23 May 2023

A campaign group’s legal challenge to the Scottish Government over fishing techniques which it says are destroying the seabed has got under way at Scotland’s highest civil court, STV reported. Open Seas, which works to protect and improve the marine environment, claims the Government’s licensing of scallop-dredging in Scottish waters is causing significant damage to […]

09 May 2023

A motion from the Scottish Conservatives calling on the Scottish Government to “reconsider” its Highly Protected Marine Areas (HPMA) proposals has failed to garner majority support. Three members of the governing SNP party rebelled in a debate over the Scottish Government’s controversial proposals for HPMAs, held on 3rd May. The commitment to introducing HPMAs, in which […]

25 Apr 2023

Humza Yousaf, Scotland’s First Minister, was answering questions during the First Minister’s Question Time in the Holyrood Parliament when a question was raised on Highly Protected Marine Areas (HPMAs) by Conservative & Unionist MSP for the Highlands and Islands, Donald Cameron. Mr Cameron asked the First Minister if he would recommit to not forcing HPMAs […]

18 Apr 2023

The world’s deepest offshore wind turbine has been installed almost 17 miles off the coast as part of Scotland’s biggest offshore windfarm. The Scottish energy company SSE installed the 2,000-tonne turbine foundation at a depth of more than 58 metres (192ft) in the early hours of Easter Sunday as part of the £3bn Seagreen offshore windfarm. […]

12 Apr 2023

UNESCO has approved eight new ecohydrology demonstration sites in Brazil, Chile, Italy, Pakistan, Poland, Sierra Leone, Tunisia, and the United Kingdom. With these new additions, the Global Network of UNESCO Ecohydrology Demonstration Sites now totals 37 sites in 26 countries The Eddleston Water project, supported by the Scottish Government in the United Kingdom, is investigating the effectiveness […]

21 Mar 2023

A network of new Highly Protected Marine Areas (HPMAs) will have a catastrophic impact on the industry, ministers are being warned. The Scottish Fishermen’s Federation (SFF) said the strict conservation zones were far too big a price for fishermen to pay when they lacked ecological justification and were being introduced for purely political reasons. In […]

14 Mar 2023

Salmon deaths on fish farms in Scotland nearly doubled last year, according to Fish Health Inspectorate (FHI) Scotland. FHI data shows that nearly 15m salmon mortalities were reported by farms in Scotland from January to November 2022, the latest data available, compared with 8.58m in all of 2021 and 5.81m in 2020. Deaths are caused by growing […]

06 Mar 2023

Cabinet Secretary for Rural Economy and the Tourism, Mairi Gougeon has told Scottish Labour MSP for Central Scotland, Monica Lennon, that the government has no plans to introduce a three-nautical mile limit. When the Scottish Labour MSP for Central Scotland asked in a written question: “To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to […]