Update :: An angry crowd walked out of the SNH meeting on Barra after being barred from airing their views on creating marine national parks in the sea around the island. SNH was holding one of its “meet the public” meetings when it was faced with vociferous demonstrations against proposals to bring rich fishing grounds [...]

Legislation to designate marine reserves around the coast of Britain is likely to contain a loophole that will allow fishermen to damage the fragile areas of seabed without fear of fines. Conservationists are warning that the Marine & Coastal Access Bill, which has its final reading in the House of Commons on Monday, contains a [...]

An eleventh-hour plea to the UK Government to scrap plans to abolish a statutory “right to fish” granted more than 200 years ago in an amendment raised by Aberdeen North Labour MP Frank Doran to the UK Marine and Coastal Access Bill. Mr Doran will argue against a clause intended to protect the marine environment [...]

Condensed from this STV News Article. An unusual fish known for its sharp spike and beak-like mouth has stunned experts after turning up off the west coast of Scotland. The grey trigger fish, or balistes capriscus, is usually found in warmer waters closer to the Mediterranean. But fishermen have caught several in creels in the [...]

Not long to go now – please sign up below if you’d like to take part. SSACN’s Scottish Shark Tagging Programme (SSTP – www.tagsharks.com ) is delighted to announce the launch of the second annual Spurdog Tagathon. The tagging event is part of our ongoing campaign to allow the stocks of spurdog and common skate [...]

Lara Leslie, an independent film maker, recently made a short film about plastic pollution and the sea. This poetic 90 second short is about Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a patch of waste 6 times the size of Britain that has doubled in 12 years. It was made in an attempt to save the sea and [...]

Rural Affairs, Environment and Climate Change This paper is part of the National Conversation series of papers, considering issues for rural affairs, the environment and climate change. According to it’s introduction, Scotland has already demonstrated that it can work well within the existing constitutional arrangements to deliver imaginative and successful policies to improve the quality [...]

Scotland’s proposed Marine Bill as it stands will only manage the status quo. It will not bring about any improvement in the wider seas outside marine protected areas. These are the principle conclusions of a report prepared for Scottish Environment LINK  by the Scottish Association for Marine Science. The report, Recovering Scotland’s Marine Environment, here [...]

BRITAIN is to ban shark-finning, the fishermen’s barbaric practice of slicing off a live shark’s fins and discarding the remainder of the body, generally still alive, at sea. The move is aimed at preserving the UK’s remaining sharks from destruction by commercial fishermen exploiting Asia’s booming market for shark-fin soup where 1lb of shark fin [...]