A new hand on deck for COAST
Andrew Binnie has been chosen from a big field of candidates to be the new Marine Project Officer for COAST, the Community of Arran Seabed Trust. (The position is funded by the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation and the Underwood Trust.) Conversing amiably on the shore overlooking the No Take Zone in Lamlash Bay last week, his open friendliness, coupled with wide-ranging ideas and knowledge, made him an enchanting person to talk to. He’s already hard at work in the new COAST office, which you can find behind the High School, in the same building that houses Noel Crack’s bookshop – a happy coincidence, since Noel specialises in books on the Scottish natural world.
Glasgow-born, Andrew emigrated to Australia and lived in Sydney for a long time, becoming a naturalised Australian citizen. He worked there for an academic publisher of scientific books and then went to Papua New Guinea, where he helped to set up a successful community publishing enterprise. He is modest about that – ‘I’d never used a Mac before,’ he says, ‘but they taught me.’ It’s easy to see why they found him a natural pupil. Andrew has a direct yet quite un-pushy energy that makes people want to help him find things out. On Arran, hopefully in post for three years, given continued funding, he has immediately started talking to people with practical interest in the natural world, whatever their start-point. He is also working with four post graduate students from York University, but at the same time says, ‘There’s an incredible level of interest from children. They only have to see you poking about on a beach and they come up, wanting to know what you are looking for and whether they can find something, too.’
At the larger end of the scale, Andrew is keen to work with bodies such as the National Trust for Scotland, who have been guiding immensely successful rock pooling groups. ‘Sixty people at Kildonan, all fascinated by rock pools!’ he says, delighted. He’s been on other islands as well, contrasting the community-bought small isle of Eigg with the slightly more organised equally small Rum, where numbered stones help the casual visitor to find a way through a woodland walk. ‘Some help is useful,’ he says, then adds, ‘but you have to be careful not to over-interpret, which can spoil the fun of discovering things for yourself.’
On the prickly question of fish farms, Andrew is clear and logical. He feels that instead of penning marine creatures in a tightly controlled ‘intensive farming’ system, we should allow fish to breed and grow naturally, free from chemical and organic additives and over-exploitation. ‘COAST is not an anti-fishing group,’ he insists. ‘We are pro sustainable fishing. Once there are plentiful stocks in the sea we’d love to see more people catching fish. That’s what we’re aiming for.’ News this week confirms that there is a big rise in the numbers of young fish in Clyde waters, though they are too small to catch, which suggests that the absence of more mature fish shows the damage done to the stock by over-fishing. [See our report that follows.]
Andrew stresses, too, the hard economic sense of developing a sustainable future for marine life, saying that if the fish stocks are given a fair chance to reproduce themselves, it will provide a viable future for people working in the fishing industry – and can also benefit tourism. ‘‘It would be good if there was a glass-bottomed boat,’ he muses, ‘so people could see down to the sea bed in the shallows.’ While accepting that punitively high insurance levels have brought about the death of the small boat hire business, he hopes that there may be more use of the sea for exploration and sight-seeing. He recognises the usefulness of fast RIBs and sporting craft of all kinds, but would like to see more ‘utility’ boats as well, able to take people close to the shore and show them things in the shallow water that they can’t see from the land.
Philosophically, Andrew’s view is refreshingly broad. ‘Science and art meet in the middle,’ he says. ‘You need the detailed knowledge and the understanding of how natural things work – that side of it is essential. But so is recognising the beauty of it all, and the sheer fascination. It’s a constant excitement.’ With such enthusiasm and such practicality, Andrew seems like a gentle dynamo of new energy. He makes great possibilities seem a step closer than they ever have been, and that is a rare and highly welcome talent.
