Restoring oyster beds could bring back bright blue seas

AN OYSTER revival project will make Britain’s seas as blue as the Bahamas, Ben Goldsmith has said as he launches a nature restoration group.

The financier and board member at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is part of a coalition of landowners and nature organisations hoping to bring back life to Scotland’s landscape.

One project is the restoration of native oyster beds across the country.

Oysters secure the seabed, stopping grime and debris from floating up, and filter the water, making it purer. Mr Goldsmith believes that widespread oyster bed rebuilding could make the seas a sparkling blue, like they were before the Victorian era, when the beds were dredged.

He told The Daily Telegraph: “Britain was encircled with a halo of native oyster beds before we dredged them all out in the late Victorian era. So oyster beds are down 95 per cent.

“But if you’d looked at the coast from almost any part of our island 150 years ago you’d have had bright blue sea, because the oyster beds held the seabed in place. And then we dredged all the oysters, and that’s partly why the sea is brown now.

“But the seas would have looked very different, a lot more like the Bahamas, in terms of the colour of the sea in Victorian times.

“They [oysters] hold the seabed in place and they filter the water. So you combine that with agricultural practices that don’t lose soil, and you have bright blue seas.

“We just need to have the oyster beds back and stop losing our soil through poor agricultural practice.”

The Highlands and Islands Environmental Foundation will help to fund projects such as this by partnering with communities to solve the environmental challenges on their doorsteps.

The charity has already raised more than £100,000 over the past year and hopes to raise hundreds of thousands more over the next few years from individual donors and businesses with an interest in the Highlands and Islands.

Created in partnership with Mr Goldsmith’s Conservation Collective, the foundation is the philanthropic network’s second place-based foundation in the UK.

Sally Mcnaught, executive director of the foundation, said: “It is now more important than ever to work to regenerate and restore our damaged environment. The Highlands and Islands offer unique opportunities to improve Scotland’s environmental future and support a green recovery.”