Hey! Dredgers! Leave our kelp alone!

We are very lucky to have kelp forests around our coasts. Kelp forests are known to be one of the most dynamic and biodiverse habitats on the planet, and as well as providing a habitat for myriad species, some of great commercial importance, they also provide unique ‘ecosystem services’ such as protecting our coastlines from storm surges and erosion, buffering rising ocean acidity, creating an environment where people of all ages can snorkel and wonder at one of the few unspoiled habitats on the planet, and perhaps most importantly given what we know about climate change, they absorb more atmospheric carbon than terrestrial forests.

For more on the science behind all this, check out this report:
Threats and knowledge gaps for ecosystem services provided by kelp forests: A northeast Atlantic perspective

Kelp is the bottom of the food chain and underpins the health of our coastal waters, so when USS heard of plans by an alginate company to be the first to dredge kelp up by the holdfast over a huge area of Scotland’s West Coast, they were horrified.

Kelp dredging has never been licensed in Scotland before, and the rules that the Crown Estate and Scottish Natural Heritage impose on the people that hand harvest are, rightly, very strict, with every species of seaweed being cut in such a way that it can regenerate, no changes being made to the habitat, and all bi-catch being recorded.  It would have made no sense to impose these rules on individuals working on a sustainable level and keeping the money they made in small coastal communities, whilst at the same time allowing a large company to come in and haul the habitat out in strips with only a negative impact on the habitat that we rely on.  You don’t have to be a Sea Saver to understand what it means to rip out the bottom of the coastal marine food web!