ENVIRONMENT
Protect Our Seas
News and views from the world of marine heritage and conservation
Creatures of the sea caves
Divers have documented the hidden in life Fair Isle ’ s remote sea caves for the first time . Marine surveys earlier this summer documented around 70 caves around the island , with dive teams battling weather conditions to carry out full biological surveys of four of them .
Owned by the National Trust for Scotland , Fair Isle is a small , isolated island , located halfway between Orkney and Shetland . It is famous for its birds , knitwear and historic shipwrecks , and the secrets of its sea caves are now gradually being understood .
The caves explored on this expedition included a spectacular 200-metre-long cave on the west of the island known as Diamond Cave . The expedition ’ s images show the characteristic sea cave habitats and species discovered , including corals , sponges and sea squirts .
Fair Isle is home to Scotland ’ s only Demonstration & Research Marine Protected Area ( MPA ), designated in 2016 . The data gathered will help to map the sea caves around Fair Isle in more detail and increase knowledge about habitats and species in the community-led MPA , as well as sea caves around Scotland ’ s coastline more widely .
The surveys were commissioned by NatureScot and carried out by a team of divers from Heriot- Watt University .
Slaughter in the Faroes
Dolphin hunting in the Faroe Islands has come under fire , after more than 1,400 white-sided dolphins were killed in a single day in mid-September .
Boats herded them into shallow waters at Skalabotnur beach in Eysturoy , where they were killed with knives . The carcases were pulled ashore and distributed to
locals for consumption . Known as the grind ( or Grindadrap in Faroese ), the hunting of sea mammals is a tradition that has been practised for hundreds of years in the Faroe Islands , a self-governing region of Denmark .
According to the Faroese government , about 600 pilot whales are caught every year on average . However , white-sided dolphins are normally caught in much lower numbers .
Supporters say whaling is a sustainable way of gathering food from nature and
38