Fishing Meids
Charlie Simpson and Davie Anderson on the Pilot UsZoomFishing grounds carry names that relate to the seabed. A skor is a hollow in the seabed and a groin is a shallow bank in the sea. In the days before navigational aids such as radar and global positioning systems (GPS), baas (sunken reefs) and fishing grounds around Shetland were identified by lining up pairs of onshore landmarks - fishing meids.
Shetland Amenity Trust recognised that important information about fishing species and stocks, fishing methods and place names were at risk of being lost through the changes in methods of navigation. Therefore the Shetland Place Names Project and Shetland Biological Records Centre jointly developed a project to record Shetland's fishing meids by interviewing retired fishermen to:
- Collect information on meids and the fishing grounds that they were used to locate;
- Gather information on place names relating to meids and the wider coastline;
- Collect an oral history relating to the contemporary environment, fishing species and stocks and culture.
