News

The wrong activity, in the wrong place, can cause serious damage to the health of our seas. In Loch Carron, we saw this starkly when the world’s largest flame shell reef was damaged by a scallop dredger. (If you’re not familiar with what happened in Loch Carron, we suggest you read this before continuing here).

The Scottish Government set up a “National Marine Plan” in 2015 to manage these impacts and guide the way the sea is used by industries. Unfortunately, the events in Loch Carron made clear that Ministers are failing to comply with it, specifically by failing to ensure that use of the marine environment does not impact on the national status of “Priority Marine Features”.

As a result, the Government are now undertaking a “review” to understand what impacts of bottom-towed fishing are taking place and to assess the cost of meeting their own legal requirements… It looks like this is going to result in very little actual action and so we’re calling for a more effective and evidence-based approach to protect our underwater heritage, the future of our fisheries and the health of our seas – read on to find out more. 

 

A brief history

Scotland’s seas are a central part of our culture. Since the first people arrived to settle here after the last ice age, our seas have provided the foundations of society – literally so in some places; archaeologists have found homes made from oyster shell middens, and more recently towns such as Plockton were planned and built to harvest fish. The habitats carpeting the seabed, are the foundation of our seas. They give life to our fish, they filter our water, they store carbon and underpin the functioning of the interconnected web of life in the sea. Unfortunately they are in a historically bad condition. [Read more…]

The UK Government released a White Paper outlining their intention for replacing the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) on Wednesday. On Thursday Scottish Cabinet Secretary for Fisheries Fergus Ewing condemned the document as a Westminster “power grab” – power over fisheries has long been devolved to Holyrood (and the Senedd and Stormont). Here’s a quick summary of our view on what the White Paper means for sustainable Scottish seafood.

Context

As has been established elsewhere in the Brexit proceedings, despite leaving the EU in March 2019, the UK will in effect follow EU fishing rules in 2019 and 2020, only by 2021 will we have properly Brexited from a fisheries [Read more…]

Scotland’s seas are packed full of amazing life – the basking sharks that migrate to our west coast each summer are the world’s second largest fish, the Bass Rock is the world’s largest gannet colony and the cold water coral gardens on the Hebridean Slope hold some of the oldest living creatures on the planet. Some of the species that live in our seas are not just important in themselves; just like the redwood forests of the Pacific Northwest or the heather of our own peat bogs, they create and maintain the structure of our interconnected marine habitats. Here we look at where those species live, where they used to live and understand what the future may hold for them…

Healthy seabeds form the foundation of our seas. They are integral to its health and its ability to provide us healthy, sustainable seafood.

Introduction

From vast forests of kelp, to shoals of sandeels, muddy sea lochs to cold water corals, Scotland’s seas are rich in life. These species form an interwoven web of life, the marine ecosystem. Together this connected web provides the living, breathing and working sea that delivers fish to our tables, provides water, oxygen to nourish our lives, and circulates and captures carbon dioxide in a way that helps stabilise our climate. [Read more…]

We recently voiced our concerns about a seafood eco-labelling process for a scallop dredge fishery and have been publicly criticised for doing so. Polarised debate is clearly not in anyone’s interests, but we take accusations about our use of evidence and accuracy very seriously, and so here lay out our evidence and the reasons why our concerns remain accurate and valid. [Read more…]

Open Seas’ mission is to promote more sustainable fishing in Scotland. It is with some regret that we are now challenging the proposed re-certification of the scallop dredge fishery in Shetland.  Unfortunately the possible re-certification of scallop dredging here, under its current management regime, risks green-washing an important certification standard that should represent a benchmark for sustainability.

Scallop dredging is one of the UK’s most damaging forms of fishing. Dredge boats tow heavy rakes with metal teeth several inches long that dig into the seabed, dredging out the scallops. In April of 2017 the severity of damage caused by scallop dredging was revealed when a vessel towed through a well-known flame shell reef in Loch Carron. The killing of species other than scallops and the flattening of seabed habitats, means dredging has and continues to have a profoundly negative impact on the health of our seas. However, it does not have to be this way. Dredging in some [Read more…]

Wrasse are beautiful, charismatic fish that play a key role in the ecosystems of Scottish inshore waters. However, as Scottish salmon farmers now look to ‘cleaner fish’ as a way to address the industry’s sea lice problem, rising commercial demand is having potentially catastrophic impacts on wild stocks of wrasse. We take a look at the issue, find out what we know, what we don’t know and what we really should know about the environmental costs of the unprecedented demand for ‘cleaner fish.’ Our research indicates there is a systemic flaw in current fisheries management, which has failed to take precautionary steps to regulate this new fishery.

 

The sea lice problem

A big commercial concern for salmon farmers is sea lice: natural parasites that biologically weaken the health of salmon by feeding on their flesh and [Read more…]