Unloading fish at the docks of the Albert basin, Aberdeen. Another trawler is awaiting unloading space behind the Ocean Sceptre being emptied here. Photos: Michael Cohn.
Oil and Fishermen
By Michael and Susan Cohn
The finding of oil on the North Sea bottom is changing the life of the people of the coasts for hundreds of miles around. New types of ships are nosing their way out of the harbors of eastern Scotland. Blunt-nosed supply ships that look like floating flat-bed trucks are a common sight, but there are also submarine mother ships, survey ships, fire-fighting ships, giant barges and many others that serve the oil business. The ports of Lerwick, Peterhead, Aberdeen, Montrose, Dundee and Leith have become oil supply ports. The new oil ships fly the flags of Canada, Norway, Germany and Holland as well as the ensign of Great Britain. Flying out over the Forties oil field, 110 miles ENE from Aberdeen, we saw six supply ships scuttling out to the rigs like water beetles. Alongside each giant drilling platform bobbed a fishing trawler acting as guard and rescue boat. Between the four wells was a larger trawler, rigged with a helicopter platform to play a new role as a fire fighter and a first line of defense against oil slicks. British United Trawler Corporation in Aberdeen has leased eight of their older fishing trawlers as standby boats for the operations in the Forties field alone. Additional trawlers from other ports are standing by the rigs on other fie lds that dot the ocean off the Shetlands, Orkneys and the Scottish mainland. The Scottish east-coast harbors are crowded with the oil service ships. In Aberdeen, the Victoria Basin is almost entirely given over to the oil industry. Even the Albert Basin, traditional home of the fishermen, has its dock used by
SEA HISTORY, SPRING 1978
ex-trawlers now serving the oil fields. In Lerwick harbor in the Shetlands, a new terminal has been built to handle additional freight and passenger traffic, while the older municipal pier is heavily used by visiting oil ships. A new oil supply terminal has been built and another one is building. This is in addition to the giant tanker terminal facilities at Sullom Voe on the same island. Even secondary ports like Peterhead devote more space to oil-related shipping than they do to fishing boats. Some oil companies, like British Petroleum, are aware of the problems this creates and are running as many of their activities as possible out of under-utilised ports such as Dundee. Fishermen complain of nets torn by "junk" that was dumped on the ocean bottom by oil drillers and pipe layers. Some of the claims have been settled by the oil companies but not all of them. "We're being blamed for every bit of debris on the ocean floor, much of it miles away from where we have ever worked," say the oil men. But the fishermen also claim that the oil men have usurped some of the best fishing
spots for their rigs, mile-wide anchor buoy sites and pipe lines. Many of the fishermen want to have nothing to do with oil, but the alternative employment that the oil industry offers is always present in case of disaster to fish or fishing boats. And shipyards, ship chandlers and craftsmen of all kinds need no longer depend on the slow-paying fishermen. Banks have alternative uses for their money. Clerks are leaving for the oil business and have forced the closing of some stores and service facilities. Prices of all kinds have risen drastically in the "oil boom areas''. "Once a fishermen, always a fisherman," we were told. During the summer children are seen going out with their fathers to the fishing grounds and some young men are choosing careers in fishing in preference to the oil-related work. Despite the problems new middledistance and short-distance fishing boats are being built. The number of fishing boats out of Lerwick has remained constant over the last few years. Though the number of fishermen sailing out of Aberdeen, Hull and Grimsby has declined, some of the west coast harbors of Scotland are taking over as fishing bases from the North Sea ports. There seems to be room for both fishing and oil, .though adjustments must be made under the impact of the new uses of the sea.
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One German and two Norwegian oil supply vessels in Aberdeen harbor.
MICHAEL COHN of the Brooklyn Children's Museum is an anthropologist interested in seamen and fishermen. His wife, SUSAN, has worked for the Foreign Policy Association and for the late Congressman William F. Ryan.
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