays, were slowly disappearing, and by the mid-'80s, quite often you wouldn't see any at all." "So is your hope that over the next decade or so, these will spring up all round Scotland's coasts?" "If the Scottish Government is serious about a recovery in the marine environment, this is one way forward." "It's not the total way forward." "It's not a panacea, it won't solve all the problems, but it's a very essential part of it." "We're a generation that have just taken, taken, taken from our natural resources, and it's time we started thinking about how are we going to feed the next generation in 50 years' time." "This isn't about stopping fishing, this is about increasing the amount of fish and shellfish so we can feed ourselves in 50 years' time." "Lamlash Bay is one of only three tiny protected marine zones in Britain." "And as the seabed takes many years to recover from two centuries of trawling, it's too early to see big changes yet." "The human heart has played a powerful role in the fate of certain marine animals, creatures with the X factor." "But we can't go on like this, because it discriminates." "You can't leave the destiny of marine life to the whims of human sentiment." "It's time to take stock of all species that depend on the incredible marine landscapes that lie under Scotland's waters..." "..before it's too late." "Nothing exists in isolation." "As the conservationist John Moore says," ""When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world."" "In other words, if we remove one species, then the chain falls apart." "I know there's still lots to be done, but I can't help but feel optimistic that we can restore life and habitat to the seas, because it's in everyone's interest to do so." "Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd" "E-mail subtitling@bbc.co.uk"