FIMETI and FIMRO

The Fair Isle Marine Environment and Tourism Initiative achieved its primary purpose in 2016 with the declaration of a Marine Protected Area for Fair Isle waters. This was of course only a beginning and it was clear that a shared approach, still led by the Fair Isle community but drawing in other interested parties, was the way forward, backed up by a firm legal structure. The Fair Isle Marine Research Organisation (FIMRO), a body with charitable status, was born.

 

The main purpose of FIMRO is to demonstrate to the wider world the impact coastal communities can have on sustainable management of their marine resource; and to support this by building on a research programme already under way. In this respect, it met the Scottish government’s Marine Act (2015) category of Demonstration and Research MPA. In 2016 Fair Isle became the first DR MPA for Scotland and a world-wide pioneer in this form of marine management.

 

The recently published 'Sea Area Fair Isle' booklet is not just a final fair well from FIMETI but fits neatly into the Demonstration and Research envelope, thus creating a bridge to FIMRO as well as an early document for the new initiative.

 

 

 PURCHASING THE BOOKLET

 

'Sea Area Fair Isle' can be purchased directly for £15 + £6 postage and packaging (p&p £10 outside the UK). For those visiting the Island it is available at Shop and Museum. Please use Contact Page on this website to place a mail-order order. Income from the sales goes to the Fair Isle Marine Research Organisation (FIMRO) to further their work.

Sea Area Fair Isle: that’s a familiar phrase to all who follow the radio’s Shipping Forecasts. It is also the title of a booklet now at the printers.

 

'Sea Area Fair Isle' - 38 page publication is a tribute to the Fair Isle community’s intrinsic dependence on the sea through the millennia, and the community’s efforts – past and present – to ensure that this vital resource is safeguarded for the generations to come. It describes how impacts on that resource have focused community minds and explores the factors behind the ensuing changes, which have accelerated in recent times. Finally, it looks to the future and the positive steps being taken to demonstrate to the wider world the huge cultural, economic and environmental values the seas bring to this small Isle.

 

'Sea Area Fair Isle' is sponsored by the Williamson family, written by Nick J Riddiford and Kerri Whiteside and is a final addition to a series published over the last twenty years by the Fair Isle Marine Environment and Tourism Initiative (FIMETI).

 

The others in that series were: Fishing Traditions of Fair Isle by Emma Perring, Standing into Danger: Shipwrecks of Fair Isle by Anne Sinclair, Exploring the Coasts and Shores of Fair Isle by Elizabeth Riddiford, and the three-language (Norwegian, English, Swedish) titles En Smack av Nord/A Taste of the North/Smakbitar Från Norr and Håndverk/Handwork/Hantverk edited by Anne Sinclair – all now out of print.