#53 Howard Wood - COAST, Community of Arran Seabed Trust

Howard Wood was born in 1954 and has lived on the Isle of Arran since the age of 14 and he's been diving the seas around Arran Island Scotland since 1973. In 1995, he and fellow diver Don MacNeish set up the Community of Arran Seabed Trust (COAST).

Since 2003, Howard has spent the majority of his time volunteering with COAST. He has an extensive knowledge of the marine environment in the Clyde, has created a photographic and video archive of Arran marine life, and was COAST Chair for ten years before stepping down in 2018. 

Howard was involved in writing marine management proposals to the Scottish Government, including the final Arran Marine Regeneration trial proposal of February 2005. These led to the creation of a no take zone in Lamlash Bay, designated in 2008. He was also a key primary source of marine survey records supporting the South Arran Marine Protected Area proposal designated in 2014. Since designation, he has led baseline surveys of the area. Howard has attended many meetings with the Scottish government, Scottish Natural Heritage, Marine Scotland and Fishermen Associations and has also appeared before parliamentary committees on a number of occasions.

Howard received the Goldman Environmental Prize in April 2015 for his work with COAST and was awarded an OBE for services to the Marine Environment in 2015.  Howard and COAST were recently part of the epic PBS documentary Hope in the Water.

In this episode, Mark and Howard discuss working with community to save what they love, methods of preserving aquaculture and the current methods that people use to save marine environments and what it was like to work on the production of Hope in the Water.

Save What You Love with Mark Titus:⁣

Produced: Emilie Firn

Edited: Patrick Troll⁣

Music: Whiskey Class⁣

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Creators & Guests

Host

Mark Titus

Mark Titus is the creator of Eva’s Wild and director of the award winning films, The Breach and The Wild. He’s currently working on a third film in his salmon trilogy, The Turn. In early 2021, Mark launched his podcast, Save What You Love, interviewing exceptional people devoting their lives in ways big and small to the protection of things they love. Through his storytelling, Mark Titus carries the message that humanity has an inherent need for wilderness and to fulfill that need we have a calling to protect wild places and wild things.

Guest

Howard Wood

Howard was born in 1954 and has lived on the Isle of Arran since the age of 14. He has been diving the seas around Arran and Scotland since 1973. Since 2003 he has spent the majority of his time volunteering with COAST. He has an extensive knowledge of the marine environment in the Clyde has created a photographic and video archive of Arran marine life. Howard was COAST’s chair for 10 years before stepping down in 2018. He was involved in writing marine management proposals to the Scottish Government, including the final Arran Marine Regeneration Trial proposal of February 2005. These led to the creation of a No Take Zone in Lamlash Bay designated in 2008. He was also a key primary source of marine survey records supporting the COAST South Arran Marine Protected Area proposal designated in 2014. Since designation he has led baseline surveys of the area. He has attended many meetings with Government, Scottish Natural Heritage, Marine Scotland and fishermens’ associations and has also appeared before Parliamentary Committees on a number of occasions.

What is Save What You Love with Mark Titus?

Wild salmon give their very lives so that life itself can continue. They are the inspiration for each episode asking change-makers in this world what they are doing to save the things they love most. Join filmmaker, Mark Titus as we connect with extraordinary humans saving what they love through radical compassion and meaningful action. Visit evaswild.com for more information.

00:00:00:08 - 00:00:25:15
Mark Titus
Welcome to the Save What You Love podcast. I'm your host, Mark Titus. Today on the show, I welcome all the way from Scotland. Howard Wood. Howard was born in 1954 and has lived on the Isle of Arran since the age of 14. He's been diving the seas around Arran Island Scotland since 1973. In 1995, he and fellow diver Don MacNeish set up the community of Arran Seabed Trust or COAST.

00:00:25:17 - 00:00:55:16
Mark Titus
Since 2003, Howard has spent the majority of his time volunteering with Coast. He has an extensive knowledge of the marine environment in the Clyde, has created a photographic and video archive of Arran marine life, and was COAST Chair for ten years before stepping down in 2018. Howard was involved in writing marine management proposals to the Scottish Government, including the final Arran Marine Regeneration trial proposal of February 2005.

00:00:55:18 - 00:01:26:22
Mark Titus
These led to the creation of a no take zone in Lamlash Bay, designated in 2008. He was also a key primary source of marine survey records supporting the coast. South Arran Marine Protected Area proposal designated in 2014. Since designation. He has led baseline surveys of the area. Howard has attended many meetings with government, Scottish Natural Heritage, Marine Scotland and Fishermen Associations and has also appeared before parliamentary committees on a number of occasions.

00:01:27:00 - 00:01:49:08
Mark Titus
Howard received the Goldman Environmental Prize in April 2015 for his work with coast. And was awarded an OBE for services to the Marine Environment in 2015. Howard and Coast are recently part of the epic PBS documentary Hope in the Water. I hope you enjoy this episode. It was such an honor to talk with Howard, and we'll see you down the trail.

00:01:49:10 - 00:02:25:15
Music
How do you save what you love?
When the world is burning down?
How do you save what you love?
When pushes come to shove.
How do you say what you love?
When things are upside down.
How do you say what you love?
When times are getting tough.

00:02:25:17 - 00:02:30:06
Mark Titus
Howard Wood, welcome. Where are you today? Where are you coming from?

00:02:30:08 - 00:02:39:12
Howard Wood
Well, I love to speak to you, Mark. I'm sitting at home and waiting on Arran, which is on the west coast of Scotland.

00:02:39:14 - 00:03:05:00
Mark Titus
It is indeed. It's, I have not been, But I've been to Northern Ireland so I could look almost across and almost up and see, see where you are. And it is gorgeous country. My my ancestors, at least on one side of my family, on my dad's family came from the west of Ireland. And, deep, deep love in my heart for that part of the world.

00:03:05:02 - 00:03:28:01
Mark Titus
I would love to hear your story. Sir, you have such an incredible story about resilience and and putting the time and the effort in in a very daunting challenge. Can you. We got all the time in the world. So don't hold back. Start from the beginning. Tell us your story. How did you get into this work that you love?

00:03:28:03 - 00:04:02:11
Howard Wood
How did I get into it? Well, I suppose I got into it because of my love of diving. And, I learned to. I learned to dive. 50 years ago this spring. In March 1974, and initially, I didn't go willingly to the training. I had a big friend at the time called Robert and still have a friend called Robert, who was actually, he now lives in Canada.

00:04:02:13 - 00:04:29:00
Howard Wood
But he was over the last few weeks to, go to celebrate his 70th birthday. And, Robert dragged me along to the training against my will. To be honest, I wasn't that keen. But then after 2 or 3 months training and the first dives in the spring of that year. Yeah, I, I, as I said, numerous times, I took to it like a duck to water.

00:04:29:00 - 00:05:04:17
Howard Wood
We brought it, and really enjoyed it. So, so my Kenneth and my first, 20 years of diving, were particularly involved in conservation. I really enjoyed it and enjoyed the exploring, and the lots of places we dived. Probably nobody'd dive before. We dived shipwrecks. We dived from the shore, we dived rocky reefs. I mean, I just I just loved it.

00:05:04:19 - 00:05:37:19
Howard Wood
I was the, Well, I was in my 20s. It was a get married and children. I was, growing a family business. So all these things, take precedent. But what triggered off the, the kind of conservation side was, my friend and co-founder of coast, a man called Don McNish.

00:05:37:21 - 00:06:06:05
Howard Wood
And Don, I mean, I still see him every week. He lives in the next village. And we dive together, for over a decade. And we became more and more concerned over the state of the sea around our island about what we were seeing or, to be honest, what what we were lacking and seeing what we should see in five years previous.

00:06:06:07 - 00:06:35:01
Howard Wood
And in those days, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, we weren't up to date with what was happening in fisheries management. We didn't really know. We just knew things were disappearing. You know, you know, 2 or 3 years before we would swim across the Sandy Bay and see lots of plays and dives in and even look at nice big turbot and, and quietly, you know, and one of the great things about diving in those days, I mean, it's how you got your dinner quite often.

00:06:35:03 - 00:07:17:15
Howard Wood
You know, a few scallops in the bag at a nice place for dinner. But of course, eventually we were seeing less and less fish. We were shooting less and less white fish. And we kind of we had an inkling about why that was happening, that we were seeing more and more scallop dredging. We were seeing more and more bottom trawling, and we started to look into it, and we found that there'd been a major change in legislation in 1984 up until that point, from from 1869 to 1984.

00:07:17:17 - 00:07:51:04
Howard Wood
We've had, a mechanism called an insurer limit that didn't allow trawling, bottom trawling within three miles of the shore. And under pressure from certain parts of the fishing industry and the kind of deregulation of the Margaret Thatcher years in the 1980s, that inshore limit was, abandoned. And we noticed it within a few years that we were having these were huge trawlers.

00:07:51:04 - 00:08:18:20
Howard Wood
These were still only 50, 60ft trawlers. But there was nothing stopping them coming right up the shore. And common sense tells you that this isn't really good for the seabed. It's not good for the important habitats. But at that point, it was basically just common sense. And we would talk to local fishermen who were also angry about it.

00:08:18:22 - 00:08:47:13
Howard Wood
Much more small scale, what I call now low impact fishermen. They they had never been happy about it. They had written and complained in 1984 when this was going to going to happen. And we weren't really involved in that, but but slowly through the 19, late 1980s, early 1990s, we kind of we talked and we we kind of shrugged her shoulders and we, we thought, well, what can we do?

00:08:47:14 - 00:09:15:22
Howard Wood
But, Don being Don, and I was always, jealous of his, of his travels around the world. He had relatives in New Zealand, and every couple of winters he would disappear for six weeks to New Zealand. And in about 1989, 1990, he came back from New Zealand and said, you know, I looked out and I met a, a met a man called doctor Bill Valentine from Auckland University.

00:09:16:00 - 00:09:29:20
Howard Wood
And I looked him up because, he and his colleagues, ten, 15 years earlier, that set up what became known as the world's first fully formed marine reserve and would take them.

00:09:29:22 - 00:09:31:05
Mark Titus
You know, take some.

00:09:31:06 - 00:09:59:20
Howard Wood
I know, take zone, off Lee, in the north of Auckland. And Don said we should. That's what we should do. And, I said, well, sounds like an interesting idea. Let's look into it. Let's move forward. We and and we tried to, we made no ground at all. Over 4 or 5 years.

00:09:59:22 - 00:10:23:12
Howard Wood
It was very, very difficult. The concept of marine reserves was just wasn't they talked about it. Different government agencies talked about it, but it wasn't on their agenda at all. And we you know, after a few years of talking, we were both very busy, married kids. And so it was a kind of talking point.

00:10:23:12 - 00:11:00:14
Howard Wood
And the letters were written, letters were written to politicians, letters to ministers. And we very rarely actually got a response. But what we realized after a few years, we started looking into, marine reserves around the world, and we realized that during the 1980s, the UK actually had a Nature Conservation Act, which actually allowed marine areas, and in the United Kingdom called the United Kingdom because it comprised of four countries.

00:11:00:16 - 00:11:31:07
Howard Wood
And in England, they set up the Lundy marine area, and in Wales they set up scuba. And in Northern Ireland they set up Strangford Loch as a marine, Area of Conservation. And in Scotland we couldn't find where it's set up. And the reason was it failed. So, so the area that were going to the government were, had identified was an area quite close to us.

00:11:31:08 - 00:12:03:02
Howard Wood
As the crow flies around the sea lochs quite a long way. It was lock screen in Argyll. I mean, and I've dived that over the last 20 years. It's absolutely amazing. See, look. But it was a top down initiative by government and government, nature to organization called Conservancy Council and and Scottish Natural Heritage. And the locals didn't like being told what what they could do and what was going to happen.

00:12:03:04 - 00:12:04:00
Mark Titus
Sure.

00:12:04:02 - 00:12:27:14
Howard Wood
Certain aspects of the fishing industry basically did not want them and basically went around and said, this is going to close the whole village. This is going to close everything. It. And within two years it was pulled in. And so we looked at that and we thought, well, that's not the way to go about it. We if we're going to move forward with marine reserves, we need the community on board.

00:12:27:15 - 00:12:47:15
Howard Wood
So in 1994, 1994, five Dawn came up with the name coast the Community about and Seabed Trust. And from then on we would talk to anybody, would talk to us, and we would build and build this organization, this community body.

00:12:47:17 - 00:13:11:10
Mark Titus
That's fantastic. So this is a this is something that we're familiar with here in on the west coast of North America to, we've watched our salmon populations decline. We've seen the examples from from Europe, from your part of the world, from the east coast of the United States and North America, and then now to the West coast.

00:13:11:12 - 00:13:43:04
Mark Titus
And there was a time in the late 1800s where, it was actually an admiral in the US Navy who suggested a salmon refugia zone that would do exactly what you are in the in the work of doing right now and have done successfully. And of course, the folks at the time during that time thought, well, you know, what's at issue here is this, overfishing.

00:13:43:08 - 00:14:04:19
Mark Titus
But we we want to also be able to exploit the land. So, you know, as far as logging and mining and damming and those sorts of things. So we'll come up with this a better idea. We'll just we'll create more fish. We'll we'll make these new fish manmade fish. And that's where hatcheries got popular here on the West Coast.

00:14:04:21 - 00:14:37:03
Mark Titus
And they just scrapped the idea entirely, of course, because industry was pushing behind that. So what were some of the biggest forces that, you know, obviously getting the word out and you're dealing with government and but were you also dealing with industry and other external forces that you were pushing the, the giant rock up the hill against during all this time of trying to create coast and marine protections, the no take zone that we'll get to the success part here in a little bit.

00:14:37:09 - 00:14:43:02
Mark Titus
But, what were some of those, those other external forces that you were fighting against?

00:14:43:04 - 00:15:12:11
Howard Wood
Yeah. So, initially on the island, not a lot. 100 years ago, are not a vibrant, had an industry, and that that kind of as, as, as things modernize and the larger boats, because you're on an island, you don't really have a market. So at that point in the late 1990s, 2000, we just had eight registered fishermen on the island.

00:15:12:12 - 00:15:41:11
Howard Wood
Right. Eight commercial all load, all those, low impact, both, krill, which is like lobster pot type things and, dive shellfish. And the great thing about islands is on an island of our size, which is like 4600 people is, there's there's not many people you don't know. Right at that point. I was running a business employing 12 people.

00:15:41:17 - 00:16:09:22
Howard Wood
Everybody knew me. Don Tracy's family back six generations. When we look back on how we succeeded at that point, a lot of it was to do with was we were two locals who were trusted. We hadn't come in, and we're telling people what to do. We were talking to people who we had known and worked with for 20 or 30 years.

00:16:10:00 - 00:16:37:04
Howard Wood
So in meeting the local fishermen, literally one evening, we can. I came to an agreement that, you know, a small area put aside. Would they support it? And, basically, by the end of the evening, we did take a couple of bites of beer, in the pub together. It's nothing. But by the end of the evening, they had they had said, yeah, we we will support this.

00:16:37:06 - 00:17:06:09
Howard Wood
Wow. And what we found then was it was really important on a regular basis to keep them informed about what we're doing and what meetings we were having. And just keep you informed. Now, as we progressed and and finally got meetings with government officials and the fisheries department, they immediately, said, well, of course you need to meet the the mainland fishermen, which are the bigger fishermen's organizations.

00:17:06:10 - 00:17:31:07
Howard Wood
Sure. And we and we agreed. Of course we do. And so we we met with 2 or 3 of the fishermen's associations around the Clyde. Now, for those who don't know, the Clyde and the Clyde, the Firth of Clyde, it's not the river or the though the river comes out. It's a huge body of water. 3700km².

00:17:31:07 - 00:17:52:00
Howard Wood
Wow. And it has the whole what we call a name on side, on the Ayrshire side, and then the Argyll side and the other, we are the large island right in the middle. And so we we went to meet the, the different fishermen's organizations and the, the low impact, guys that we met a couple of times.

00:17:52:02 - 00:18:26:11
Howard Wood
They thought it was a great idea. They had one misgiving, and that was that the current proposal wasn't big enough. They wanted it bigger. We thought, okay, okay. Well let's. That's good. So that we went to see the, what we call the mobile fishermen's organizations, which represent more dredging trolling but also some creel line, and, and the individual fishermen in the first couple of meetings were also fairly positive.

00:18:26:13 - 00:18:50:04
Howard Wood
They they basically said, well, what have we got to lose? The fishery is in such a poor state. You know, they were willing to support it. But what was interesting in the following weeks was when we went back to the the head of the official, the head of initial fisheries and said, well, we seem to have got more or less agreement.

00:18:50:06 - 00:19:28:00
Howard Wood
She said, well, I don't think so because the, the mobile fisheries leaders said you can't see them, but they didn't really understand what you're talking about. And so we can realize that there's a difference in talking to individual fishermen than talking to their associations. Sure. And it took us a long time to realize that the bigger fishermen's organizations in Scotland really do not want other communities and potentially non fishermen involved in fisheries management.

00:19:28:02 - 00:19:41:19
Howard Wood
And so that was a big hurdle which is an ongoing hurdle at the moment. To this day. But, but that didn't stop us having regular meetings with them. And we did find a lot of common ground, although it's very difficult.

00:19:41:21 - 00:20:07:13
Mark Titus
Well, we're going to come back to again, as promised, we're going to come back to the victories that you've achieved in just a moment. But, I just also want to hearken to the other similarity with what's going on here in this part of the world. Up in Alaska. We have, you may be familiar. This pretty severe issue of bycatch with trawlers and.

00:20:07:13 - 00:20:55:10
Mark Titus
Yep. And, this is a very hot topic here. And these are large, large companies, billion dollar seafood companies. And there is, what appears to be, it's difficult for the public to get information that is clear and understandable. There's the the organizations that I align with. Many times, folks like Salmon State and Alaska, have have data that, that corroborate the accusations that, these giant trawlers are harvesting tens of thousands of pounds of endangered king salmon, and they're not the target species, so they get thrown dead over the side.

00:20:55:10 - 00:21:26:09
Mark Titus
And, anyway, it's it's kind of the fog of war. Right. And, and so it's really difficult to, to pierce that and obtain precise information or even information that is relevant to moving the needle forward on UN actions. And so, my question to you in that given, you know, you've got these you've got government, which is a giant, massive entity, and then you've got large fishing organizations.

00:21:26:11 - 00:21:43:14
Mark Titus
How did you persist in Pierce that fog to, to get the information and the tools necessary to move the cars forward with coast and a no take zone?

00:21:43:16 - 00:22:08:11
Howard Wood
We tried to find as much, ground that we could agree on, and we and we, we would sit there and say, well, you know, we're not going to agree on these other areas. We've got major differences. Let's, let's try and move forward that, we did have the Scottish Government did help with putting intermediaries. So chairs of meetings and we tried to move that forward.

00:22:08:13 - 00:22:34:13
Howard Wood
But with the no take zone because our proposal was much for much more than a no takes in the first. It was a no take. So an an MP and an overspill area because we wanted a trail to, to trail spatial management and full Nordic zone and to see if there was going to be, an, an area that nothing would be well managed.

00:22:34:13 - 00:23:03:02
Howard Wood
But everything that was caught would be measured. And so that was our proposal. What what what happened is we it was a real struggle to move forward. Government, the government's nature organization, the Scottish Natural Heritage, the different fishermen's organizations, knew we were moving forward. Quite often, the low impact fishermen's organizations were denied a seat at the table, which which wasn't correct.

00:23:03:02 - 00:23:30:10
Howard Wood
And we kept pointing that out. Yeah. And we didn't move forward that much, but but what so what we did was, you know, our backgrounds are not politics and media and and all. Okay. I mean, I come from horticulture and Don comes from, can a blacksmith and I and foundry, and that's great. So so that's that's our backgrounds.

00:23:30:10 - 00:23:58:12
Howard Wood
But we kind of had to quickly learn. And it was quite easy because we attracted lots and lots of, of like minded people who would help us with the media, and like minded actually politicians who would who would help us. And so one of those politicians who wasn't, local to ourselves, but but we had got to know him, was a gentleman called Rob Gibson.

00:23:58:14 - 00:24:32:20
Howard Wood
Now Rob's retired from Parliament now. But Rob said, look, you know, we're kind of stuck at the moment. Why don't you put a petition into Parliament? And leave a petition and get as many signatures you can, and then we can we we can try if we can persuade the crossbar tea groups to move petition on to a much more powerful environment committee, and the environment committee will, will be able to ask the minister direct questions and hold him to account.

00:24:32:22 - 00:25:03:08
Howard Wood
So we started that in 2004 to thousand, found over a two year period to 2006. We appeared before different parliamentary committees. So that was myself, Don, our secretary, Tom, and we were supported by at least committee meetings. You could invite witnesses. The fishing industry would invite witnesses. And we would have academics. We had Professor Calum Roberts.

00:25:03:09 - 00:25:31:18
Howard Wood
We had small scale fishermen and, help representatives. And we would also have recreational singles that and so always in the, in these parliamentary committees we would also so pre them and after to make sure that we, we gave some good media releases. And so it was not only locally, but we were trying to get national media, which was more difficult.

00:25:31:22 - 00:26:03:09
Howard Wood
Yeah. And we were successful. Successful because we, we had made contact with, with some really good people who could see that this was quite a good story. And so, so we learned, all this and it was actually the Environment Committee that kind of cracked open, the new take zone by by pushing both government and the big fishing industry leaders to sit down and talk, through and the industry leaders came up.

00:26:03:12 - 00:26:27:23
Howard Wood
Also came up with, they said, well, if we support this Nordic zone, we'd quite like to experiment with the scallop regeneration area, with it. And we thought, yeah, we could, we could talk about this and we could amalgamate the two. So we've got similar things. And so we managed to progress the lab, but those talks took two years.

00:26:28:04 - 00:26:31:18
Howard Wood
Wow. Every 2 or 3 months.

00:26:31:20 - 00:27:02:14
Mark Titus
So, we're we're we're moving toward this moment in time. What? For our listeners, what was that moment? What was that large breakthrough when you knew? It's kind of like a band, you know, when I think I always wonder about this when the, you know, the Rolling Stones, you know, knew that I can't get no satisfaction is is going to be this there's this light bulb that turns on.

00:27:02:14 - 00:27:22:06
Mark Titus
You're like, I think we're really on to something here. Was there a moment like that for you when you were like, okay, we've been pounding the pavement. We've been doing this work for years and years and years. What was that light bulb moment when you're like, I think we're going to get something done here. What did that look like for you?

00:27:22:08 - 00:27:55:18
Howard Wood
It was probably 2 or 3 little inklings. One of them was when we, managed to persuade, both the fishermen's leaders and SNH, to appear live on BBC news. And so we, we through different contacts we have in the media, and we managed to have an old broadcast from Lumley Bay that went out every hour on the hour by a satellite truck.

00:27:55:20 - 00:28:24:09
Howard Wood
And we all sat around and the BBC reporter you can actually look it up. It's, it's on YouTube. I like you all. We can have edits and edited together. So. So we had everybody's voice, the fishing leader's voice, the nature, the government, nature conservation. Person's voice tones. Voice, muscles. Voice. And we kind of sat around and, interviewed area.

00:28:24:09 - 00:28:31:02
Howard Wood
And at the end of the day, I thought, right, it's going to be very difficult to not do it now.

00:28:31:06 - 00:28:32:05
Mark Titus
Cool.

00:28:32:07 - 00:28:41:01
Howard Wood
We we are getting there. But there were lot still lots of hurdles to get over. Because that was still like a year before it was actually designated.

00:28:41:05 - 00:28:46:02
Mark Titus
So. So we're talking this this BBC moment in time was 2011 ish.

00:28:46:04 - 00:28:49:08
Howard Wood
No, 2007, I think seven.

00:28:49:09 - 00:29:00:18
Mark Titus
Okay. Got it.

00:29:00:20 - 00:29:29:13
Mark Titus
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00:29:55:02 - 00:30:15:15
Mark Titus
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00:30:15:17 - 00:30:39:17
Mark Titus
So then. As. As promised. Where did all of this incredible effort by you and so many people, so many of your friends and neighbors and compatriots, where did this ultimately lead us to? What did. And this is an ongoing story. Of course, there's it's not like you get the prize and it's over and everything's always done. You know, we all know that we have to be vigilant.

00:30:39:17 - 00:30:53:03
Mark Titus
But what what was the result of all of this effort to create a no takes zone and create real, lasting protection for this place that you love?

00:30:53:05 - 00:31:21:04
Howard Wood
Yeah. I think there's this there's multiple, areas. One of the areas is that by that time you realize that actually that we had, quite a, a good, well organized organization. And the people involved in it and it wasn't just myself and Don. You know, there were a lot of people involved in it, both committee members and supporters and volunteers.

00:31:21:05 - 00:31:51:07
Howard Wood
They'd all become pretty wise, educated. They knew their stuff. They knew this stuff on, on fishing. They knew the the issues that we were also battling. Or in some farms at the time. So we had multiple campaigns going, and we kind of became quite an effective campaigning organization. And that was because we unknown to us, we'd actually been building like an education site.

00:31:51:08 - 00:32:15:19
Howard Wood
We'd been we'd been gathering all the information and making it freely available among many people. The other thing that one of the things that I did was I collect, I started collecting any photographs or any video I could. Going back as far as possible. And of course, commercial fishing had been large, but then small, but recreational.

00:32:15:19 - 00:32:41:20
Howard Wood
Saying sea angling was huge on the island. Pre the demise of whitefish. But it was only that was only 10 or 15 years ago. So, so I, I started collecting this huge archive of photographs. And that was really important in the campaign and the media side because it showed people, local people would go and give film shows.

00:32:41:22 - 00:33:13:05
Howard Wood
And you would, you would have. Oh, look, there's my next door neighbor, James, and he's holding a huge, big Pollock. And I said, yes. And it's like, that's just 12 years ago. What do you think he'd catch now? No. Right. And they just turn around and say, you a maybe get a few mackerel. That's it. Now those visual images and and then eventually video imaging became really, really powerful, in persuading people and also getting the message out publicly.

00:33:13:07 - 00:33:17:18
Howard Wood
And I've got to go a little bit off of track on that, but that's a really important area.

00:33:17:19 - 00:33:48:22
Mark Titus
It's important to hear how how this was fomented and how, what type of tools you had and used. And, and what I'm hearing is just so much patience and perseverance. I mean, as you pointed out several times, you guys aren't full time activists, you know, getting paid just giant amounts of money from a giant NGO. You you've got lives, you got kids, you've got families, you've got your own careers.

00:33:49:00 - 00:34:19:17
Mark Titus
And, so it it's just it's fascinating and inspiring to hear all of these pieces that you cultivated to get to the end result that you're hoping for. And I think that's what we're talking about is that end result and you did. Have you achieved what you've hoped to do with coast and and and an organization? And it's a, a personal, citizen, a person who loves the land and water that is your home.

00:34:19:17 - 00:34:31:22
Mark Titus
Have you do you feel like you've achieved those things? And if so, what are those things look like? Also, last part of that question is where do you need to go from here?

00:34:32:00 - 00:35:01:05
Howard Wood
Well, you know, when I look back, from our initial, hopeful proposals, we've actually achieved a lot more than the initial no takes. So, we achieved the no take zone in 2008, and then government moved forward with the Marine Scotland Act, which was to. Well, so the new take zone was against there was no actual act that was relevant to it.

00:35:01:07 - 00:35:34:16
Howard Wood
We just had very clever legal advice. Lawyers who said it was actually perfectly possible with fisheries legislation, and that's how we went down fisheries legislation and pushed the minister that he had the right if we had enough community backing and there were right circumstances to actually close an area. But eventually, 2010 onwards, the government were moving forward with the legislation that would be able to bring in a network of marine protected areas.

00:35:34:18 - 00:35:57:07
Howard Wood
Now, marine protected areas aren't full marine reserves like no take zones I would look at on them as areas that allow low impact, fishing. But exclude the higher impact. Government don't quite look on it like that at the moment. They will do it another ten years, but we will get there. So that's an ongoing battle.

00:35:57:13 - 00:36:29:01
Howard Wood
Yeah. So, so in achievements. Yeah. We've we've we in the community have achieved way more than we set out 25, 30 years to achieve. Because not only did we achieve the, the very small new take, so we achieved a marine protected area around half the island out three miles. Well, I think it's 220km². I mean, it's very large now.

00:36:29:03 - 00:37:03:04
Howard Wood
The other thing that we've had to do, because the government said they would, they was kind of half hearted. We've had to set up our own research. So with the new take zone coming in, and in 2008 and in 2016, the management of a huge, big, marine protected area that is being monitored by ourself with our academic partners, government monitor it a little bit, but it's stretched to try and monitor all country as usual.

00:37:03:04 - 00:37:18:16
Howard Wood
Doesn't have the resources, don't have the funding. And so that has been a huge, huge part of what coast have done. And what I've been involved in. I mean, I'm going to I've learned to become an amateur scientist.

00:37:18:22 - 00:37:19:03
Mark Titus
Sure.

00:37:19:05 - 00:37:21:23
Howard Wood
I learned learned to do seabed surveys.

00:37:22:03 - 00:37:22:16
Mark Titus

00:37:22:17 - 00:37:49:21
Howard Wood
I've tutored academics who come in. The one thing about myself and Don is we over our overall diving careers, we we did quite a bit of commercial work, so we would do moorings and jobs and phases. And so we built up the skills so that when the young academics come on, they're masters of PhDs to do research.

00:37:49:23 - 00:38:22:03
Howard Wood
I for the first week, I would be with them to show them how to work underwater. So, you know, the being able to dive is great, but there's a big difference. Being able to dive and actually being able to dive and do research underwater. Your dive in has to us to become completely natural is that, you know, you've got to go back into dive mode, but your your emphasis is on your research and doing your quadrant to do just so.

00:38:22:05 - 00:38:38:18
Howard Wood
So to me, that's the area that I love. I just love diving. I love discovering things nowadays. I just love seeing the difference that closing areas makes. The beds just springs back to life.

00:38:38:20 - 00:38:52:21
Mark Titus
You're you're reading my mind, Howard. I was just going to say. So. What have you observed since the early 20 tens? Since we've had this protection in place? Have things bounce back?

00:38:52:22 - 00:39:20:03
Howard Wood
Yeah. In the new tech zone, which is which is a small area. It's only 2.67km². Only covers the third of the one. Must be. Recovery was slow to start off. With the first 2 or 3 years, we worked with the University of York, with the master's students, with the PhDs from the university and monitored it.

00:39:20:05 - 00:40:03:05
Howard Wood
But eventually, slowly, over about six, seven, eight years, lobsters started increasing to three times as much, four times as much. And then and then the lobsters dropped and then recovered. But it's the scallop numbers kept rising and slowly kept rising. The sea bed, benthic complexity. So instead of it being sand gravels all dredged away, we start seeing all the algaes, the red algaes, brown seaweeds, the high droids, Bryson's soft corals.

00:40:03:07 - 00:40:33:00
Howard Wood
As it slowly builds, it slowly becomes more complex and with that complexity, this attracts more life. Now, if you're a fish or a shrimp, would you rather live on a on a sandy seabed that's been dredged away or somewhere? There's lots of cover to hide. Lots of areas to feed. It's kind of common sense that complex ensure sea beds are so important.

00:40:33:02 - 00:40:51:04
Howard Wood
And what we've what the government allowed to do in Scotland is, is terrible. In allowing 70 or 80% of our seabed, inshore seabed to be dredged and trolled. Because it's in the end, it kills the fishing industry.

00:40:51:06 - 00:41:15:12
Mark Titus
Sure it does. And, you know, that's why we see fishermen in Bristol Bay, Alaska, which is, I've been featuring in my films, and it's where we source the salmon. I have a salmon business. The fishermen are totally down to stand down and allow the the the the amount of fish that need to get up into the river system to get there.

00:41:15:14 - 00:41:45:05
Mark Titus
Why? Because obviously, there's a lot of love in their heart for this place, but also it's their, their livelihood, just like you said, I mean, it there's there's both things. And I think when you're combining the economic reality of things with a deep love for place and the water in the land, you're going to move the needle. And the last piece, of course, is, is the work like you're doing, Howard?

00:41:45:08 - 00:42:07:17
Mark Titus
The people that you and and Don and your, your incredible network of people have bonded together because of this love of place. I wanted to ask you to move the the needle here a little bit different direction. And recently you you were appearing in the PBS documentary Hope in the water. How was that experience working with those folks?

00:42:07:19 - 00:42:43:07
Mark Titus
And there's three parts to this question. How was the experience for you? The second part is, are you hopeful, that the broadcast is going to bring better results because of the wider amount of people that are going to see this issue? And third part is just the broadest part of it. Are you hopeful in general, based on the work that you do for maintaining and recovering areas of the ocean that we need to recover?

00:42:43:09 - 00:42:45:16
Howard Wood
Right. Okay. I'll see if I remember all three. Yes. Okay.

00:42:45:19 - 00:42:49:14
Mark Titus
Let's start. Just start with working on the show. Was that a fun experience?

00:42:49:16 - 00:43:29:12
Howard Wood
It was. Yeah. What? I was really impressed with, Intuitive Content. Who filmed it? Over 20 years. We've been filmed by numerous, production companies from BBC to channel Ford. Numerous ones, all of them, are fine. But they they were not just a level above. They were, well, a level of great their, their researchers, went into every single fine detail, and they wanted to know everything.

00:43:29:13 - 00:43:43:03
Howard Wood
And when they initially phoned me, I think it was a lady Coursera. She knew a course website better than me. And that that's that is a good researcher.

00:43:43:07 - 00:43:45:01
Mark Titus
That's right.

00:43:45:03 - 00:44:13:04
Howard Wood
So they were they were very professional. They all arrived on, and there were about 14 or 15 from the States and, and a crew from, from, from Scotland. When we'd been filmed before, there were as normal as 2 or 3 people and, they all descended on my house and my wife just about 19 people, three huge fans.

00:44:13:05 - 00:44:36:18
Howard Wood
So it was, it was quite an experience. And so for the next three, three and a half days, we were filmed, we would what I was really pleased about was we could get so many people in the community of being involved, involved in the film. Great, both in the public meeting and in the local pub restaurant.

00:44:36:19 - 00:44:52:03
Howard Wood
And you saw all the faces when they initially come into contact to me. They said, we want to make a film about Kirsten. You, And I was kind of wary because, you know, you can't one person can't do this.

00:44:52:07 - 00:44:52:16
Mark Titus
That's right.

00:44:52:17 - 00:45:22:22
Howard Wood
It's a whole community. Yes, the community needs a leader, things like that. But. But if you go off by yourself, just like myself and Dawn did in the first 4 or 5 years, you get nowhere. You get nowhere. So the great thing about the film was it, it's it's the had lots and lots of the locals in. And not only that, but it was kind of from filming to actually see in a first draft was quite a long time.

00:45:23:01 - 00:45:23:22
Mark Titus
Sure.

00:45:24:00 - 00:45:49:06
Howard Wood
And we were quite nervous about the angle it was going to do. But we, we saw first draft in about February, March of this year. And to be honest, neither me. I don't could believe it. We could not believe how 25 plus years of our life had been put down into under 25 minutes, and it was so accurate.

00:45:49:08 - 00:45:50:20
Mark Titus
That's great.

00:45:50:22 - 00:46:26:08
Howard Wood
So yeah, they did a fantastic job. And the other angle that we liked was, the you we always get bracketed with environmentalist and I've just got used to it over the over the years. You get used to it and obviously really proud of winning the Goldman Environmental Award. But but we didn't start off as environmentalists. We start off as a community that are actually concerned about a seas that are sustained, the people on our island.

00:46:26:10 - 00:46:58:10
Howard Wood
And so it's it's getting this balance of sustainability of both fishing and sustainable forms of agriculture to feed us. And you know, and so not all environmentalist, but some environmentalist can go over the top too far, too one way to kind of and you kind of looked on as you want to stop everything. Well, and obviously if you're trying to bring in a no take zone, you're constantly being accused of, you're just trying to you're trying to close down the industry.

00:46:58:10 - 00:47:25:04
Howard Wood
He's trying to stop everything. And nothing could be further from the truth. And I hope, hoping the water, gets that across. And in the other films that I've seen from it, they're incredible as well. Right. Of people work in a way to try and try and change around and bring sustainable seafood, sustainable agriculture. To our communities.

00:47:25:06 - 00:47:46:23
Mark Titus
Well, I think it's a good place to start wrapping this up. And this is folks listening. This is just scratching the surface on the work. The coast is doing, the work that Howard and Don and their cohort have done. I mean, there's we didn't we didn't get into, so many of the other things that, you guys have achieved over this time.

00:47:46:23 - 00:48:14:22
Mark Titus
You you have a, marine center, you, but suffice to say, this is such a hopeful story. And, Howard does this, you know, this work that you have done over the course of your life and your career, and then dovetailing with what you just said about all these other stories in the series, the PBS series Hope in the water, does this give you a hopeful sense for the future?

00:48:14:22 - 00:48:29:10
Mark Titus
I mean, we've we've got huge challenges and we all know that, but doing one thing at a time based around community does give you a hopeful sense of what is possible for recovery with the things we love, especially our oceans.

00:48:29:12 - 00:48:59:13
Howard Wood
It does. I, I won't say I'm not. There are times when I've, it doesn't get me down. Sure. But, the, the the biodiversity crisis and and climate change, but, whether it's caused or whether it's lots of other communities around the world, I was fortunate, by the Goldman Prize, I get invited to, quite a selection of different conferences and things.

00:48:59:13 - 00:49:47:10
Howard Wood
And, and last October, myself, another prize winners were invited to the, UK and International Leaders conference in Geneva, which was people from all around the world, and that gave that give you hope because the main talking point that came out of it was that it was communities that were making the biggest difference. And, and I was I was thinking, yeah, I know this, but actually it's great to listen to all these world leaders and people saying, you know, the people are making the big difference of communities, because because well educated, well organized communities can make the change.

00:49:47:12 - 00:50:10:17
Howard Wood
And so I sincerely believe that. And, you know, one of the other is that hoping the water doesn't cover and we haven't covered, is that. Sure. Founded by course with the help of Foreign Flow International, we now have nearly 30 communities around Scotland. All they're not clones, of course, because they're all doing what their community want.

00:50:10:18 - 00:50:30:17
Howard Wood
So. So we founded a community network all around Scotland about with, with people and communities pressuring lobby and government, and local officials, to recover and maintain and then sustainably use their local resources.

00:50:30:19 - 00:50:54:00
Mark Titus
Amazing. Howard. To to wrap this up today, and and rest assured, I'm going to have an intro. The folks will be listening to, describing a lot more of the, the work that you all have done. But, I just love to get a little personal view. You know, most of our listeners are going to be, on the West coast of the United States.

00:50:54:02 - 00:51:05:16
Mark Titus
Maybe haven't been to Scotland or, the UK. Can you just paint a picture of what it's like? What? What do you love about living on your home island of Arran?

00:51:05:18 - 00:51:28:04
Howard Wood
Well, so many of your listeners, I've been I've been very fortunate in travel in many places and have many relatives. And so I've been to British Columbia and I've been to Vancouver Island, and I've been to a lot of places like that. And Scotland is not much different. They can have plenty of rain.

00:51:28:06 - 00:51:55:08
Howard Wood
The weather tends to be very mild, the snow on top of the mountains. But if it snows in my house near the, near the bay, it's normally gone by lunchtime because it's mild and wet. This in general, the scenery in Scotland, especially in the west coast, is absolutely magnificent. I'm very fortunate to live on this island, with a most amazing community.

00:51:55:09 - 00:52:21:15
Howard Wood
We have a lot like any community, we have lots of lots of issues. We have lots of ferry issues. We have lots of affordable housing issues. We have all kinds of issues. But in the bodies on the island, not just coast, but the different, bodies that I, I meet with, there's a real, there's a real campaigning zeal.

00:52:21:17 - 00:52:50:07
Howard Wood
Basically, I was once told by a councilor our council is actually on the mainland, and we quite often think they don't really understand. It's an urban council. They don't really understand our areas. And, I was once told it took me a while to figure out that, when I met a councilor there and he said, the problem with you, you islanders from Ireland is you're revolting.

00:52:50:09 - 00:53:14:05
Howard Wood
And then he looked at me and winked at me. He said, you're always revolting about something or other. And, and it was an it was a compliment because basically Island Communities Commission is that we we have to raise our voice. And if we, if we know what we're talking about, you know, we can get listened to and we can make change happen.

00:53:14:07 - 00:53:38:09
Mark Titus
What an inspiration. Howard, thank you so much for giving us your time and your wisdom and your passion. You will not escape this episode, though. Without the bonus round. Everybody does this. It's just a fun little thought exercise. And, I'm just curious because you are a, c live, I, I, too, I live right near the near the, saltwater here.

00:53:38:11 - 00:53:52:15
Mark Titus
But we we have this fun little tradition on this show where we imagine if the sea was rising and you had to get out of the house, and, of course, you're going to take your loved ones and your pets and those dearest to you. But if you could only take one physical thing, what would that physical thing be?

00:53:52:15 - 00:53:57:02
Mark Titus
That you would save?

00:53:57:04 - 00:54:01:01
Howard Wood
My boat.

00:54:01:03 - 00:54:13:04
Howard Wood
It's right outside my. It's right outside my house. I take my boat. Yes. Family possessions. I'd probably make sure my diving gear is in the boat.

00:54:13:05 - 00:54:34:10
Mark Titus
Hey, take it all in. The practical and heartfelt. That's great. And if we're imagining more about you metaphysically, like if there is one. If you could only take one trait that makes Howard. Howard, what would be that one trait that you would take?

00:54:34:12 - 00:55:03:19
Howard Wood
Well, my theory is probably persistence. Yes. It takes a while to realize that, there's there's never one battle. It's it's a series, and you've got to be in it for the long term. Because there's because winning, winning one campaign, it is always another battle to be at Howard Wood.

00:55:03:22 - 00:55:19:21
Mark Titus
I can't thank you enough. You are a warrior and a gentleman and a scholar and, a truly an inspiration to me. Thank you so much for your time. If folks want to check out the work you're doing, where can we send them to go look and get involved?

00:55:19:23 - 00:55:26:17
Howard Wood
So of course, they've got an excellent website. It's w w w dot Oregon coast.com.

00:55:26:19 - 00:55:34:23
Mark Titus
Wonderful. Thank you sir I appreciate you so much. And let's definitely stay in touch and we'll see you down the trail.

00:55:35:01 - 00:55:38:03
Howard Wood
Thank you very much Mark. It's been an absolute pleasure talking to you.

00:55:38:05 - 00:55:41:11
Mark Titus
Likewise, sir. Take care.

00:55:41:12 - 00:56:12:19
Music
How do you say what you love?
How do you say what you love?
How do you say what you love?
How do you say what you love?

00:56:12:21 - 00:56:36:20
Mark Titus
Thank you for listening to save what you love. If you like what you're hearing, you can help keep these conversations coming your way by giving us a rating on whatever platform you're listening from and leaving a comment on Apple Podcasts. It really helps get the word out. Check out photos on our Instagram feed. We're at Save What You Love podcast, and you can get links from today's featured guest in the show notes of this episode.

00:56:36:22 - 00:57:05:19
Mark Titus
Join our growing community by subscribing to our newsletter at evaswild.com and then clicking on Connect in the upper corner. You'll get exclusive offers on wild salmon shipped to your door and notifications about upcoming guests and more great content on the way. That's at Evaswild.com the word save spelled backwards wild.com. This episode was produced by Emilie Firn and edited by Patrick Troll.

00:57:05:20 - 00:57:11:17
Mark Titus
Original music was created by Whiskey Class. Thanks again for listening, and we'll see you all down the trail.