Shellfish Fisheries
Scallop Dredge
Scallop Dredge
Scallop dredges work similar to a garden rake, scraping scallops off the seabed with a toothed bar into an attached bag. Several dredges are usually attached to a bar to cover more of the ground.
Creel Fishing
Creels are cages of netting with one way doors and bait to lure shellfish such as lobsters and crabs. The D shaped creel in the video has two entrances. Lobsters are usually caught close to the shore by fishermen setting creels in a long line called a leader.
Several crabs have been caught in the video, lured in by mackerel as bait. The entrances are one way only meaning that once inside the creel they cannot escape. The creel is thrown into the sea and left for a period of time, usually 24 hours. The creel in the video was left overnight. After this, the creel is hauled back into shore by a long rope attached to it.
Crab species
Crab species
In the video you may be able to spot three different species of crabs. Can you decide which are which?
Shore crab
This is the most common type of crab found in Scotland, normally greenish in colour but can be orange. They live amongst rocks or seaweed. They are generally not considered edible mostly because they don't tend to be big enough.
Brown crab
This species is common around Scotland, the fishing boats catch more brown crab by weight than fish species like hake or whiting, averaging around 11,000 tonnes per year. It has a reddish-brown coloured shell and white and brown meat which people around the world enjoy eating.
Velvet crab
These crabs have distinctive red eyes and a body covered in short hairs, making them soft to touch and giving them a velvet appearance. Very few fishers fish solely for velvet crabs with edible brown crabs being the main goal. The velvet crabs caught around Scotland tend to be sold to Southern Europe.
All the crabs shown in the video were released back to the ocean afterwards.
Whelk Fisheries
Whelks (Buccinum undatum), known locally as "buckies" are large sea snails mainly caught close to the shore by small boats going off typically for a day at a time between February and June. They prefer sandy and muddy grounds and therefore tend to be found grouped together in distinct patches. Baited pots are used, such as those seen in the video, which are circular plastic with a funnel shaped net entrance. The bottom is weighted with a block of cement to make sure that the pot lands upright on the seabed. This is an environmentally friendly way of fishing with minimal impact on the seabed and with a low chance of catching unwanted types of fish. The minimum landing size for Shetland whelks is a 75mm shell length, 45mm elsewhere in Scotland. The fishers in the video can be seen throwing back any which are too small to bring back to shore to sell.