Scotland's The Ethical Shellfish Company closes due to COVID-19, Brexit

The Ethical Shellfish Company, based in Mull, Scotland, has closed as a result of difficulties caused by the COVID-19 crisis and Brexit.

The Ethical Shellfish Company, based in Mull, Scotland, has closed as a result of difficulties caused by the COVID-19 crisis and Brexit.

The company opened 12 years ago by founder Guy Grieve, offered locally caught and farmed lobster, brown crab, hand-dived king scallops, langoustine, rope-grown mussels, and oysters.

In an email sent to customers, Grieve said the coronavirus pandemic had shut down the company’s foodservice business. It then pivoted to home delivery, but was forced to sell its boats to float the company through the period of lean sales. Then, due to Brexit, it lost its supply of seafood from other local dive-fishing boats in the area as their European crews were forced to leave the country.

“This has been a very difficult decision which has caused us considerable anxiety and heartache. We do not consider it a failure – rather an era that has come to an end. But running an ethical fishing business presents real challenges which, when combined with the events of the past few years, have in the end defeated us. We thought it would be worth setting out the reasons as we see them why our model has not worked in the long term," Grieve said.

“This left drastic crew shortages which in the end caused our main supplier to quit fishing altogether and leave Scotland,” Grieve said. “It also made it even more difficult to staff our small operation on Mull.”

A lack of affordable housing caused by the rising popularity of Mull as a holiday destination also combined to doom the company, Grieve said.

“It has always been a challenge to find staff on the islands, but the explosive growth of holiday accommodation following COVID has made it even worse. We tried to find people to work for us on Mull but with nowhere to stay it is nigh-on impossible to attract people to move there. The scourge of second homes means that houses stand empty for months waiting to be populated by holiday makers in the summer. Meanwhile real working people, who would contribute to the community, struggle to find places to stay, and any homes that come on the market are snapped up at inflated prices as second homes,” Grieve said. “It felt like the final insult when in the end we were asked to leave our business premises so that it could be turned into - you guessed it - yet another holiday home.”

Finally, Grieve blamed recent changes in law that made it more difficult to operate a scallop-diving business.

“The mainstay of our business was hand-dived scallops, but recent changes to legislation relating to scallop diving have made it much harder to set up as a dive fisherman. Many of the increased regulations feel unnecessary and arguably make diving less rather than more safe,” it said. “It certainly suits some people to not have divers down on the seabed witnessing the damage that's being done on a daily basis. Whether or not this is the case, the loser is the sea, as health and safety legislation moves ever in favor of bigger boats fishing in ways that are damaging to the marine environment. And hand-dived scallops will become increasingly difficult to find.”

Grieve cited poor fisheries management, including the use of scallop dredging and trawling, as “decimating” to the local scallop stocks.

“Unfortunately, it remains the case that large-scale fisheries and bulk supply are still encouraged by our government, with little support or encouragement for small-scale fishermen who are fishing responsibly with care for the environment that supports them,” Grieve wrote.

Photo courtesy of The Ethical Shellfish Company

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