Photo by Ekaterina Zlotnikova
Scotland’s largest known flame shell bed has made a complete recovery following the designation of a Marine Protected Area in Loch Carron, Wester Ross, a result that researchers and conservationists are hailing as a model for decisive marine protection.
Two reports commissioned by NatureScot found that flame shell beds in the Highland loch appear to have been fully restored after the area was declared an MPA in 2017. The first report, by researchers from Heriot-Watt University, re-assessed the condition of flame shell beds at three monitoring stations in outer Loch Carron that were originally surveyed in 2017. At that point, scallop dredge tracks were clearly visible, with nests disrupted, fragmented and flattened. When the team returned four years later, the damage was no longer visible at any of the three stations, with the areas now comprising well-defined nests – a sign of healthy flame shell beds. A subsequent NatureScot video survey found the bed had expanded further into the loch.
Rie Pors, NatureScot’s marine habitats ecologist and surveyor, said: “It’s wonderful news that an important habitat like this, which is home to so many marine animals and plants, can recover relatively quickly from damage. It shows the big difference a Marine Protected Area can make for the animals and habitats in our seas. Loch Carron is a real success story, showing what quick and decisive conservation action can achieve.”
Pors was careful to note that the outcome may not be universally replicable. She cautioned: “It’s important to note that while the bed in Loch Carron appears to have recovered fully, recovery may take longer in other locations, depending on the health of the bed before damage and on the extent and intensity of the damage. Fortunately, in Loch Carron, dredging didn’t cause a mass removal of nest material, as it was the result of a single dredging incident over an otherwise healthy bed. It left a trail of broken and separated nest material on the seabed from which the flame shell beds appear to have recovered.”
Flame shells, small, brilliantly coloured saltwater clams named for their fiery-orange tentacle fringes, live hidden on the seabed in nests built from shells, stones and other materials, bound together to form dense beds. Those beds support hundreds of other species and help to stabilise the seabed. Found mainly on Scotland’s west coast, the species is also protected in five other MPAs around Scotland’s coasts.
The Loch Carron MPA was established on an urgent basis in May 2017, following reports of dredging damage, one of the few instances in which Scotland’s marine protection framework has been deployed reactively and at speed. A Marine Conservation Order prohibiting the use of all towed, bottom-contacting gear came into force at the same time, providing the legal basis for the recovery now documented by researchers.