For years our Scottish Government has been presenting its marine conservation policy as a big success by claiming that 37% of Scotland’s seas are “protected”. However, severe damage to seabed habitats is still occurring inside these supposedly protected seas. This article highlights evidence we have collected from the Small Isles Marine protected area and the government inertia that is now exacerbating the fisheries and marine biodiversity crisis unfolding in Scotland’s seas.
On the west coast of Scotland and to the south of Skye are the Small Isles, a group of islands in Lochaber: Canna, Eigg, Muck and Rum as well as a number of small skerries. The roughly 150 permanent residents of these islands rely on a ferry from Mallaig that crosses some of the most biodiverse seas in Scotland. The underwater seascape around the Small Isles – formed by glaciers in the last ice-age – contains productive, carbon-storing muds and maerl beds, horse mussel reefs as well as the largest known bed of fan mussels, now sadly the rarest reef-forming mollusc in Scotland.
And yet in recent decades these habitats have been under threat. [Read more…]