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
​
​
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
​
​
Latest news
Home > News > Latest news
26 June 2020
Amended Wildlife Bill
Thank you so much to those who wrote to their MSPs ahead of last week’s vote on the amended Wildlife Bill.
The excellent news is that seal shooting by fish farms will cease, primarily in order to comply with US marine mammal legislation, so farmed Scottish salmon can continue to be exported to America.
Acoustic Deterrent Devices (ADDs) have not been banned but their use by fish farms now has to be reported to the Scottish Parliament, which is a small step in the right direction. Marine Scotland are required to report to Parliament by March 2021 on “future plans for the regulation of the use of acoustic deterrent devices” by the fish farming industry.
Strengthening penalties for illegal fishing in MPAs did not pass.
​
​
26 June 2020
Read these reports from Feedbackglobal.org
Read Feedback's http://feedbackglobal.org/ two Reports which explore in depth the sustainability and nutritional implications of using wild fish to feed the growing Scottish farmed salmon industry. You can sign up here to attend their webinar on 16th July exploring this research in more detail.
​
16 June 2020
Important opportunity: help tighten the law on use of Acoustic Deterrent Devices which can harm cetaceans.
We’re urging our supporters to write to their MSPs asking them to vote in favour of some important amendments to the Animals and Wildlife (Penalties, Protections and Powers) (Scotland) Bill, which will be debated at Holyrood this Wednesday 17th June.
The purpose of these amendments is to protect whales, dolphins and porpoises from disturbance and harm by the extremely loud Acoustic Deterrent Devices (ADDs) fitted to many fish farms to deter seals from biting the fish.
The amendments to tighten the laws on ADD use have been put forward by two MSPS, Claudia Beamish and Mark Ruskell, well known to FoSoJ for their dedication to reform fish farming in Scotland.
All cetaceans are legally protected from any deliberate or reckless disturbance and SNH have confirmed to the Government that ADDs can cause disturbance.
Here is a link to a sample letter you might wish to send to your MSP. Also attached is the letter from SNH to Ministers stating that ADDs can disturb cetaceans.
You can find out who your MSPs are from this website: https://www.theyworkforyou.com/msp/
Read more about the Bill here:
If you have not already signed this petition please add your name to the 25,000 signatories. It is calling for an enforcement of existing laws protecting porpoise, dolphins and whales and to ban all ADDs by January 2020.
​
​
CLICK HERE FOR LETTER FROM SNH TO MINISTERS STATING THAT ADDs CAN DISTURB CETACEANS
13 February 2020
Ocean Acidification Survey
We are so grateful to all of you who completed the recent Ocean Acidification Survey which has raised £1000 for Friends of the Sound of Jura.
Here is a message from local resident Iain Croucher thanking you for taking part in his Ocean Acidification Survey. We are very grateful to him for his generosity and wish him well with completing his Masters degree in Climate Change.
'Thank you for taking part in the survey into the issue of ocean acidification. To make credible conclusions, I needed more than 200 reponses… 300 would be great. Thanks to you help, I received 321! This is a great result that will help me, enormously, and - of course - will help the Friends of Sound of Jura. (I will make the promised donation, as soon as possible!).
The intention was to find out how much people understood about the concept of ocean acidification and, in particular, in relation to the wider understand of the causes and consequences of climate change. To do this, I wanted to target people with an obvious concern for the environment AND lived close to the coastline.
I am now going to spend time analysing the responses; this will form part of my MSc into Climate Change. I will happily share the results of my analysis, in due course. However, some early observations:
-
People are very knowledgeable about climate change - 97% know about this; with two-thirds of people claiming to know a lot or quite a bit about this.
-
People were less knowledge about ocean acidification - with 12% admitting they know nothing about it and 23% being aware of it, but not knowing much about it.
-
Of the causes and consequences of climate change, people seemed to be very switched on….
-
People were less certain about ocean acidification, but on balance people were pretty aware of the causes and consequences. There are many threats to our oceans and coastal areas from the impact of man - pollution, land discharges, etc… but the big driver for the damaging consequences of increasing ocean acidification is the presence of CO2 in the atmosphere (a consequence of carbon emissions).
I would like to thank everybody for the spirit in which the survey was completed. I liked the honesty and candidness of people who often admitted to not understanding causes, and consequences.
Finally, to help me understand and interpret some of the data, I would like to have a conversation with seven or eight people who participated in the survey. This would be in the form of a phone call and would be around 10-15 minutes. If you would be prepared to do this, please drop me an e-mail (Iain.coucher@btinternet.com).
Kind regards
Iain Coucher
​
​
20 January 2020
A call to help halt fish farm expansion in the Greater Clyde!
Since 2018 there are new permissions or applications in the pipeline to farm an additional 76,000 tonnes of farmed salmon, with much more to come. Several of these proposals are in the Greater Clyde (see attached map) where they will add immense additional pressure to an area that already has a great many pressures on it.
Uniquely, this has been acknowledged by groups as diverse as SNH, which has called for the applicants to prove that the sea lice from this farm and other new and expanded farms will not harm the precious wild salmon that breed in the Endrick Waters, upstream from Loch Lomond, and the Clyde Fishermen’s Association, which has said for the first time that the Greater Clyde already has more than enough fish farms in it.
It is irresponsible to expand the industry in such a hurry because neither the companies nor the Scottish Government has first assessed whether the west coast’s seas can cope with so many more sea lice and so much more chemical and fish-sewage pollution, all of which are dumped into the sea from the farms’ open nets for free waste disposal.
There are viable ways to farm using closed containment methods rather than open nets. These should have been considered as alternatives, but they have not been.
By chasing such rapid expansion, using the cheapest and dirtiest way to farm, the industry is doing great harm to Scotland’s environment, to the reputation of our country as an environmentally responsible nation, and as a producer of world-class food and drink. ‘Brand Scotland’ is a valuable commodity overseas but it is being spoiled by the fish farmers’ irresponsible behaviour in establishing massive new or expanded farms in the Clyde, such as Ardyne, North Arran, North Kilbrannan Sound, Carradale, and others.
The closing date for comments on the Ardyne expansion is 5th February. The reference number is 19/02539/MFF and you can submit your objection here
More information about fish farm applications and expansion in the Clyde can be found here:
https://www.arrancoast.com/north-arran-salmon-farm-campaign/
https://www.arrancoast.com/sign-the-salmon-farm-petition-to-north-ayrshire-council/
​
18 November 2019
Friends of the Sound of Jura is now a registered charity
We are very pleased to announce that Friends of the Sound of Jura is now an SCIO, which is a Scottish registered charity. When we formed in January 2017 we soon realised how rare it is for the opinions of coastal people to be heard or given due weight when it comes to issues affecting the area's wildlife and local sustainable economy. Since those early days of campaigning against the inappropriate fish farm proposal at Dounie we have aimed to inform and help our local community to express its opinions and to campaign more widely for marine conservation and the sustainable use of the sea we all share. As a Scottish registered charity we have more weight to carry out our objectives.
​
November 2019
Kelp Farming Proposal in Argyll and Bute
In November Local Authority Argyll and Bute published a feasibility study for A&B becoming a national hub for farming seaweed. The Sound of Jura is identified as having suitable areas. Seaweed farming is less damaging than mechanical harvesting of wild kelp so we will look closely at the proposals and report back to FoSoJ’s supporters as soon as possible.
19 May 2019
New MPA -A fragile flame shell reef which was severely damaged by scallop dredging on Scotland's north west coast has been granted permanent protection.
​
14 MAY 2019
Launch of the new Mission Blue Hope Spot
Supporters of Friends of the Sound of Jura attended a very special event in Ardfern on the evening of 14 May, to celebrate with CROMACH the launch in our area of a Mission Blue Hope Spot - an important marine conservation initiative - the first of its kind in Britain - find out more.
​
APRIL 2019
Our MPA is one of six others to benefit from a EU funded Marine Protected Area Management and Monitoring project.