Cromarty Rising

In our mini-series looking at the Port’s recent propaganda offering, here’s another extract: “One caveat to all that lies in the need to protect the environment. few stretches of water have more environmental designations attached to the,. After more that 40 years, respecting the constraints they impose comes as second nature to the Port. Indeed […]

Here’s another extract from the CFPA’s recent 16 page pull out. Worth a read just to highlight how much they are happy to distort the truth. “This has mean investing in infrastructure that will meet their needs, most recently the £25 million Berth five”. This makes it sounds like the CFPA paid for for this […]

It’s time to start turning our attention to the CFPA 16 page advertising pull out provided in our local papers. Here’s what they’ve said about STS. So, the reason they are applying is because business has fallen away at Nigg and the new location will more attractive to oil companies. Why do you think oil […]

Well here we are, Easter weekend, tourist season kicking off and here’s the view from Cromarty Harbour, nice. We’re especially thankful to the CFPA to arrange for the red tug to have it’s engines running all night, just off Cromarty, the sound reverberating around the whole town. Now imagine the sound of several tugs and […]

There are a number of important salmon and sea trout rivers draining into the Moray firth, namely, the rivers: Ness, Conon, Beauly, Nairn, Findhorn, Spey, Brora, Shin, Oykel and Cassley. These rivers rely on the passage of fish to and from the rivers through the waters of the inner Moray Firth. An oil spill would […]

A difficult question. There is no doubt that the Moray and Black Isle coasts are popular with both day trippers and tourists who come to enjoy the natural assets of the area whether that be via walking the core paths, cycling or staying in local holiday homes, B&B’s and hotels. Initiatives are underway to attract […]

Before we start dissecting last weeks bumper 16 page colour pull-out in last weeks local papers, one of our eagle eyed correspondents has noticed that this would appear to breach Advertising Standards Authority code of practise, see: https://www.asa.org.uk/type/non_broadcast/code_section/02.html   RECOGNITION OF MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS The CAP Code: The UK Code of Non-broadcast Advertising, Sales Promotion and […]

One implication of ballast water discharge during STS that we haven’t highlighted is the potential to transfer phytoplankton that can form harmful algal blooms or ‘red tides’. The public health implications are well documented and include Paralytic Shellfish Poisoning (PSP) which can cause severe illness in humans. Any such incidence would cause shellfish fisheries to be […]

Commercial fishing in the inner Moray Firth is an important source of income and jobs for fragile rural coastal economies. There is a relatively small demersal and pelagic fishery, with the majority of landings being shellfish. The key target species being: brown crab, velvet crab, squid, nephrops, lobster, king scallop, whelk, periwinkle, mussel, razor fish, […]

More from the Scottish Government FOI. Here’s an email the backs up the UK government line, that Marine Scotland were reminded that they had replied to the consultation – it is dated 11th Feb 2016 – 3 days after the consultation closed, the reply from Marine Scotland is “correct and noted”. A bizarre response.