Dear Supporters,
Friends of the Sound of Jura is one of more than sixty organisations that have joined the Our Seas Coalition.
Our Seas believes that Scotland’s coastal waters are among the country’s most precious assets, and worth protecting. Our waters are extremely productive, rich in biodiversity and they can support many jobs in coastal communities if they are managed sustainably.
​
Some fishing methods damage life on the seabed, destroying nurseries for commercial fish, such as maerl beds, and harming rare seabed animals. The Scottish Government has identified 11 of these Priority Marine Features (PMF) species and habitats that are most at risk from bottom-contacting fishing (scallop dredging and prawn trawling).
In 2017, a scallop dredger devastated a bed of rare flameshells in Loch Carron.
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Despite this being one of the best examples of this PMF, the flameshell bed was not legally protected. After a public outcry, the Scottish Cabinet Secretary for the Environment set up an emergency Marine Protected Area, within which it is hoped that the flameshells will gradually recover. She also promised to review the protection given to PMFs from scallop dredging and prawn trawling. This review was launched in 2018 but nothing has come of it so far and the Government’s ambition to protect these PMFs seems to have dwindled almost to nothing. The only tangible action is that trials have started of tracking devices on the smaller scallop dredgers, which would show where the boats are, without being admissible as evidence in court, if the boats are fishing illegally in protected areas.
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We fear that these devices will be used to claim that PMFs can now be avoided very precisely, so the few areas where this type of fishing is not allowed, such as parts of the Loch Sunart to the Sound of Jura Marine Protected Area, might be opened up to dredging, with just small exclusions around the known PMF locations. Records of PMFs are far from complete and the unknown ones will be at risk.
Although the Government has designated 20% of our seas as Marine Protected Areas, boats using bottom-contacting methods are allowed to continued scraping 95% of Scotland’s seabed, and some boats illegally fish the remaining 5%, where they are banned. Marine Scotland Compliance seems unable to enforce the law.
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The Scottish Government has control over the management of our inshore area within 12 nautical miles. Its agency, Marine Scotland, is obliged to follow Scotland’s National Marine Plan (NMP) and the Marine (Scotland) Act 2010, which require it to put fisheries on a sustainable footing. The National Performance Framework also commits the Scottish Government,
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“by 2020 [to] effectively regulate harvesting and end over-fishing … and unregulated fishing and destructive fishing practices and implement science-based plans, in order to restore fish stocks in the shortest time feasible, at least to levels that can produce sustainable yield as determined by their biological characteristics”.
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The Government has also committed to promote local, small-scale and sustainable fisheries, robust measures to protect vulnerable stocks, and “mechanisms for managing conflicts between fishermen” (Policy FISHERIES 1), so as to manage fisheries in the long-term public interest. Its marine planners must also identify marine carbon sinks and seek to avoid the “Colocaton of damaging activity”. Dredging disturbs the ability of seabed sediments to store carbon.
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None of these obligations are being met by our Government. In fact, the Scottish Government has failed to meet 11 of the 15 indicators it uses to measure Good Environmental Status, allowing our marine environment to decline.
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The longer Ministers stall, the more seabed habitats we lose and the harder it becomes for them and the species that rely on them to recover.
​
Our seas are a public asset and potential resource; they must be managed in a way that restores lost marine life and degraded fish stocks, and recovers the marine environment, so it can provide for us all into the future. To restore public confidence, Ministers must be guided by science and policy. We need urgent action to stop further destruction and improve the resilience of our seas.
​
So, what can be done to preserve what’s left and allow recovery?
​
The degradation can still be reversed. If we protect the seabed it will recover. If we take action, environmental and economic benefits will flow.
​
This European Environment Agency report, Marine Messages, states it clearly:
​
"Solutions for halting the loss of marine biodiversity and starting to restore ecosystem resilience, while allowing for the sustainable use of Europe's seas, are obvious and available. They just need to be implemented.”
​
But that is not happening in Scotland.
​
In the absence of any progress to protect and restore Scotland’s seabed habitats and animals, and with the laws on illegal fishing going unenforced, Our Seas calls on First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and the Scottish Government to implement their own policies and stop the chronic destruction of our seabed.
​
Reinstating a coastal limit on bottom-trawl and dredge fishing seems to be the only way for this to be enforceable, so Our Seas calls for the Scottish Government to act urgently on this.
​
Our Seas is campaigning to Bring Back the Fish - Bring Back Scotland's #InshoreLimit
Please help this to happen by signing and sharing the Our Seas petition here
Please join us in supporting this petition:-
https://ourseasscotland.eaction.org.uk/bring-back-the-fish
Friends of the Sound of Jura have recently added their name to support a Global Call for the United Nations Human Rights Council to recognise without delay the human right to a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment.
In this time of climate emergency and COVID-19 crisis, we have come together as civil society organizations, social movements, local communities, and Indigenous Peoples to address the attached letter, calling on the United Nations Human Rights Council to recognize without delay the human right to a safe, clean, healthy, and sustainable environment. We respectfully ask you to join with us, support this call, and share it with other organizations that might be interested in joining this call.
Details can be found on the following link:
bit.ly/Right2Environment_SignOn
Friends of the Sound of Jura
www.friendsofthesoundofjura.org.uk
Community Group Member of
The Coastal Communities Network, Scotland
Friends of the Sound of Jura is a Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation: SC049740
​
​
Dear Supporters,
Friends of the Sound of Jura is one of more than sixty organisations that have joined the Our Seas Coalition.
Our Seas believes that Scotland’s coastal waters are among the country’s most precious assets, and worth protecting. Our waters are extremely productive, rich in biodiversity and they can support many jobs in coastal communities if they are managed sustainably.
​
Some fishing methods damage life on the seabed, destroying nurseries for commercial fish, such as maerl beds, and harming rare seabed animals. The Scottish Government has identified 11 of these Priority Marine Features (PMF) species and habitats that are most at risk from bottom-contacting fishing (scallop dredging and prawn trawling).
In 2017, a scallop dredger devastated a bed of rare flameshells in Loch Carron.
​
Despite this being one of the best examples of this PMF, the flameshell bed was not legally protected. After a public outcry, the Scottish Cabinet Secretary for the Environment set up an emergency Marine Protected Area, within which it is hoped that the flameshells will gradually recover. She also promised to review the protection given to PMFs from scallop dredging and prawn trawling. This review was launched in 2018 but nothing has come of it so far and the Government’s ambition to protect these PMFs seems to have dwindled almost to nothing. The only tangible action is that trials have started of tracking devices on the smaller scallop dredgers, which would show where the boats are, without being admissible as evidence in court, if the boats are fishing illegally in protected areas.
​
We fear that these devices will be used to claim that PMFs can now be avoided very precisely, so the few areas where this type of fishing is not allowed, such as parts of the Loch Sunart to the Sound of Jura Marine Protected Area, might be opened up to dredging, with just small exclusions around the known PMF locations. Records of PMFs are far from complete and the unknown ones will be at risk.
Although the Government has designated 20% of our seas as Marine Protected Areas, boats using bottom-contacting methods are allowed to continued scraping 95% of Scotland’s seabed, and some boats illegally fish the remaining 5%, where they are banned. Marine Scotland Compliance seems unable to enforce the law.
​
The Scottish Government has control over the management of our inshore area within 12 nautical miles. Its agency, Marine Scotland, is obliged to follow Scotland’s National Marine Plan (NMP) and the Marine (Scotland) Act 2010, which require it to put fisheries on a sustainable footing. The National Performance Framework also commits the Scottish Government,
​
“by 2020 [to] effectively regulate harvesting and end over-fishing … and unregulated fishing and destructive fishing practices and implement science-based plans, in order to restore fish stocks in the shortest time feasible, at least to levels that can produce sustainable yield as determined by their biological characteristics”.
​
The Government has also committed to promote local, small-scale and sustainable fisheries, robust measures to protect vulnerable stocks, and “mechanisms for managing conflicts between fishermen” (Policy FISHERIES 1), so as to manage fisheries in the long-term public interest. Its marine planners must also identify marine carbon sinks and seek to avoid the “Colocaton of damaging activity”. Dredging disturbs the ability of seabed sediments to store carbon.
​
None of these obligations are being met by our Government. In fact, the Scottish Government has failed to meet 11 of the 15 indicators it uses to measure Good Environmental Status, allowing our marine environment to decline.
​
The longer Ministers stall, the more seabed habitats we lose and the harder it becomes for them and the species that rely on them to recover.
​
Our seas are a public asset and potential resource; they must be managed in a way that restores lost marine life and degraded fish stocks, and recovers the marine environment, so it can provide for us all into the future. To restore public confidence, Ministers must be guided by science and policy. We need urgent action to stop further destruction and improve the resilience of our seas.
​
So, what can be done to preserve what’s left and allow recovery?
​
The degradation can still be reversed. If we protect the seabed it will recover. If we take action, environmental and economic benefits will flow.
​
This European Environment Agency report, Marine Messages, states it clearly:
​
"Solutions for halting the loss of marine biodiversity and starting to restore ecosystem resilience, while allowing for the sustainable use of Europe's seas, are obvious and available. They just need to be implemented.”
​
But that is not happening in Scotland.
​
In the absence of any progress to protect and restore Scotland’s seabed habitats and animals, and with the laws on illegal fishing going unenforced, Our Seas calls on First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and the Scottish Government to implement their own policies and stop the chronic destruction of our seabed.
​
Reinstating a coastal limit on bottom-trawl and dredge fishing seems to be the only way for this to be enforceable, so Our Seas calls for the Scottish Government to act urgently on this.
​
Our Seas is campaigning to Bring Back the Fish - Bring Back Scotland's #InshoreLimit
Please help this to happen by signing and sharing the Our Seas petition here
Please join us in supporting this petition:-
https://ourseasscotland.eaction.org.uk/bring-back-the-fish
Friends of the Sound of Jura have recently added their name to support a Global Call for the United Nations Human Rights Council to recognise without delay the human right to a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment.
In this time of climate emergency and COVID-19 crisis, we have come together as civil society organizations, social movements, local communities, and Indigenous Peoples to address the attached letter, calling on the United Nations Human Rights Council to recognize without delay the human right to a safe, clean, healthy, and sustainable environment. We respectfully ask you to join with us, support this call, and share it with other organizations that might be interested in joining this call.
Details can be found on the following link:
bit.ly/Right2Environment_SignOn
Friends of the Sound of Jura
www.friendsofthesoundofjura.org.uk
Community Group Member of
The Coastal Communities Network, Scotland
Friends of the Sound of Jura is a Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation: SC049740
​
​
Newsletters
Home > News > Newsletters
Here is the latest Newsletter from Friends of the Sound of Jura.
Please see Newsletter Archive below for earlier Newsletters.
Newsletter No24 15 February 2021
Dear Supporter,
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Friends of the Sound of Jura has been busy lobbying for greater marine protection during 2020, despite Covid-19 preventing us from holding public meetings or taking part in events such as the Tayvallich Weekend. Some of this has taken place with the other members of Argyll Coast and Islands Hope Spot team, for instance by giving a joint presentation to Argyll and Bute councillors on the potential value of the Hope Spot’s MPAs to ecotourism, set up by Christine Richards.
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We have continued to argue for better marine protection, for instance being quoted in several articles in The Ferret (eg https://theferret.scot/fish-farm-pesticide-pollution-rise-2019/ ). To achieve this we have sought information from public bodies via freedom of information requests to Marine Scotland, Argyll and Bute Council, NatureScot (previously SNH), Marine Scotland and Crown Estates, and had online meetings and calls with their staff.
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FoSoJ has responded to the following fish farm planning permission applications:
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North Kilbrannan
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Ardyne
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Millstone point
FoSoJ is a supporter of the OurSeas campaign for the restitution of a modern spatial coastal limit for bottom-contacting fishing (See link to The Limit film below). We were pleased to see the discovery of a flapper skate eggcase nursery in the Inner Sound, Skye receive publicity on Autumnwatch and elsewhere.
Through its membership of the Coastal Communities Network, Scotland, FoSoJ has:
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Regularly attended meetings of SEPA’s Finfish Advisory Panel, arguing for reductions in pollution.
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Responded to a number of SEPA and Marine Scotland consultations.
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Supported other communities on fish farm planning issues.
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lobbied regulators, MSPs and the Scottish Government to improve regulations on the cumulative impact of fish farm pollution, sea lice on wild fish and Acoustic Deterrent Devices on cetaceans.
During 2020, FoSoJ applied for and received the following funding:
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A grant from the Highlands and Islands Environment Foundation for our new Hope Spot Project Development Officer Keira Anderson. Keira's primary role is to scope out projects that we could run during 2021; Scotland’s Year of Coast and Waters. Public engagement and citizen science seabed surveys are important elements of this, Covid-permitting.
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A Community Support Fund grant, to help us undertake citizen science.This was used to develop sea lice tracking from fish farms in the Greater Clyde, using hydrodynamic modelling. The cumulative impact of lice from multiple farms is being overlooked by regulators (see image below). This information has been valuable for our and others’ responses to planning applications, and featured in a Herald article (17/01/21).
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A grant from NatureScot, shared with CROMACH, for a dropdown video camera to allow us to start doing surveys of the seabed, aiming to identify Priority Marine Features so far overlooked by NatureScot. CROMACH will house the camera. We may also be able to use it to assess the suitability of sites for the reintroduction of native oysters, and the restoration of existing seagrass meadows, and for educational outreach, as its long cable can bring an image to a monitor on the shore.
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If you would like to have a say about the North Kilbrannan fish farm proposal you have until 19th February to email Sandra.Davies@argyll-bute.gov.uk quoting 20/01345/MFF
or make a comment online here https://publicaccess.argyll-bute.gov.uk/online-applications/applicationDetails.do?activeTab=makeComment&keyVal=QE8MP8CH0I300
FoSoJ’s objection letter is here, with a summary of reasons why the proposed farm will do harm: https://portal360.argyll-bute.gov.uk/my-requests/document-viewer?DocNo=22335719
The campaign to ban Acoustic Deterrent Devices has also become urgent, with action needed within two weeks.
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Marine Scotland is considering whether to issue EPS licences to allow fish farms to carry on using ADDs - very loud underwater loud speakers, which disturb porpoises, dolphins and whales. Disturbing cetaceans is illegal without an EPS licence. It ought to be impossible for the Scottish Government to issue such a licence for any ADD, as stronger ’seal-proof’ nets are a viable alternative.
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Will Marine Scotland act reasonably and insist that fish farms must use these nets, rather than allowing fish farms to carry on disturbing cetaceans?
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Based on past performance, it seems unlikely, so please sign and circulate this petition, https://www.change.org/p/roseanna-cunninham-scottish-government-cabinet-secretary-for-the-environment-save-dolphins-porpoises-and-seals-from-scottish-salmon-farms/u/28549578?cs_tk=AoL12BZQ-oVtG-RKLWAAAXicyyvNyQEABF8BvCarffzSwitPpPYOJPe3Lyw%3D&utm_campaign=10a1a8a9cf6e49ff97439e50d022f7d1&utm_content=initial_v0_4_0&utm_medium=email&utm_source=petition_update&utm_term=cs
And please write to your MSP if you can, urging them to ask Fergus Ewing and Roseanna Cunningham, the ministers responsible, not to issue EPS licences for ADDs because seal-proof nets are a viable alternative.
A recent report in the Ferret suggests that for these and other reasons, fish farming has had a hidden cost of £3.3bn to Scotland’s other users of the sea and to its marine environment.
A recent piece in the Herald shows that SEPA does not assess the risk that pesticide discharges might harm swimmers, when it issues fish farms with pollution licences. This applies to all of Scotland’s 200 or so farms.
The Limit is a film by the OurSeas coalition about restoring the threatened connections between people and the life in our sea. It explores the impacts of drastic declines in Scotland’s fish populations and the hidden damage to our seabed. You can view it here http://bit.ly/The-Limit.
It asks the question; How can we bring about an urgent and fair transition towards more sustainable fishing?
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There is a petition https://bit.ly/inshorelimit​ to bring back the #InshoreLimit​. There are nearly 4 000 signatures already.
Friends of the Sound of Jura
www.friendsofthesoundofjura.org.uk
Community Group Member of
The Coastal Communities Network, Scotland
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