News from Mallaig Harbour: January 2020
Happy New Year to everyone! It’s not a great start to theyear weather-wise, with high winds forecast for most of the week, and not muchmovement in the harbour as I am writing this on Monday 6th. We were due to hostthe Screen Machine on Sunday 5th and Monday 6th Januarybut unfortunately the stormy weather meant that this visit had to be cancelled.
On a more positive note, the Sprat landings continuedthrough December, right up until Wednesday 18th as the weathercontinued to be kind. A total of 1,210 tonnes was landed pre-Christmas, and theboats requested the pump be left for the start of January, in the hope thatthere would be more landings of sprats. This was also a boost for our iceplant, as there was almost daily ice required!
The Marina is closed for the Winter season, so we have been reviewingthe occupancy figures. Although there were very slightly more vessels in totalthis season, there were actually less nights occupied at the Marina, with 1,401in 2019/20 as opposed to 1,602 in 2018/19. June and July were on a par with theprevious year, but August was quieter. This year is the Year of Coasts andWaters 2020 so it will be interesting to see what impact this has on marinetourism locally. There are some great opportunities to promote the area onsocial media throughout the year, not least the Sunset competition running allyear as West Coast Waters www.westcoastwaters.co.uktry and create a breathtaking West Coast Waters Sunset Trail for the Year ofCoasts and Waters 2020. There’s a different prize to be won each fortnightthroughout the year, and your photograph doesn’t even have to be new – it justhas to be shared to @WCWScotland and tagged #WCWSunsets and the location of thepicture.
Mallaig Harbour Authority is a member of The British Ports Authority,who put together a range of information in the run-up to the General Electionin December. This included their proposals for ‘A New Deal for UK FishingPorts’, which you can read at www.britishports.org.uk/fishing.This document recommends three different strands:
Building Economic Resilience – by creating a domestic fisheriesfund to replace EU funding which has clear, strategic aims that tie into widerpolicy to revive UK fishing
Restoring the Economic Link – which suggests increasing landingsinto UK ports is the best way to ensure that UK coastal communities benefitfrom UK fisheries. Increasing landings would also put UK fishing ports on amore sustainable economic footing, boosting the wider marine economy.
Maintaining Market Access – which supports Government policy tonegotiate a deal on fisheries that preserves frictionless and tariff-free tradefor seafood.
Each of these strands could have significant implicationsfor Mallaig Harbour, and the delivery of our new Masterplan, so we will bewatching with interest how policy develops.
As many of you will know, the ‘upstairs’ Denholms office inthe Harbour Buildings has been empty for a period. As Mallaig Harbour Authorityhas overall responsibility for the building, we decided as a Board that weshould approach Denholms to take back the lease on the space, with theintention of sub-dividing it so that it could be used again. This will allow usto update the whole upstairs of the building, putting in more modernfacilities. Denholms renounced the lease at the end of December, so we arecurrently working with an architect to draw up some plans, with the intentionof sub-dividing the existing space into three offices, some storage and acommunal kitchen for all the upstairs users.
Jacqueline McDonell