Schemes working to improve the marine environment and learn more about its habits and habitats have been given a multi-million pound funding boost.
Projects include using sonar to find lost creel pots – which pose an entanglement danger to marine life – and deploying acoustic monitoring devices to find new spawning grounds for herring.
Other projects are learning more about the condition of and improving habitat for species such as seals, seabirds, native oysters, flapper skates, horse mussels and marine mammals, and planting vulnerable dune ecosystems in St Andrews.
The funding, from the Scottish Marine Environmental Enhancement Fund (SMEEF), is supporting work from the Outer Hebrides, West Highland, Argyll, Clyde, Solway, Forth and Tay to Orkney and Shetland.
A total of 54 projects so far benefited from a cash injection through the SMEEF.
More than £4m is also already pledged from private companies to support more projects over the coming years.
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Sarah Brown, SMEEF Project Manager, said: “Our coasts and seas are absolutely essential to tackle the nature and climate change crises.
“It’s wonderful to have so many private companies donate to help our rich marine environment recover.
“All of the amazing projects we’ve funded are using cutting-edge technology to discover the best ways to ensure our marine habitats and the species they support are healthy, resilient and productive for future generations."
SMEEF is unique in that it enables sectors that use Scottish waters, such as renewable energy, aquaculture, fishing 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.
Ms Brown added: “We know there are many more great projects out there that we would love to support - but we need more funds if we are going to scale up our efforts to recover nature in our seas. Please get in touch if you’d like to help!”
SMEEF is hosted by NatureScot, and managed jointly between the Scottish Government Marine Directorate and Crown Estate Scotland.
All donations to the fund are assessed by an Ethical Contributions Board and decisions on which projects to fund are made by a Grants Panel.
Both the Ethical Contributions Board and the Grants Panel have independent chairs and include input from Scottish Environment LINK.
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