Green marine environment fund distributes £3.2m - NatureScot

A trailblazing marine environment fund – designed to help ensure Scotland’s coasts and seas are healthy, productive and nature-rich – is already having a great impact, after its first two years saw over £3.2m in funding distributed to 45 projects.

Examples of the projects funded around Scotland include improving the ability to rescue stranded marine mammals, using cutting-edge technology to track the health of the marine environment, restoring sand dunes, and improving seagrass beds.

The Scottish Marine Environmental Enhancement Fund (SMEEF) has so far distributed nearly £3.3m, with £2.9m coming from the Nature Restoration Fund, along with almost £400,000 from private finance (led by the offshore wind industry). It is a new financial tool designed to help bridge the green finance gap for Scotland’s marine and coastal environments. The Fund enables sectors that use Scottish waters, such as aquaculture, fishing, energy and shipping, to voluntarily contribute to the health and biodiversity of Scotland’s seas by creating a grant pot. This is then distributed to marine nature enhancement projects across the country.

Under the scheme, £33,889 was granted to British Divers Marine Life Rescue for a mobile command and control centre to assist stranded marine animals. For the first time this gives the rescue team the ability to deploy a vehicle that can support them at a rescue site – this is vital, as 80% of the UK’s mass strandings happen in Scotland.

The Hebridean Whale and Dolphin Trust (HWDT) received over £101,087 to purchase new survey equipment for their sailing vessel, such as hydrophones, acoustic recorders, navigation equipment and cameras. This will allow the best quality data to be collected for years to come, as well as to revamp their citizen science reporting app, Whale Track.

Alison Lomax of HWDT said, “The funding allowed for the first substantial upgrade of the acoustic setup on Silurian since HWDT’s acoustic monitoring began more than 20 years ago. It really has marked a transformative step-change in our capability to assess the changing soundscape of the west coast marine environment and unearth what is potentially causing barriers to nature recovery in Scotland’s seas.”