Argyll and Bute is a county council area, on the West coast of Scotland, but also encompasses thirty three islands, twenty-three of which are inhabited . The physical geography of Argyll is made up of a large number of sea lochs intersecting the coast, resulting in a very long coastline. A large proportion of the population , live within 1km of the coast . Of the 32 Scottish local authorities Argyll and Bute is the second largest geographically, but has the third sparsest population . At the last census, the area had a total population of 88,100, with 25% of this population being over 65 . The area is subject to depopulation, with a population decline of 0.5% between 2018 and 2019. Like Lewis and Harris, the area historically suffered during the clearances , which impacted the traditional ways of life, but also impacted maritime activities such as fishing . Employment in Argyll and Bute is proportionally more reliant upon the physical environment , compared to the general Scottish population . Whilst fisheries were once an important sector, it now supplies less than 1% of employment in Argyll and Bute .The landscape is not only used in an extractive sense, 25 liter pot but is also vital as draw for tourism, where tourism businesses account for 13% of the share of businesses in Argyll, compared with 8% in the whole of Scotland .
The geographical area of Argyll and the Clyde is the largest producer of Atlantic salmon in Scotland and around 80% of Scotland’s pacific oysters, as well as 11% blue mussel production . In addition to the sea-loch and coastal net-pen sites, there are a number of freshwater hatchery sites located within Argyll and Bute. The fish farming industry is estimated to directly support around 460 employees. Like Lewis and Harris, disease episodes and escapes incidents from salmon farm sites have contributed to controversy around the fish farming industry, which have been covered by both local and national press .The process of grounded theory analysis begins as soon as the interviews are conducted . Once the interviews were transcribed, the process of coding began using MS Excel and following the protocol set out by Charmaz and Saldana . An example of which can be seen in Table 3. This technique allowed for codes to be written alongside the interview transcripts keeping them, and subsequent themes, close to the data. It is a suitable technique for working through rich qualitative data, as it assesses every line of interview text, helping the researcher to break it down and encouraging detailed exploration, generating new ideas . Alongside the initial line-by-line coding, memos were created where new ideas were developed from the data. Initial coding was applied across all the interviews first, and consecutively. After this was completed the second and third phases of coding began, where instead within the community, and gender. Participants came from a range of occupations, although there was a focus upon those involved in the marine environment. The following sections describe the themes that have been extracted from the interviews and are set out as subtitles. These themes represent a large portion of those that were extracted from the interviews but not all of them. Themes that were less prominent in the interviews have been excluded in the interests of focus and efficiency. The themes are presented according to the case study sites. However, there were a few themes that were found in both case studies. The two case studies have shown the complexity in experiences of the fish farming industry.
They showed the disjunction between the need both communities had for stable employment, and the perceived risk that fish farming posed to local places, which were highlighted as vital contributions to community identity. It also appears that the perceived identity of the fish farming industry plays into responses to the actions and consequences of fin-fish farming. This research has shown how the identity and place attachment could have consequences for social license to operate for the fish farming industry. The complexity of experiences was shown through the ways in which participants described their concerns around the growth of the fish farming industry and the increasing technological advances, framing these in a largely negative way. Conversely, there were elements of the fish farming industry that participants felt had positive impacts, the most important of which seemed to be the stable employment the industry provides. Reactions to new developments or changes to the environment are often rooted in place based attachment, making each development unique and complex . Further complexities are created through the proximity of communities to developments , as well as perceptions of the industries that are creating change . Therefore, the complexity of perceptions across the two case study sites is not unique. The community values that contributed to the identities of communities on Lewis and Harris and in Argyll and Bute, were perceived as juxtaposing with those that were perceived as important to the fish farming industry. Community values centred around systems which have local benefits, an appreciation of the marine environment and activities that “fit in” with the communities’ identity. The participants often described industry motivations as contrary to theirs. For the most part, these were expressed as the industry working hard to mask or make up for the negative impacts of the industry on local communities. Many interviewees focused on the idea that the industry’s largest motivator was profit. Alongside this the participants recognised the fish farming companies as multinational organisations. Participants had two contrasting perceptions, one of the older structure of the industry and one of the new. Looking at perceptions of the old style of industry, it was often described by participants as being local, emphasising its role in providing local jobs and producing a better product.
These results align with what has been seen in research around the SLO for aquaculture, where it was seen that local ownership allowed for greater integration into the community . The importance placed upon the farms being locally owned, could suggest that they were more associated with community identity and place, than the current system with the majority of production being done by multinational companies . In this sense it is possible to see that perhaps attachments to place and community identity can lead to the othering of the newer fish farming industry model. The transition from these smaller, local farms to the system now in place, where the majority of production is concentrated across five companies can be seen to feed into a sense of distance between the fish farming industries and communities. Multinational companies run the risk of becoming “place-less” as they lack being rooted in one place . Oftentimes companies working at these globalised scales, weaken the ties that they have within local spaces . This was emphasised by participants from Lewis and Harris in particular, as the multinational aspect of the fish farming companies operating in the local area and the rapid growth of sites was seen as the main cause of the problems that industry faces, both in terms of community acceptance and environmental impacts. This echoes what has been found by Baines and Edwards as they highlighted that a loss of social acceptability of aquaculture was in part because of a loss of connection to the industry, which then makes relationship and trust building harder to achieve . The results of this study have shown the influence that identity and place attachment can have upon perceptions of marine developments. Both cases studies provided evidence of communities’ strong attachment to the coastal and marine environment. For some, it was sharing stories of childhoods growing up on the coastlines of Lewis and Harris and for others it was describing the activities that they partake in with the local communities and marine environment. Sense of place plays an integral role in community identity, which can be seen in the way in which interviewees described their relationship with the coastlines in both sites . It is possible that places, and the meanings attributed to them, are so influential that they become one and the same, identity and place becoming intertwined . As Devine-Wright states, opposition to developments can be linked to perceptions that such development threaten identity, because it changes place, and therefore disrupts place attachment . Fin-fish farming activities do create change in landscapes so represent a potential disruption to place attachment . Such changes, and the potential environmental impacts of the fin-fish farming industry, were recognised by participants, suggesting that these risks are noticed by communities.
Therefore, seeing what appears to be a strong place attachment in the two communities of Lewis and Harris, and Argyll and Bute need to be taken into consideration when exploring the SLO for the fish farming industry. This is because what is likely to be acceptable to a community is dependent upon the socio-cultural norms of that community, within which place attachment and its role in identity, raspberry cultivation pot play a part. These socio cultural norms then bound what is acceptable, ultimately impacting SLO. Place attachment makes the social and contextual history of a place consequential for SLO. What is valued in place and attached to identity can be weighed against the risk posed by an activity, such as fin-fish farming. Ultimately affecting what is considered a legitimate and credible . There are further examples of ways in which identity and values can impact SLO. Differences in identity and what is ‘valued’ across the parties involved, have been shown to feed into conflicts . This is especially true where activities pose a risk to spaces valuable to communities . Conflicts can then have clear detrimental impacts upon SLO, especially on trust between those involved . Identity and values also influence response to information on both sides of relationships . Information is shaped by those who share it, with or within communities, as well as shaping industry responses to acceptability challenges . How information is utilised by communities and/or ENGOs has been shown to be influential upon SLO for marine activities . Finally, identity and values can impact trust between groups. The role of identity, especially the alignment of values between the two parties is highlighted as vital . Specifically, for blue economy activities, the role of values has also been recognised as a central component of SLO .The two case studies have shown the potential lack of trust caused by a perceived misalignment of values and identity. This can be seen in the way in which participants described what they saw as the values of the industry, focussing upon profit and production. This misalignment can add to the distance between the industry and communities, which is further exacerbated by the perceptions that decision-making is out-with of local areas. Together this could create a gulf between the two, ultimately making trust harder to achieve. Using a grounded and qualitative approach allowed for a finer scale analysis has shed light upon the complexities that make up SLO for the fin-fish farming industry. It has highlighted the influential role that community and industry identity can have upon SLO. Whilst the qualitative nature of this work means that it should be not be generalized outside of the study areas, the results reflect what has been shown in the wider literature, that SLO is especially influenced by the social and cultural context in which these relationships are attempting to be built . However, these results are also novel in revealing how a communities’ place attachment could influence how it perceives fin-fish farming companies. As well as showing how they can impact perceptions of industry identity. This matters as companies look to SLO frameworks when enacting community engagement. Measures used within the aquaculture industry with the aim to ultimately improve SLO, such as third party certification or community benefit schemes, may fail to improve SLO if they do little to improve the idea of the industry as “outsiders”. How the aquaculture industry could improve this is a question for further research, but also bears reflection as to whether these incompatibilities between industry and communities is something that can be fixed, or is a results of greater chasms between local communities identity experiences of multinational companies.