Welcome to the Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee's 20th meeting of 2019 before we move to the first item on the agenda. Can I remind everyone to switch off their mobile phones or put them on silent as they may affect the broadcasting system? The first item on the agenda is for the committee to decide whether to take item 3 on today's agenda and consideration of all future evidence on our marine inquiry in private. Are we agreed? Thank you. The second item on the agenda this morning is to hear evidence as part of our marine inquiry. This morning, we will hear from two panels. The first of our panel will focus on the current health of Scotland's marine environment. I am delighted to welcome Katie Gillum, the team manager for marine ecosystems of the Scottish National Heritage. Good morning. Professor John Baxter, who is appearing in a personal capacity. Professor Michael Brothers, from the Scottish Association for Marine Science. Good morning to you all. I want to start by talking about good environmental status. Can I ask you all to give your views on what progress has been made towards achieving good environmental status in Scotland's marine environment? Katie, you want to go first. There is a consultation out at the moment, which gives an overview of where the UK thinks it has got to in terms of achieving good environmental status. You have probably already seen that, so I won't go into lots of detail on it, but there are some key points from that. Essentially, the consensus is that we haven't yet achieved good environmental status for all the things that we are looking at. There are some things that we have done better than others on. For example, on the water quality side of things, looking at contaminants, we are achieving good environmental status. There are other areas where there are big areas of uncertainty. For example, if we look at whales, dolphins, porpoces, underwater noise, we are still at the stage where we are trying to collect enough data and develop the assessment methodologies to enable us to draw those kinds of conclusions. It is also fair to say that there are some areas where we are saying that we are not meeting the targets at the moment. Areas such as sea birds, for example, we are not meeting good environmental status. That has been put quite clearly in the consultation paper. Anyone else? I agree with what Katie has said. It is a big challenge to establish whether we are meeting good environmental status. There are other areas that Katie has not mentioned. We clearly are not, particularly things such as harbour seals in particular, which are showing significant declines. I think that one of the biggest areas of challenge is the benthos, the seabed habitats. The amount of data that we have on many of those is limited. The challenges of the cording and surveying the marine environment are huge. We are getting better at it, but it is extremely expensive and very challenging. I think that there are certain areas where we still need to gather more data. There is also, as I am sure that you are aware, the work that is going on in relation to the advising of the Scottish Marine Atlas that was published about a decade ago now. That work is on-going at the moment in terms of further assessments of all the different features of Scotland's marine environment. We would hope that that work will be completed sometime next year, but at the moment there is not a final date for that. As an ecologist, my primary interest is in what the abundance of marine organisms is. Defining good environmental status requires us to understand how the abundance of those species relates to what you would normally expect for an environment that was in good condition. That definition is very difficult where you have environments and populations that may already be degraded in some way. You have a shifting baseline, in fact. Whether we can say that we have achieved good environmental status or not is still an area of question. The other main issue is that, with climate change, those baselines are going to continue to shift irrespective of whatever efforts we make to try to protect our environment. It is an area of active research for me to try to get a better handle on how to come up with objective criteria for saying that we have achieved that status. A couple of you have mentioned data and there are gaps in that data. Can you maybe outline where those gaps are and how they might be addressed? I think that I mentioned data to begin with, so I will take that one first. I think that there are lots of gaps, if you like. Scientists always say that they do not know enough and we need to know more. I think that it is important that we do not get trapped into that way of thinking and do not do anything until we know more. We know a lot and we should act on what we know. The main areas where we are still lacking data are simple things such as the distribution and extent of many of the benthic habitats in Scottish waters. There has been a lot of work done over recent years in mapping and the techniques that allow us to map the seabed are improving all the time. It is a huge area that we are trying to cover and there are huge gaps. Employing the most efficient ways of gathering those data is really important. There is probably a lot more data out there that we are aware of and we need to mine other sources of data, industry, etc. They are getting better at sharing those data but there are still gaps there. That is what I was going to ask. There are a lot of people in different sectors operating in the marine environment and they are all going to have their own sources of data. It is just a case of coming together and realising that it is the environment that you all share. Exactly. That is where we really need to... There needs to be greater effort in bringing people together. It is getting better, undoubtedly getting better. I am long enough in the tooth to remember times when it just wasn't shared. Different people had their data and that was it. The other area where we need greater understanding is one that Mike mentioned in relation to climate change and all the different factors. We need to get better understanding of what sea temperature rise is going to mean for many of the organisms in Scottish waters. The focus has largely up to now been on temperature but we mustn't ignore the other major drivers that are coming along. Ocean acidification is an issue which is becoming a greater issue around the world. At the moment Scotland is fairly free of that but it is coming our way. The other one, which is still very much left field but is a great concern, is ocean deoxygenation where we are getting huge dead zones appearing. Not in Scottish waters at the moment but there is the potential for those in some of our deeper sea locks and in some of the more offshore areas of Scotland. That will be very detrimental to all life in the ocean. Have the causes of that been identified? The causes of it? Yes, as the sea warms up, it is able to hold less oxygen. The warmer the water, the less oxygen and less gases that can be held in the water. As the oceans warm, you get less oxygen in the water. Utilisation and pollution also causes extensive dead zones. There was something on the television just yesterday reporting on a huge deoxygenated zone in the Red Sea which is the result of run-off from countries around their fertiliser run-off which has created utrophic situations. We understand the physics and the chemistry. We do not yet fully understand the biological implications. We are opening up a huge debate. We have identified that there are significant gaps in our data although I am not sure which of those matters most. Given that we have about a quarter of Europe's seas, how are our neighbours doing in terms of the data that they are relying on and that they have? A subjective, high-level answer is perhaps what we are doing because are we doing better or worse than our neighbours? Shall I have a go at that one first of all? I think that we are in a relatively good position compared to other countries across Europe and that reflects the importance that we place on our seas culturally, economically and socially in all sorts of ways that are of great importance. For example, there are programmes of work going on across Europe looking at identifying by-catch and looking at the issues around that. Whilst we would say that there are still gaps in our data in Scotland in understanding by-catch and what it means for dolphins and porpoises and whales, we have a monitoring programme that is in place that covers the UK and we have something that is more comprehensive than in other countries. In some areas, one of the important things to emphasise is that we are trying to collaborate at that much broader scale so the Auspar convention becomes really important with the work that we are doing through that. There is a lot of information that is being collected by other countries and part of the work that has come through the marine strategy framework directive has placed more emphasis on working collaboratively through those regional seas conventions and over the last few years developing a series of common indicators so that we can pool the data from different countries and start to make assessments at a broader scale. That is really important in the marine environment because the scale at which the issues occur and the scale at which the management response is needed is often broader than at the Scottish scale it might be at the scale across Europe or across the north-east Atlantic. We are getting better at referring to what you were saying earlier about collaborating with different organisations but I think we are in a relatively good position compared to some other countries in terms of the data that we have. I agree with that broadly in terms of when we are talking about fish and birds and marine mammals but for other habitats I do not think that we do quite as well as other countries in my mind I was perhaps more thinking about static you know, metal beds, corals, our understanding of that rather than mobile parts of the biology of the seas where inevitably we share. I do know that Norway for example is interested in it's kelp forests and does an awful lot of research into the extent and how the status of those forests are changing over time. We've managed to map ours, well at least get some good survey data from them back in the 1990s but it's fair to say that level of activity hasn't continued at the par with what's going on elsewhere so we may well be doing okay for some parts of the ecosystem but I don't think we are and others. I think it's actually where the interest lies with individual researchers that's where the focus will be and as has been said there are some habitats where there's been a lot of work done in recent years on those specific habitats. You mentioned Merl, there's a lot of work being done on Merl beds or the biology of Merl beds.  There's work going on to try and help us to at least model where some of these habitats might be which would possibly help us focus our survey work in the future so that we can go and check whether where the models say things are where they should be. The other area where I think we are very well served is the UK, Scotland has a great history of marine research so we actually have probably a better historical record of some of our habitats where we know that they're there we've been studied for a long time so we're in a good position to actually make some sort of assessment on how things have changed in specific areas over a longer period than maybe many of our European neighbours. Could I just maybe add something on the benefit side of things if that was particularly what your interest was in? I think there's a question of scale in there as well so I think if you're looking at a very broad distribution of where the sediments and where the rocky habitats are then we have very good information on that and we can use a combination of the actual data and the predictions to give broad distribution maps across our seas. I think if you're then wanting to look at a finer scale the information that's I guess most comprehensive is probably within the marine protected areas for those benthic habitats and particularly for things like you mentioned what we call the biogenic habitats which is where the plant or the animal is actually creating the structure so things like mill beds and horse muscle beds and the information that we have within the NPA network is getting much better. It gets older and I guess there's fewer data points outside the NPA network but that is something that we're looking to try and address. Good morning to the panel. I could ask you specifically you'll be aware that both our own committee and the REC committee have been scrutinising the way forward for the aquaculture industry at the moment and we're wondering in terms of research that's being done about the effects of that industry on the seabed specifically but the wider marine environment if you can draw any attention to either the research or indeed the gaps. Just briefly as we have a short amount of time. At SAMS we've had an effort to model the settlement of fish farm waste effectively fish, feces and excess food onto the seabed itself because that additional load of organic material is what the real problem is underneath fish farms. The model that we developed is called Deeper Mod. It's in use by SEPA at the moment to try to establish what sort of footprint one should consider when it comes to looking at the seabed itself. It's pretty well understood how the seabed organisms respond to that additional load of organic nutrients from one end of the scale almost completely without life. There'll just be with no oxygen a layer of blueish kind of bacteria on the sediment surface through to species which can tolerate low oxygen then at the other end of the scale a perfectly undamaged environment. That response is well enough understood to allow us to regulate how long a fish farm should be in a certain place, what the stocking density of those fish might be. I think that's a useful piece of science that does help us with that kind of regulatory process. What's probably less well known is how many fish farms you can put in a larger area and what the impact on that maybe sea lock might be. Are there particular challenges in getting sectors bought into the process of collecting data and understanding impacts? I think in particular about the impact of noise on citations. There's been a lot of controversy in the past around ministerial defence operations in the seas. Obviously there are confidentiality issues there around understanding and assessing the impacts of naval operations on citations. I wonder if that's an issue if there are other sectors where getting access to that data and that buying is an issue. I'll start on that one. There have been discussions going on for a long time with MOD just about all sorts of different activities relating to noise. There's a protocol that's established for dealing with that. There's a tool called the MISAT tool. That's a tool that helps to assess risk and help to understand what mitigation might need to be put in place for particular activities that the navy in particular would want to undertake. I think that there's been a lot of progress in the on-going dialogue in looking at mitigation on that side of things. For another example where there's been a lot of focus on underwater noise is related to the aquaculture industry with the use of acoustic deterrent devices. Again, there's a programme of work looking at that. I know that Marine Scotland has got work on going at the moment to better understand how many devices are being used and how frequently they're being used. That will help us to then get a better handle on what the impact might be, what the risks might be and then understand what management might need to be put in place after that. There's a couple of examples, but there's a lot of work underway. Maybe I'll just add to that. One of the other areas where in recent years the noise issue has been a significant one is in marine renewable energy developments and the piling that goes on when putting wind farms in particular into the sea. The noise that's generated during those activities. My experience is that this has been well managed and well regulated. There has been an understanding by the industry that this is an issue that needs to be addressed. I don't know that we're quite at the point of fully understanding the long-term implications, whether animals, particularly mobile species, are moved out of an area on a permanent basis or on a temporary basis. Even if they're moved out on a temporary basis, which might be for a significant number of months, what implications that has for their population. There is work underway to better understand all of that, but it's work in progress. More broadly, engaging developers in the marine environment with the collection of the appropriate data is really important. One of the best examples that I can think of in terms of that is the Shetland Oil Terminal Environmental Advisory Group, SOTIAG. When the proposal went in to put an oil terminal in Solomvo, in the mid-1970s, it was ensured that there was an environmental monitoring programme put in place. That joint activity between the Solomvo Association and the operators of the oil terminals resulted in probably one of the best-understood environments around Scotland. There are a 40-year time series of how the seabed and how the coast and how the birds in the area have changed. It's probably one of the best examples of understanding the relative impacts of the oil terminal and climate change. The advantage has been in as much as we can see that most of the changes that have happened there have been because of climate change and not because of the operation of the oil terminal. Does a huge advantage in engaging early with potential users of the marine environment in that regard? There's no compunction on people operating in the marine environment to provide data, to share data or to get involved with the things that you just talked about. Solomvo isn't a voluntary arrangement that was put in place before the development of the oil terminal itself and its non-going arrangement whereby the monitoring is funded. There are all sorts of potential other examples where voluntary provision of data from vessels could be really useful. Another good example is the continuous plant and recorder survey which covers some of Scottish waters, but it's basically a monitoring scheme where recording devices are put onto commercial ships and the movement of commercial ships through the water is enough to sample the plankton. It's important. That is another extremely long-term data set which is really important. One of the challenges with it at the moment is I don't think there's any lack of willingness of operators' shipping firms to put these nets on their vessels. The challenge is finding the funding to analyse the data once it's been collected. This is a SAFOS, the South Alistair Hardy Foundation for Relation Science which is the organisation that analyses these data based on the plimeth that it does the whole of the UK is stretched for the sources to analyse the samples to get the data that will help us to understand what's going on. John Scott. Thank you, convener. Can I just ask you notwithstanding the gaps in the data is the UK marine strategy an effective framework for assessing and delivering GES or does it need to be updated or revised or are you content with it notwithstanding the shortcomings and the lack of success in various parts of it thus far? I'll go for that one as well then. I think that if you look over the time since the marine strategy framework directive has come into place and that's what the UK marine strategy implements, then there's been a huge amount of progress there. As you said, notwithstanding the gaps, we have collected a lot more data and we have improved our understanding. The thing that's been really helpful through the marine strategy and the directive more generally is, as I mentioned before, the joint working that we're doing through OSPAR and that's allowed us to really focus in on developing new assessment techniques. There's a series of new indicators that have been developed and that we're using now to really bring all of the existing data together to help us to understand what the impacts on the marine environment are. So I think that's been useful. As we've said, we haven't actually got to the point where we've said we've fully achieved good environmental status and there's definitely further work to do there. Maybe if I could give an example on the benthic side of things. We had talked before about how there is a variable amount of information that's available on the seabed habitats and species. So far, we've made good progress on what's called a sea floor integrity indicator and that's telling us how much pressure there is on seabed habitats and it also relates to the sensitivity of those habitats as well. That's a really good step forward. One of the things that's set out in the current consultation is the intention to do further work to develop more indicators and I think that's really important because if you look at seabed habitats and species they are a really good indicator of the health of our seas more generally and that's because they stay in the same place so they're really integrating all of the different pressures that exist on the marine environment and you see the results of that. So understanding the implications for seabed habitats and species is really important. That commitment to develop further indicators and then to find a way of collating them all together to get an integrated assessment of the seabed I think is a good position to be in in terms of setting out a future direction. Can I move on to the OSPAR intermediate assessment and questions from Angus MacDonald? Okay, thanks. Good morning to the panel here. Just diving a wee bit deeper into the OSPAR intermediate assessment from 2017. Clearly, there are a number of areas of concern. For example, marine birds 20 per cent decline in the abundance compared to levels observed 25 years ago. Seabed habitats you've just mentioned the OSPAR assessment of physical disturbance from bottom trolling shows that 86 per cent of the assessed areas in the greater North Sea and the Celtic seas are physically disturbed. There are issues with marine mammals, marine litter of course, and also contaminants, but some good news that I noticed was that in some areas fish communities are showing signs of recovery. What can you tell the committee that you know about past and present trends in seabird marine mammal and fish populations? I can talk about the marine mammals certainly. If we take the seals, we have two species of seals in the UK, the harbour seal and the grey seal. If you go back to the beginning of the 20th century, grey seals were almost extinct from the UK. It was estimated that there was less than 500 animals left. This was largely due to hunting and both targeted hunting and fisheries control. We now have about 40 per cent of the world's population of grey seals in Scottish waters, about 120,000 animals. The number of grey seals has increased dramatically. As a result of legislation that has been put in place to control the hunting of seals, that was initially through the Conservation of Seals Act and later later through the Marine Scotland Act, which provided even greater measures of protection. The other reason why grey seals have increased in numbers so much is because of the depopulation of many of the islands of Scotland, where lighthouses became automated. It only took one or two people on an island to dissuade the seals from going there to breed. Now that we have so many islands that are not populated, have nobody living on them, the seals are very grateful and have returned. The Monarch Hills on the west coast is a prime example. The largest grey seal breeding colony in eastern Atlantic. It happened since the lighthouse was automated. So grey seals are doing well. Some might say they're doing too well, but grey seals are doing well. Harbour seals, which are the smaller of the two species, Scotland was the stronghold in Europe for harbour seals. The numbers were, we have about 40,000 harbour seals in Scotland. These are minimum estimates because they're very difficult to count. What we're seeing is a very strange phenomenon with harbour seals on the east coast of Scotland and in the northern isles, the harbour seal numbers are declining dramatically. Orkney, which was at the stronghold for harbour seals, has seen about a 90 per cent decline in its numbers in the last 12 years. The Firth of Tay has seen a 95 per cent decline in its harbour seal numbers in the last 12 years. If you go further south, down to the Wash, another important area for harbour seals, they're doing very well. It seems to be the north-eastern part of Scotland, where harbour seals are suffering and declining. The west coast population is increasing. We know that the seals from the east coast haven't gone to the west coast because we can tag them. There's also been genetics work done, which shows that there's very little exchange between the east coast and the west coast. We know that something is happening to the harbour seals in the east and north-east of Scotland. There's a huge amount of research that's going on at the moment, funded by the Scottish Government, carried out by the sea mammal research unit at St Andrews University, to try and understand what is going on to see if there's anything that can be done about it. At the moment, we don't have any concrete answers as to what the cause of these declines are. We've got some answers as to... We now know what isn't causing the decline, if you see what I mean. We know that, for instance, killer whale predation is not significant, so that's not an issue. We know that disease is not an issue. There has been no foresign to stemper outbreaks that have caused this. So we've been able to start ticking off what isn't causing it, but we yet don't know what is causing it. But there is on-going work. So, as far as harbour seals are concerned, one species is doing very well, the other one is doing well in places, but very badly in other places. In terms of citations, by and large, our citation populations, as far as we know, and historical data are relatively limited, are doing quite well. The best example of that is with the bottlenose dolphin population on the east coast of Scotland. When we were designating special areas of conservation, the focus was on the Murray Firth, and the Murray Firth is a special area of conservation for bottlenose dolphins. That's where we thought the population was. We now know that there's over 120 bottlenose dolphins regularly used the Firth of Tay as a habitat, and there was some interchange with the Murray Firth, but not a huge amount. We're now, in the last two or three years, getting increased reports that there are citings almost on a daily basis of bottlenose dolphins in the Firth of Firth as well. Both their range is expanding, but it would appear that their numbers are increasing, because we're not seeing a decline in numbers in the Murray Firth. We're seeing more dolphins in more places. The bottlenose dolphin story is probably a good news story. It definitely is a good news story. Those would be the main points on citations and marine mammals. Can you say something on the fish and the bird side of things? As you said, with the outcome from the OSPA intermediate assessment, although the target hasn't been met in terms of fish populations, fish stocks, it's a positive story in that we're getting closer to meeting that target. You can see a long-term improvement there, which is really welcome. Going back to some of the earlier discussions that we were having about data sets, the quality of the data that we have on commercial fish stocks is really excellent, and it's a very long-term time series. That supports management decisions, so that's really good. I guess one of the things to highlight as a contrast to that is that we don't have good data for the non-commercial species. Of particular interest in understanding how our ecosystems are functioning, we're particularly lacking data on prey species as well. The prey species that would be relevant to seabirds and marine mammals that will help us to, if we have a better understanding of the prey species, we can then better interpret the data on the seabirds and marine mammals. That's briefly on the fish side of things. For the bird side of things, the picture in Scotland is very similar to the picture that's shown by the Auspar intermedia assessment. We have a seabird breeding indicator, and that measures broadly two things. It measures looking at the abundance of breeding birds, and over the time period that that indicator has been running since the mid-1980s for the 12 species that are recorded, there's been an overall decline in the number of, or the abundance of, breeding seabirds. Although I think it's similar to the seal situation that John was describing there in that overall decline, hides a quite complex picture, so you have some seabirds that have declined much more significantly, some things like arctic terns, things like arctic skewers, but other birds where you've seen a really quite big increase, so species such as gannots, which are more generous, they can feed and deeper diving. It's really the birds that tend to feed on sand eels that feed in shallow waters that are doing more poorly at the moment. The other aspect that we measure in relation to breeding seabirds is the success of breeding, so the overall productivity. Again, that's measured since the 1980s, and we look at 12 key species for that, and that's a much more mixed picture. You have the indicator where the line is going up and down, up and down in relation to the target. At the moment, we're slightly below the target, but as I say, it's quite a mixed picture between the different species as well. Thank you, forgive me. I'm very concerned about what you said, climate change is probably the biggest influence on the changes there, and I suspect that climate change is probably the biggest influence of all the acidification, the deoxidisation, and what is the moving food supplies for the birds and things like that, and also fish. What worries me is your ability to measure and keep up with the speed of what's happening in terms of climate change, because I'm wondering if you can do that given the speed of change. Absolutely, so where we've got good data and where species and habitats have been regularly monitored over a long period and climate change is something that happens over many decades, it needs to be to attribute an effect or a trend to climate change, and we need to be able to discriminate it from all sorts of other shorter term perturbations in the environment from the weather effectively. So where we do have those good records, we are able to see that species whose normal distribution is in colder waters than here, they've got an affinity for cold water, have tended to decline since the 1980s. Seas have warmed by about a degree in Greece since the middle of the 1980s. Those species which have got an affinity for warmer waters at Mediterranean species, species normally found off the coast of North Africa, they've tended to increase. So there is an on-going shift in the balance of the composition of our marine communities from cold water forms towards warm water forms. Everywhere we've looked, plankton, fishes, rocky shore invertebrates and seaweeds, we've tended to see this general shift. It's not to say that those new species won't perform the same functions as the colder water counterparts are, but they are fundamentally altering the make-up of our marine ecosystems gradually over time. Sometimes those effects will be more dramatic, but it's a gradual shift amongst those current players. A supplementary question from Claudia Beamish on that theme. Yes, I wonder in terms of internationally where the gaps are in what is emerging research in relation to climate change. Also you'll be aware that the blue carbon issue has been raised by this committee and perhaps rather light on land with Peatlands. We worked across parties to make sure that Peatlands were in the last but one, what was then called report on policy proposals into our climate change plan. There was a box on blue carbon, but the argument was that the research wasn't detailed enough to deal with it. I'm aware that there is international work, but there's also the work of SNH. I wonder if you can shed any light on both those issues, any further light on the climate change issues, but also the blue carbon specifically. You're getting very close to my heart now. One of the hats I wear is chairman of the Scottish Blue Carbon Forum on behalf of the Scottish Government. This is an issue that, a number of years ago, where blue carbon was identified as an important sink for carbon. The focus originally was on mangroves, seagrass and salt marsh. We still have significant amounts of salt marsh and we have seagrass beds in Scotland. We don't yet have mangroves, but climate change, you never know. What I was interested in when we established the initial reports that were done by SNH that Mike contributed to was to try and expand that envelope of habitats that might trap carbon and store carbon in the marine environment. The ports that were produced six or seven years ago now identified and stimulated further research, which is on-going at the moment, that is being funded by SNH through PhD studentships and through Scottish Government PhD-supported funding. That research is answering a number of key questions. PhDs last with three and a half years, so we haven't quite got the answers to all those questions yet, but we're beginning to collect information which is going to help us understand the true extent and the true importance of the different habitats in the marine environment. The numbers that we're now getting in terms of the amount of carbon that is stored in these different marine habitats is, in some cases, orders of magnitude greater than what was estimated in the original ports, because they were being done on limited information. One of the really startling sort of facts, if you like, is that in a unit area of sea loch sediment, there is five times as much carbon stored there in the equivalent area of peat bog. The marine environment, again, comes out as the best place. Seriously, there are significant amounts of carbon being stored and trapped. It's not to say that those stores are not vulnerable. They are vulnerable to disturbance from activities that disturb the seabed. They are vulnerable to ocean acidification, because much of that carbon is trapped in calcareous skeletons, so there's the danger that, in the future, that carbon could be the least into the atmosphere. I have some questions from colleagues about the degradation of the seabed. Angus, do you want to cover that? Is that all right, convener, or are we too short of time? I'm worried about time. Can you come back to that? I'd like to talk about the degradation of the seabed. If I could, convener, thanks. I'm sticking with the OSPAR assessment of seabed habitats. If I could just go back to the stats that I mentioned earlier on. I mentioned 86 per cent of the assessed area in the greater North Sea are physically disturbed. Waringly of which 58 per cent is highly disturbed, and consistent fishing pressure occurs in 74 per cent of all of the assessed area. Can you ask how seabed habitats support the wider marine ecosystem and to what extent, particularly, is human activity causing the degradation of the seabed? In terms of the first part of the question about how seabed habitats support the wider marine ecosystem, they're really important because there are a lot of different other species in the marine environment that would rely on seabed habitats in some form or another, as well as being important on their own right. Other species may rely on seabed habitats for shelter to rest. They might rely on them to escape from predators or for feeding. There are a number of different roles that seabed habitats play there, which I think show the valuable role that they play in the marine environment. The other part of your question was about how they've been disturbed. The indicator that you referred to was about the seafloor integrity. That's an indicator that's been recently developed through the OSPAR work and referred to that earlier, that we're still going through the process of looking at other indicators as well. What we're hoping to do is also developing indicators around the biogenic habitats that we mentioned around mill beds earlier too and a range of other biogenic habitats that would be included within that, things like horse muscle beds, flame shell beds. In terms of the disturbance, a lot of the biogenic habitats that we have around Scotland have been included within the Scottish NPA network. We've been working with Marine Scotland on that to not only set up the NPA network, but Marine Scotland has been leading on putting fisheries management measures in place to ensure protection of those most sensitive marine habitats. Another part of work that Marine Scotland is leading on at the moment is called the review of priority marine features. That's looking at those most sensitive marine habitats where they occur outside the NPA network. It's not saying that there should be widespread controls on the fishing industry from that perspective in terms of the benthic habitats. There are some areas in the sea where they're relatively exposed, we've got coarse sediments, they're good areas for fishing activity to happen in, but it's actually looking at the areas that are most sensitive to that activity like the biogenic habitats and looking at what we can do to protect those so that you can get a sustainable fishery happening alongside protection of those environments. Just a little thing on human activity. One of the things that the Joint Nature for the Conservation Committee says is that stopping dumping sewage at sea and the introduction of discards banned in the fishing industry is contributing to a decline in certain species of seabirds. Is that a fair comment that's generally accepted? If it is, how do we deal with this negative effect of what we're thinking of as a positive couple of interventions? In terms of the comment about introducing a discards ban and that having an impact on some species of seabirds, that's inevitably going to be the case. We've had some species of seabirds, particularly the more generalist species and the ones that you would maybe describe as more scavengers that have done really well from the way in which we've managed fishery over the last few decades. If we then get to a position where we're putting better fisheries management measures in place for managing fish stocks, there is going to be a knock-on impact in terms of those species of seabirds that have benefited the most. I think that we just have to accept that that's a consequence of that. It's not something that we have to then feel that we have to mitigate against. There will be knock-on effects of any management interventions that you put in place in the marine environment or the terrestrial environment. As long as we understand those and can then make a decision about them, I think that that's okay. We have to take great care that we're not beguiled into the idea that the only good thing is that everything is going up. Nature works in cycles and organisms have peaks and troughs. We don't have the length of data necessarily in all of these species to understand what the length of their cycles are. The fact that we have been enhancing the habitat, if you like, for seabirds by discards, they've done well is that. We've in a sense created an abnormal situation there. The fact that the numbers are now declining is a reflection of that as much as anything else. What we have to be careful of is that we're not creating further conditions which are depressing those populations artificially. The fact that the numbers are fluctuating in itself, I don't think, should be of concern. If we understand the reason, and the reason is ban on discards, that is fine, but what we need to be sure of is that we're not doing something else which is further depressing those populations. A supplementary question from Mark Ruskell. You're saying that we have less data on non-commercial species, but what about commercial species? We haven't had an MSY set for example for the wras fishery. There's no MSY set for razor clam fishery at the moment. Are there still big gaps there? There's the commercial species that we've got the long-term data sets on, which are the ones that have been fed into the large fish indicator that's been used. You're right that there are other species where there's a more recent commercial interest, where we have much less data on those. A Scottish Natural Heritage position would be that if we're going to explore a species, then we should be looking to create a good baseline of environmental data, including on the stock, the state of the stock itself. In that way, we can judge what impact any harvesting of that stock might have with the idea that we then can understand it better and make decisions that will lead us to a more sustainable fishery in the future, because if we don't have the information that provides us with the baseline, we have to make a lot more assumptions and we have to be a lot more precautionary, I would say, in the way that we harvest that fishery. Can I move on to talk about the evidence from recent studies on plastic pollution on marine ecosystems, if I can open up that very current and controversial part of this? Not an area of my expertise, I'm afraid, but there is obviously a lot of current interest in the research community into the impacts of plastics and good evidence that ingestion of large plastic items by the bigger organisms like whales and turtles and seabirds has a tremendously damaging impact on them. It prevents them from eating their normal food items. They often starve as a result. Interesting results recently from a study in Sam's show that plastic fragments have been around in the ocean for a very long time, and the deep sea species from the rock or trough show particle fragments when they were collected from the 1970s. It is a problem that we've had for a long time. There's a lot of current interest, particularly with the media exposure of the dangers of plastics. I guess there's a strong positive message in that it seems to have increased people's awareness of their environment and the damage that they're doing to it, and hopefully we'll have some incredibly positive outcomes for looking after it. That's a very stark figure from the Auspire report. 93 per cent of North Sea foamers have got plastic in their stomachs. That's horrific. What else are we finding around plastic, and that's a massive effect that's having on a particular redeveloper? I think that foamers have been a focus of research, and that's why we have that really stark figure for foamers. I think that you would probably find similar figures for many other species as well. It's like an indication of just how. It's an indication. As Mike says, I think that the plastics debate, if nothing else is served as a wake-up call to the conditions in the marine environment as a whole, we have abused the marine environment for too long. My take on it is that it's important that we address the plastics issue as best we can. The horse has voted to a certain extent, but we can address it to some degree. It should not be the cause of us losing sight of the bigger challenges, and the bigger challenges are what we face around climate change. If the oceans continue to warm, if the oceans continue to acidify, if the oceans continue to deoxonate, it won't matter how much plastic is floating about in the ocean because there will be nothing left in the ocean to be damaged by the plastic. John Scott. I'm notwithstanding. I'm concerned about the ingestion of our food of plastic by the fish species that we are more and more being encouraged to eat. Has any work been done on the long-term implications for human health of the ingestion of plastics and the fact that that must ultimately end up as part of the fibre of these fishes? Certainly not my area of expertise. I think it's an area that has only just recently become conscious of because it's microplastics that we're talking about. I think we're beginning to understand the loading of microplastics in our food species, but I'm certainly not qualified to say whether there's any research going on into that area. If there's not research going on into it, it seems like a very good area of research to get into because it's important. There is certainly some evidence that it could be a ticking time bomb for the future if we're all ingesting large amounts of microplastics, but I'm not an expert. There are specific concerns about microplastics as a vehicle to ingest other diseases potentially, but I'm thinking about other pollutants. Some molecules will stick to plastic, and by ingesting that plastic, those molecules will get inside you. Where they have a toxic effect, they may well have health-related issues. One of the problems thought of some while ago was the issue of endocrine disruptors, which interfere with the natural hormone balance in your body. There seems to be some evidence of some fish species becoming feminised because the plastic-associated pollutants have got estrogen-like properties. Another part of plastic pollution and pollution in general caused by human beings. Just how big on the scale is entanglement issues around marine mammals, the debris that comes from safe fishing vessels? At the moment, there's a project going on called the Scottish Entanglement Alliance, and that's a collaboration between various different organisations in Scotland. I guess there's not just a focus on the lost fishing gear or other plastics. It's also looking at fishing gear that's being actively used at the moment, so whether that's creals or whether it's nets that are being set. That project at the moment is at the stage where there's been a lot of work done with fishing communities to understand what entanglements are happening, what gear is involved and which species are mainly involved. The project is now at the stage where, over the next few months, they'll be writing up that work, and we should be able to get a much better idea of what's happening particularly on the west coast of Scotland but in other places as well. That's really important because we can understand whether there are particular areas where this is happening, more than in other areas, then we can focus mitigation in those places, but also if we can understand whether there's particular gear types or whether there's particular ways in which the gears have been set, which might be problematic, then we can start to look at that. I think the importance of that project is that it's got such a wide range of people that are involved in it that are recognising that there's an issue there, and it's about just making sure that we can keep that collaboration going and get the understanding that the fishing industry has and the understanding that people like SRUC have when they're working with the work that they're doing from the stranding scheme and understanding the impact that it's having on the animals so that we can identify what the solutions might be jointly. John Scott. Thank you, convener. The IBS report makes pretty horrific reading. What's the relevance of the findings of the report in Scotland and how has Scotland contributed to that report? Is there anything positive to see or is it all negative as it appears to be? Well, I think it is relevant to Scotland. I think it's really useful to have a report that draws together so much information at that global scale because it allows us to put what's happening within Scotland within that broader context. I think it's very useful for that report to set out the key drivers that are affecting both terrestrial and marine environments and they apply equally in Scotland. Things that we've already mentioned, like climate change, like pollution, changes in land and sea use, they're equally applicable. I think that there are key messages coming out of it which are fairly depressing in terms of the area of our seas that has been changed by human activities and the impacts that those have had. Those are things that we are seeing in Scotland too, but on a slightly more positive note, the kinds of solutions that are presented in the report in relation to the marine environment, things like making sure that we have an ecosystem-based approach to fisheries management, things like using spatial planning and using marine protected areas are all things that we've made significant progress on since the introduction of the Marine Act. There are definitely real issues that we should be aware of, but there are things that we can do about them. I think that the things in relation to climate change are going to require a more significant transformation in the way that we address and manage our seas than some of the management interventions that we've had in the past. Others, I mean to say. I mean, I hear what you say. I get them, but spatial planning and ecosystem planning of themselves won't solve the problem. I appreciate there may be a precursor to solutions, but are there solutions out there? Or is it the whole thing? The feeling I'm getting from this morning is that everything's being driven by climate change regrettably, although there are other incidental factors. Yes, so I mean, I agree with what John had said earlier. If we don't really tackle climate change and we obviously know that we've had a declared climate emergency, if we don't tackle that, then, you know, that's... Nothing else matters. I guess the other things are more incidental. The other things we still need to keep working on those, but if we don't start to tackle climate change more seriously, then we will have serious issues. I wouldn't say that nothing else matters, because, I mean, it's going to take us time to even begin to really tackle climate change, and we've got to work to ensure that, you know, once we get some of those issues under control or are better understood, we still have habitats and species there to benefit from that. So climate change is the big issue, but that's not to say that we should ignore all the other issues that are affecting the marine environment. And I think... I was just going to, yes, just echo what you were saying there. So if we can understand what the impacts of climate change are going to be and we can understand what the impacts from other activities are going to be, that allows us to... Going back to some of what we were saying earlier there, is making sure that we're not putting additional pressure on the marine environment on top of the climate change so that we actually can make sure that we still have a marine environment that we can depend on for all of the goods and services that it provides at the moment. Climate change will mean we will inevitably lose a lot of the species we currently care about, but we'll gain a lot of other ones that we want to protect in the future. So I think we need to look after our environment for that changing biota that's about to arrive. Some of those things will be being in turn lost from the tropics, so it's a massively and rapidly changing world. We still need to look after it as much as we can, and if regulating things like the way we use and develop the ocean is important, we should continue to do that as much as we can. It's not a message of complete despair. It's that we should still be looking after what we're going to have in the future, so it's going to be different. Claudia Beamish has a question on blue carbon. Right, thank you, convener. Just to hear from Michael, what your view is on blue carbon, and very briefly, if there is a likelihood that not in the revised climate change plan, obviously after the climate change bill, but in the next climate change plan, whether we might be able to start to be developing actions for it. We are at an early-ish stage with understanding blue carbon and how carbon in the marine environment is locked away effectively forever, how we can remove the excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and bury it in coastal sediments. We think we know what all the parts of that system are. Plants fix carbon dioxide from the water. They turn it into solid stuff, gets buried in the sediment. There's still a lot of real uncertainties. How much of that plant material is actually locked away forever and how much is actually just respired away. I think that the projects that have been started under the Blue Carbon Forum, the initiative funded by Marine Scotland and the Scottish Government, is going some way towards addressing some of those uncertainties. We know it's going to be important, and we really need to look ahead to the time when we have more accurate information, but I'm still broad on certainties there. I think that the other project that is under way at the moment is a blue carbon audit of Orkney, the Orkney marine region under way at the moment. I think that that will report hopefully later this month. I think that it's never been attempted anywhere else as far as we're aware. That will give us information to help inform management of the marine environment at that sort of more local area. It's not going to come up with absolute numbers because, again, we don't have all the information we need, but it is, I think, an important first step in terms of getting blue carbon engagement at a marine regional planning level to see whether or not it can be taken into account when we're talking about the full range of management at any scale. That report, I think, will take us a good bit forward in just understanding how well we can quantify the blue carbon resource in our region. Thank you. Matt Russell has questions on the invasive species. What impact are invasive species contributing to in the marine environment? It varies depending on the different aspects of the marine environment that you look at. Maybe if I start off and you'll probably have other things to add on to this. If you look at the benthic habitats and species, they can be affected by invasive non-native species that, for example, would outcompete them, so it would outcompete them for space or for nutrients. You can have invasive non-native species that we've had examples with the carpet sea squirt where they've actually just, as it says, carpets the marine life and literally smothers it. Then, if you look at other, I'm just giving a few examples, but if you look at seabirds, for example, there's been well-publicised occasions where you've had marine, sorry, not marine, but you've had mammal mammalian predators on seabird islands and the impact that they have on breeding seabird colonies. There's a number of different things that you can do in response to that and very much the approach at the moment is to prevent invasive non-native species from arriving in Scotland in the first place and there are certainly invasive non-native species in other parts of the UK that we would hope that are not transferred to Scotland, so preventing them from being transferred in the first place and then if it's possible to control them or contain them and in some cases it may be possible to remove them, but removal of invasive non-native species below the water is very, very difficult, so it's really on prevention as the kind of first line of defence, really. Most species in the marine environment are rare and only a few are common and the same goes for non-native species. I think most of them are just there in small quantities, but occasionally, like the carpet sea squirt, they become common and at that point they will have a noticeable impact on the ecosystem. I think the other challenge that we have going forward is identifying what is a natural invasive or non-native species, i.e. as a result of climate change and something has arrived here independent of a human vector. What can we do about that? Probably not a lot, but as Katie said there are other measures that we can put in place to ensure that things that couldn't get here by themselves we should do everything we can to prevent that, but it's a big challenge. You have recreational boats visiting them around the world coming into marinas. It only takes one of them to have something that they picked up in the Mediterranean on its hull to drop off and there you have a challenge. There are big challenges, but we need to distinguish between things that have got here because the climate and the marine environment is changing under their own steam, if you like, and then others that have got here through human vectors. We have run out of time, I'm afraid. I thank you all very much for the evidence that you have given us this morning. I'm going to spend this meeting briefly to allow a change in panel. Welcome back. We continue discussion with our second panel who will be focusing on opportunities for marine planning and licensing systems to deliver more for the marine environment. I'm delighted to welcome Charles Nathan, Marine Conservation Plan for RSPB Scotland, Annie Breeden, Senior Manager for Policy and Planning of the Crown State of Scotland, Linda Rossbrod, Chair of the Scottish Wildlife Trust and Patricia Hawthorne from Shepard and Wedderburn for Scottish Renewables. Good morning to you all. Claudia Beamish has our first questions. Thank you, convener, and again. Good morning to you all. I'd like to focus on the marine enhancement statutory duty, which of course you all know, but for the public record is from section 3 of the Marine Scotland Act 2010 and places general duty on Scottish ministers and public authorities, I stress, in exercising any function that affects the Scottish marine area. I quote, to act in a way best calculated to further the achievement of sustainable development, including the protection and where appropriate enhancement of the health of that area, so far as it's consistent with proper exercise of that function. Often in this committee and the previous committee in the last session of the Parliament, many of us have been highlighting the issue of enhancement as well as the recovery and protection of our marine environment. I wonder if, just in turn, you could tell us what the priorities for delivering marine enhancement in Scotland are in your view and indeed who is best placed to deliver them. Whoever wants to start. That's quite a broad question. In terms of enhancement, what we're looking for is recovery of the ecological diversity and health of Scotland seas. I think the marine legislation, the marine protected area programme, will provide tools to enable enhancement to happen either through protecting and managing activities that are currently damaging or preventing activities that could be damaging. Beyond that, and I know that you're wishing to go beyond that, I think people are thinking about restoration in relation to the sea. For example, we have the restoration of shellfish at Dornock Firth, which has been taken forward, which I think is a very exciting project. Our firths would once have been very rich with shellfish. A number of problems meant that those stocks were hugely depleted. In large fisheries, they captured carbon. I think that sort of vision for how the ecological potential of what's very wealthy sea ecologically could be restored is beginning to happen, but it's still early days. Thank you. Anyone else on the panel who wants to comment on that? Yeah. Definitely enhancement is the restoration mode where we want to be with the national marine plan and the implementation of the planning system. We've got it all in place, but one of the potential might fall into thinking that, like the terrestrial environment, we can do the same offshore. There's quite a distinct difference, obviously. There's dynamic and mobile species. It's a very dynamic environment. I think what that demands from those who are active within the marine environment, different human activities, is to take a step back and be a bit more strategic. Unlike on terrestrial where you're able to have a project and be able to deliver any mitigation or offsetting you might require within the project site, you might not be able to do that in the marine environment and certainly you can't in some cases. There needs to be an understanding that those that are benefitting from the marine environment through the different sectors are able to contribute towards potentially enhancement but all the other factors would probably come on to in terms of baseline monitoring and research. In a strategic level, it might not be related to individual projects or their individual activities, but as a sector or sectors, there needs to be a commitment to contribute to restoration and that's going to have to come through the guidance and strategic oversight that the national marine plan can offer. Before we come to the other two panellists, my understanding is that restoration is not the same as enhancement. Enhancement is going beyond. I may be wrong on that. That's what I thought was the case and we seem to be a little bit confused as to where we are with that. Can we clarify that first before we proceed? From your perspectives, I'm not sorry. Certainly restoration, I think we would be in a good place if we could do enhancement, as you say, at going beyond what's needed or having met our targets and going beyond. Certainly I guess there is a focus on the restoration aspect that is required. You've had in the previous session around the marine abundance of seabirds since the 1990s has been below target. It's showing a huge problem with the population of seabirds. Others? Or not, if not, I've got to... You don't need to question what I've done for you. I'm not a scientist here. I've listened to the end of the discussion about the previous session. I suppose that I'm trying to bring the business perspective to some of this discussion as well. I think that the renewables sector would very much regard their business objectives as aligned with net gain or enhancement or using that terminology. I think that if there's a concern from the point of view of industry, what that means before they embark on something or are asked to embark on something. I sensed from reading before this session today that we're not yet at the point of being able to define what we mean by net gain, particularly in the marine environment. Obviously there is a better understanding in the terrestrial environment and therefore there's something that we can try and deliver. I believe that in industry, we are engaged in a number of discussions in different fora to look at the issue. We very much want to participate in these discussions, but the key thing for us would be just understanding what it is that we are trying to deliver. For us, as you know, we're a very new organisation with different objectives to what we had, what we worked under as the Crown Estate. For us, sustainable development is obviously now our key goal, really, to promote that in all of our work. For us going forward, I think that we're still at the stage where we're understanding the opportunities that are presented to us and finding our feet in all of this and working to work with all of the stakeholders in the marine Scotland and colleagues around the table here today. For us, over the next couple of years, it's a topic that is of great interest to us. As we go forward, we'll hopefully be able to come up with some firmer plans, but as yet we are still looking at the opportunity for us in this field. In terms of delivering enhancement in the marine environment, would anyone on the panel like to comment on whether you see funding as a key barrier or whether there are other barriers? We're going to talk about the detail of funding through other committee members' lines of questioning, but in a general sense, please, now. I just think it's going back to the strategic focus. As Patricia was saying earlier, if a sector almost to some degree wants to be told where they lie and what they may or may not be able to contribute to and how they can provide positive input into the management and the marine environment, so I think it really is looking at it from a strategic point of view and articulating that through the likes of the national marine plan and forthcoming region marine plans. Anyone else? Right, move on to questions from Mark Ruskell. I think quite a useful distinction there between restoration and enhancement, so can I ask you then about how the current consenting and licensing regime really delivers enhancement? To what extent does it do that? Is it hardwired into those regimes? And how, if you can give me specific examples, that would be useful. Whether he has to answer every question, so just indicate to me if you want to answer Mark's question. I think I was glancing at Linda Rosber a bit. I'm not sure that it's a wildlife trust issue that I have a view on, but I was thinking maybe Patricia's renewables might speak to it. I'm happy to comment on that. I think at the moment, yes, to me bringing in the concept of enhancement of the marine environment within the marine planning context is where it sits most comfortably. Bringing it into licensing concerns me again if we don't have the clarity of purpose and the way to measure whether we're achieving what we need to achieve or not. So I'm very much minded as a lawyer that for a marine licence condition it has to be reasonable, it has to be enforceable, it has to be precise. So we need to just move the thinking on a bit further and make sure that we are seeking to licence something like that, that it has a precise nature, it has a precise goal and we can measure whether it's being achieved or not. I think that that is quite important. The other aspect of this is perhaps a broader point in that when you do get to measuring net gain as an industry we are ultimately tackling climate change, how do you measure that in the calculation? I think again it's something actually being able to point to specifically, I couldn't give you an answer. It's incredibly difficult, particularly at the project level when you're talking about licensing for that particular activity to contribute to an enhancement activity, positive conservation measures I suppose you could call them. Again it might not be realistic to require that of an individual project because the actual enhancement might be required on the other coastline, on the west coast for instance or vice versa. So it's definitely a tricky one and I think we need to, does a kind of need for more information and a greater level of understanding and I think some of the basics around what marine planning can do to deliver the baseline monitoring that was talked about in the previous session to deliver the research that's required for the knowledge gaps around our understanding of how activities are impacting on wildlife and habitats. I guess the third element is the kind of positive conservation measures. That's where you would identify what we could deliver in terms of protecting the carbon stores or protecting certain species and habitats. You've identified a big opportunity there. Are there other opportunities? Are there particular sectors that are addressing that need for enhancement more than others at the moment? Which are the sectors that are really performing in terms of marine enhancement? Anyone? So we're working quite closely with the offshore wind industry which is obviously a major existing potential future sector within the Scottish marine environment and we're working quite closely trying to answer some of these questions but obviously there's discussions kind of ongoing but there's willingness there certainly and I think there will be from other sectors but again it's kind of going back to they're not the experts they need to be to some degree kind of guided as to what they can and can't contribute to. Forgive me, Mark, if I can join it. In the last session we were told there's lots of data there there's lots of data but there's a shortfall in funding and actually analysing that data I mean surely that's a gap that's for example the people that are applying for licenses you know if you're not asked to be the experts in any of this or to do any of the work you can actually just put funding in for the experts to actually analyse the data that's already there am I being too simplistic? I mean there is a lot of ongoing research obviously I mean when Scotland have you know extensive an extensive research programme they've got their ScotMair programme which is looking at the different effects on different sectors from offshore energy and that allows them to sort of bring it together and have a sort of strategic overview of it but I think a lot of the research is looking at understanding potential impact still rather than taking it a step further and looking at then what industries can do in terms of marine enhancement I think you're right it's around the funding but as Annie says around a lot of the research the marine energy sector is looking at the impacts really getting some certainty on what the potential impacts might be but it's going that extra step and I think there is a willingness there as I said to contribute towards other activities other areas of research to understand the data and get a bit more certainty about what might happen to certain habitats with the effects of climate change or intensive use of activities Mark What do you see then as the role of the licensing regime then in funding that type of research and funding marine enhancement My perspective the licensing is about ensuring that we operate the way we see we're going to operate I think has been said already we do a huge amount of evidence gathering through the process in terms of applying for a licence and then carrying out a development the purpose of the licence is just to ensure that we do what we're meant to do with that information I think the funding side of it is perhaps a bit of a conflation of issues I think there is a huge willingness on the part of a renewable sector to be involved in these discussions to put man hours into investigating these things to share information to share data that they have produced that they are paying for themselves I think where it becomes more difficult in the licensing context is if you are just looking for an unconnected fund something which doesn't actually relate to the development itself more than delivering the development helps to tackle climate change in a general sense Could the licensing regime be feeding into information which is then useful for the industry in terms of how you mitigate projects I'm thinking of international examples here in Norway for example they've got a new licensing round around aquaculture where only companies that strongly innovate and come up with effects of closed containment can actually go on to then take a licence for an expanded site Are there other examples like that where you see a feedback into industry innovation through licensing? So there's definitely opportunity for the planning and licensing to to motivate innovation in an industry So if there's a clear understanding of what the impacts are and how they can be mitigated through some sort of innovation the potential for floating renewables being able to be situated further from shore and in deeper waters are more likely to be less impactful on the marine environment particularly when you're thinking about sea birds So there's potential there just very simplistic in terms of the planning system actually supporting the roll out of floating areas for floating renewables for instance which could be a long term goal but ultimately deliver more capacity for less environmental effect Question from Stuart Stevenson I think this is probably directed at Scottish renewables rather than others so the others may wish to comment Isn't it time we actually moved from simply viewing this as how do we mitigate the damage that's done to looking for opportunities to actually use the development to improve and I give an example which is not marine where the consent for opencast mining in my colleague Finlay's part of the country resulted in a substantial improvement in the quality of the water and the banks on the nith which resulted in a dramatic rise in the number of salmon that were making it up the river to spawn Now improving the nith was really nothing to do with opencast mining but doing that improvement in addition of getting a licence to the opencast mining and it was clearly very successful in a relatively short space of time Are we now in a position where we should be looking at this authorisation to potentially do some negatives being conditional on there being associated substantial positives and would that require changes in the law because I'm absolutely except renewable industry is doing what it is currently being asked to do and I accept that but should we move beyond that Would anyone like to take that on Ms Hawthorne? Back to me again I think there is a place for that but again in the context of net gain we have to understand what it is we're trying to deliver realistic but what it is we're focusing energy and resources at will actually deliver benefit at the end of the day and I think if the industry is being asked to do something on the back of a project they need to understand why that is connected with their project beyond the wider goal of tackling climate change which is a worthy role Can I give you an example which is not a well informed comment I mean when we put things in the seabed there are opportunities for creating reefs which are opportunity for fish breeding and refuge which create more food for seabirds you know it goes kind of all the way up the chain so aren't there examples that your industry and other industries that are out there it's not just about renewables could be doing but more in terms of public policy being required to do as a condition of being allowed into the environment I mean again I would say that there are these examples there are research projects going on around most of the projects that I'm involved with and they are valuable research projects as you say they are largely being volunteered by the sector at the moment and I think that's probably where I think it should sit there are other pressures on these industries as you know we have to always look at the balance of cost to the consumer of providing energy and what developers are being asked to pay for through their projects so it's about finding an appropriate balance well directed funding is always looked at sympathetically Blinda Rusba one of the best examples of this I read to you earlier on which was about Shetland and the Zetland Act and the story there where very foresighted people on the island took a long term view at a time when not many people even believed there was going to be a substantial industry there or questioned how big it would be and to the long term benefit of Shetland some of the resource that came in through the Zetland Act helps to pay for some of the work around the management of fisheries, the inshore fisheries locally through the Shetland College so I think there's examples of being foresighted and putting in tools early that means that strategic choices can be made often the industries that we're dealing with are maybe not in a particularly good financial state that's the case for certainly some elements of the fishing industry you've also got issues around what can be done within the current legislative framework no way I know did look at a wider set of requirements on investing businesses to do with research, local jobs training, looking for a whole set of different benefits but I don't think went ahead with that so there are challenges when you've got investors who are looking at different places to invest and what sort of package is available which means that you've got to be looking at the wider picture and working at what's possible but the essence of it is can we get a better way of developing and working in the sea so that we're thinking more broadly and ensuring that we're getting more rounded benefits is essentially a very good one that's where we need to be Before we move on to questions from apologies I was just going to say that if anybody wants to answer a question if they could just indicate to me because I'm worried that I'm going to miss you if you can't really see if you want to come in or not and maybe my colleagues could help things along a little bit and ask a question for their particular panellist if you direct it to them that would be very helpful Mr Nathan It was just going to say the kind of broad overarching principle I suppose is the kind of beneficiaries pay principle where there are the different activities or different sectors operating in the marine environment that are benefiting from natural resources effectively and from a common good so there's only right that they should be cost of the management and good management of that marine resource which is both natural marine environment but potentially commercial stocks or whatever it might be I think that definitely could feed into the process more more readily and there are parallels to that through economic investment around the supply chain discussions that have been had with the offshore renewables industries of the last few weeks where clearly Scotland is looking to benefit from these activities more readily OK Now on to questions directly about offshore wind Finlay Carson I think that most have been answered or they've been asked already unfortunately The Scottish Government has promised to produce a seabird conservation strategy Did the panel have any views on what it needs to deliver and how marine industries can support that? Who would you like to ask? I'll probably start with RSPB I would have thought it would be a good starting point Certainly, I mean very welcome that that's been set out in the programme for government and it's looking at really identifying what can be done to support the restoration enhancement of seabird colonies where they're required or seabird populations on a national scale and this is where the requirement for the strategic approach to be taken into context because as I said an individual developer or an individual activity can't necessarily do something on their site or within the grounds that they're acting upon so there's definitely a requirement to make those links in the synergies which would really improve efficiencies as well it was discussed earlier that the renewables industry is putting a lot of effort and resources into understanding the environmental impacts but actually could that be delivered in the round in terms of what are the interactions with offshore wind but also fisheries and aquaculture because it's all interlinked and that's where the different focus on or the differences arise between terrestrial environment and the marine environment Okay just on that so what issues would be associated with further expansion of offshore wind to the marine environment so potentially looking at displacement of fisheries, scallot dredging additional fishing pressures and areas that don't have wind farms whatever Certainly this is the long term view the national marine plan really needs to set out what's the Scottish marine environment going to look like for us to achieve on net zero by 2050 and that's likely to look at a large expansion of offshore renewables and I think that whilst looking at the impacts it's looking at what can be done to mitigate the pressures across the board so there are obviously effects of displacement of fishing grounds potentially but obviously potentially on foraging areas for seabirds, key foraging areas where they find craved to raise their chicks and there are also fishery migration impacts potentially on the cabling routes as well so these all need to be considered in the round For offshore wind we are now seeing projects being constructed in Scotland we've got Beatrice now operational and that will give us a great opportunity and the potential operational impacts on birds at these projects over the last few years there's been projects running a specific research project running at a project on the east coast of England looking at do birds actually stop using sites are there any collision risk impacts and so although that's been running in England there's some valuable learnings from it but colleagues at RSPB and SNH and other organisations are very keen to see projects looking at research projects looking at operational wind farm projects in Scotland now so I think we have to make sure that we're getting the right learnings from any projects that do happen there so that these can then be used by Marine Scotland to transform future offshore wind plan development there's interest in developing more offshore wind in Scotland obviously but we need to be able to learn from what's being built now and use that to actually understand where we can have more development Does the wildlife trust have any issues with the further expansion of offshore wind? We want it to be sustainable we want to be sure that we are managing our seabird interactions properly Do you foresee any issues? We work with our partners across the environmental family and yes there are likely to be issues it depends where they're sighted it depends what the birds are we need to understand more we need more research we need more evidence we need very careful planning and sighting we need proper evidence to select new sites So there's not enough evidence at the moment to suggest that growth would cause a problem it sounds like you know we're in the midst of a growth of offshore wind rightly or wrongly with regards to habitats and species at the moment do you think there's enough information there to Well we have we also heard a lot about climate change and offshore wind we have huge potential for our climate change obligations and we're very mindful of that as well as the issues around the proper sighting and ensuring that the planning and implementation is done properly to ensure that we minimise impact on the environment and don't threaten protected species and put at risk populations that are key Does anyone want to come in? Just finally I'll come back to you Do you want to answer your question there? Yeah just in terms of setting the context So the net zero to achieve a net zero by 2050 they set out a scenario of up to 75 gigawatts of offshore wind in the UK waters which is nearly 10 times more than we currently have operating so most of it is operating south of the border but there's huge expansion and industrialisation of the seas so there is undoubtedly going to be risks there environmental risks with that but obviously we need to balance that against the report that the assessment was discussed earlier, the IPBS report which there is a kind of biodiversity crisis in many respects and so that's a very significant challenge of and kind of demand upon national marine planning in Scotland to really kind of grasp that the opportunities that might be able to deliver to address those two conflicting issues Okay and finally the renewables what work are you doing with the fishing sector for example to mitigate any impact there might be on their sustainability I mean I am not directly involved in the liaison groups with the fishery sector but I do know that the discussions are going at several different levels so that starts up with the industry group we do participate in again discussion forums with the sector on strategic planning we are usually involved in the same groups as them when it comes to looking at the marine plan and steering the work that goes into delivering new plans dropping down on to project level each developer will have their own set of discussions with the fishery sectors the commercial fisheries that are potentially impacted by the project so there is a level of engagement across the board as Charles and others have already said this is about finding a balance in terms of trying to deliver the offshore wind potential that is there with the minimum impact on other sectors and on the environment to questions from Stuart Stevenson thank you very much and essentially my central question is about the crown estate and money so I think this is where Annie Breeden may find herself responding very largely to that the first thing given that you are described as a policy planning manager how do you determine what your policies are in relation to fees and charters so we have a sort of different approach for different industries for renewables we take into account the state of the technology is it a commercial scale is it a test and demonstration scale and what the market conditions are what other pressures there are on the developers so we're currently working this up for our planned offshore wind leasing round which is due to launch later this year for other industries we we receive sort of external advice we're looking to undertake a review of our sort of aquaculture operations and a lot of different respects over the next year or so and I believe one aspect of that that will be considered is rental income I think at the moment I can tell you that for salmon we charge it £27 £57.50 per ton of net gutted weight of fish produced and that's our price at the moment and we're very open about what these prices are and over the next few years we're going to be looking at how we do all of this given our new legislation that we operate under and I think for fish farming in some of the western Isles and for Orkney and Shetland there's a 10% discount of rates given the increased cost of transport to market for operators in these areas so we have a slightly different approach for different industries which we consider has really sort of best value for us but taking into account the market conditions that the industries are operating in so I got the implication there that for sunrise industries and I might think in terms of tidal which is not yet even remotely at commercial scale you were prepared to in effect invest to support them because there's a prospect of a longer term financial gain and that's your report that's right that's fine given that quite a substantial amount of the income that Crown is at Scotland derives comes from the marine environment to what extent are you required by ministerial direction by legislation or otherwise to turn some of that revenue there back into investment in marine science and restitution of the environment and so on and so forth or is there no connection between how you derive your income and how you have to spend it we don't have a direct link in terms of we will pay a percentage of our revenue into research for different areas we do invest in research and development I think for agriculture last year we invested just over 100,000 pounds in research and development for offshore energy we input into different research programmes that are on-going, we'll provide ad hoc funding into specific marine Scotland research projects and at the moment we're in discussions with marine scotland about how much revenue we should be contributing to research let me just pick on that decisions that crownessate scotland are making or are you being directed to do this I'm not objecting to you doing this and asking the question, I isn't it I'll have to be completely honest and say I don't know exactly how those decisions are made I'm sorry I've also got a supplementary on this before I come back to you Stuart Mark Slightly tangential but I was going to ask you about whether the crown estate leasing should effectively require a proportion of Scottish manufactured content when it comes to offshore windfarms for example Well that's a hot topic at the moment obviously we're considering at the moment we're working with colleagues at Scottish Government and Marine Scotland to understand we're going through a process looking at what different mechanisms we might be able to incorporate into our leasing we've the process hasn't concluded yet I think we've come up with a number of options and we're getting legal advice on them as to what actually what we can do that's legal so yes we are looking at this at the moment but we don't have an outcome yet but we're looking at it to inform the new leasing that's coming later this year Perhaps I'll go to renewable Scotland and pose the Scottish renewables and pose the question as to what extent you regard the Clown Estate Scotland as open and transparent and more fundamentally predictable given that your investments are relatively long term and how has that evolved and how would you want to see it involved in the future I'm always wary of putting words in the industry's mouth as far as I'm aware it is a very open and transparent relationship between our industry, the offshore wind sector and Crown Estate as the landlords in the run up to the new leasing rounds there's been a very open dialogue about how that round should be framed, how it should be conducted and the elements of the process in terms of option agreements all of that has been consulted or openly with the industry I don't know if that answers your question No no that's absolutely fine there is no right answer when I ask a question there is a genuine layer question in it and finally perhaps back to just to what extent should you be investing in protecting and enhancing the marine environment because I think one of the messages we got out from the previous panel and I think you were all sitting in to hear that as far as I could see that there is a need to do more in the marine environment primarily we're being told through climate change but through many other interventions you could say that Scotland would be doing more than it's currently doing I think there is definitely the opportunity for us to do more as I referred to earlier we are we do have a new act that we're operating under which is very very new and is still being implemented so I think for our organisation we're still trying to work out in a way what we can do and what we should be doing in order to fulfil the obligations under that act so I think we are looking to do more than we have done in the past we're looking to be more proactive from a sort of delivering sustainable development perspective how we operate as the new organisation will be different as to how we operated under the last so we're looking to understand what we can do in this sphere questions from Angus MacDonald okay thanks convener if I could turn to fiscal measures we know that the sea fish industry authority collects and disperses a UK-wide seafood levy and clearly in my view there's a case for Scottish ministers to have the power to raise a Scottish seafood levy and a full autonomy with regard to deciding how seafood levys are best utilised here in Scotland so how does the panel feel with regard to the existing UK-wide seafood levy operating in terms of supporting sustainable development in the Scottish marine environment and do you have a view on whether the seafood levy should be devolved Linda Rusba I should declare an interest here in that I'm a member of the seafood board appointed by all four ministers to that board so I'm not here as a spokesman person for seafood as you say it's UK-wide levy it's quite a political issue there's been raised in the House of Commons relatively recently by way of just factual background if I can just add that one point that the levy is levied on fish landed into the UK and also to fish imported for processing so there is a lot of levy that comes into the coffers that comes because of the processors in the northeast of England but in view of my role I can't really say anything a very political issue I could say just to add on to what was talked about previously in terms of resource the Crown Estate Revenues are probably the closest to an environmental rent that we have in Scotland because although Scotland doesn't have levy-raising powers the Crown Estate Revenues which are fully devolved you're able to charge those on a might of fin fish grown a might of electricity generated and that I think gives an ability to charge sort of like an environmental rent which I think is quite interesting in the context of the discussion that you're having earlier on OK, notwithstanding your position on the sea fish board I think the committee would appreciate the view of the SWT so if you could arrange for that to be submitted I will do I don't work directly on fisheries policy and such like but in terms of the levy it's certainly back to that principle of beneficiary pays principle where accruing a benefit from the marine environment and rightly they should be contributing towards the cost of the management of that environment which is borne by government and other sectors OK, so for the record do you think it should be devolved I wouldn't like to say OK Right, there's anyone else, sorry in the panel no OK, there have been proposals from the sustainable inshore fisheries trust for a landings tax on fisheries in Scotland as a means of sustainable cost recovery and investment in ecological sustainability so would you have a view on that whether a landings tax should be introduced anyone I think again we would be supportive of such a mechanism to deliver funding towards management of the natural marine environment but in terms of specifics I couldn't offer any further detail OK, no one else it's unfortunate that we don't have representatives from the sea fish industry here today to ask these questions although it's not through the lack of trying I think are there any other fiscal measures that could be used in other marine industries to deliver more for a marine environment that you've identified The Scottish one of trust has proposed looking at the area of decommissioning that could be looked at in a way that might be helpful in generating some revenues it's quite a controversial topic it's a proposal that for some installations rather than decommissioning by removing everything from the sea that the sort of inert structures could remain and that there might be some environmental benefits from that rather than removing everything in entirety it's still our view that our expectation is that in general the presumption should be that such structures are removed but in some circumstances and this would only be after detailed environmental examination it may be to the overall benefit of the environment to leave the structures in situ where they've been providing an environment and a little ecosystem for some time and there's been some research at University of Edinburgh that has looked at this we gave evidence on this to the Scottish Affairs Committee and it's a controversial topic and the committee recommended that the regulator should sort of look at this in more detail as it develops. Charles? To say I'm not sure the legislation supports or enables the setting of conditions that would require funds to be attributed to a particular cause there are conditions in current offshore wind farm licenses which ask for a contribution towards regional advisory group activities so the Murray Firth and the Firth of Firth both have these groups that have been established as part of the conditions of licensing and so they're required to be an active participant in those and they do deliver a level of research but in terms of going back to the point about articulating what could be done or what should be done the conditions are quite broad in that respect so it's not specific as to what should be delivered or what must be delivered. Sorry. Can I come back one more? In relation to where environmental harm is caused or environmental damage is caused such as maybe escapes from fish farms or other spillages or damage ensuring that the polluter pays ensuring that there is a way of recouping revenue that could then be used for environmental benefit I think that would be a good area to develop and we don't really have that fully in place at the moment. Okay thanks and finally just one last question from me are there examples of other countries using levies or taxis to fund marine enhancement that Scotland could learn from that you're aware of? Okay. We do have some information regarding if fisheries charges being used in Iceland, Australia, New Zealand and the US, you're not aware of any of these specific. Rigs to reefs in the Gulf of Mexico, that was one where certainly there are payments to the sort of state authorities in relation to some activities there. Okay, it's maybe something we can look at in the future. We did invite representatives from the fishing industry and they were not able to send representatives in that case. Moving on to questions from John Scott. Thank you convener. I'm interested in this concept of marine enhancement. Going back to what Stuart Stevens said earlier essentially marine planning gain. Planning gain is a well-established concept on land and developers. I'm not certain that the renewables industry would necessarily welcome marine planning gain but how well-developed is that as a concept? Perhaps a question for Patricia Hawthorne and Ann Breeden. I would say that I'm not aware of it being developed as a concept beyond what we regard as a very constructive process of understanding the environment that we're about to place developments in and learning from that all the way along the line. I think the part that the offshore renewables sector has played in delivering a lot of information about marine environment has been viewed as a contribution to that extent but in terms of specific proposals I'm not aware of any. It's just a concept of your developer building, maybe 500 houses you asked to put in a new roundabout or build a road to it. Everyone on land would have to deliver an environmental impact assessment which of course the offshore renewable industry will do too but in terms of actually enhancing it have you any views on it Annie Breeden? I'm not aware of it really being considered at the moment to be honest and it's from our perspective it's not something that we would ever seek to incorporate into a lease or anything we would wait to see what came out of a licence or consent so if there was a wish to do that we could help to deliver it but at present I don't think it's anything that's under discussion. Okay, thank you. I move on to essentially public money for public goods down the theme of the discussion under a post EU agricultural funding has been the idea of public money for public goods is this a concept that's relevant to the marine environment and if so what would it mean in practice in terms of Government support public money for public goods? On land you're talking about farm payments being used to purchase landscape which people enjoy and those wider societal benefits I think the first thing is that the scale of the subsidy for farming is quite substantial in comparison the EMFF is much more modest as a fund and is much more limited in its purposes it does not underpin day-to-day fishing in the way that the common agricultural policy underpins day-to-day farming so I think there's a difference in context there so I'm wrestling with the concept to see where that takes us then with that as a given so the public money tend in fact the European Fund went from European Fisheries Fund to European maritime fisheries fund and the intention in that was to ensure that it wasn't focused purely on fisheries but it did have a wider marine objective in the way in which the fund was administered so I think that movement had already started to happen okay sorry could I just take a step back on planning again I've managed to touch on that but as far as I'm aware there isn't really a mechanism I think to deliver that in the marine environment and it's certainly something that we would support through securing funding to deliver what's required and I guess the problem there is the connection of the licence that's being granted to the work that needs to be done and they may not be in the same place for the marine environment so one of the this is an example we have been involved in island invasive species eradication for sea bird colonies those are located up on the north west coast and northern islands so they may not be applicable to an activity down on the west coast, south west coast or east coast but it's certainly something that we are having discussions with certainly the renewable sector as a means to deliver some positive benefit from the sector okay thank you and do you see Brexit having an impact on Scotland's ability to fund and deliver enhancement in the marine environment or not so go on, whoever yes I think our main concern is a kind of governance gap so the potential weakening or loss of environment protections and the mechanisms to enforce those obviously governments may have more or greater discretion around that without the European Court of Justice so one of the although we really welcome Scottish ministers commitments to meet or exceed the existing environmental protections and I guess one of the key elements that we really would be looking for is actually delivery of an environmental watchdog where which would replace the kind of position of the European Court of Justice effectively being able to enforce environmental protection legislation very much agree with what Charles I said I mean in addition there's the risk of losing the sort of core money that comes for data and compliance from the European Commission that is a chunk of money that helps to buy services for shared data collection across Europe shared compliance across Europe you know it's really important ways of ensuring that we're following best practice and those dedicated funding streams have been significant I think that the local funding as well the way in which local people can bid for coastal element of maritime funding has been quite significant in people's relationship with the sea changing and there's been quite a lot of exciting local projects in all sorts of small coastal communities that have been really significant and often these things are the things that get lost when there's a time of change Okay Thanks so much and can I finally ask is it possible to restore marine environment via project by project approach or is a more strategic approach required and to what extent Scotland's current approach to marine enhancement strategic or sufficient? So just in terms of I guess I've touched on it already but yes definitely it can't be delivered I would say from a project by project staged delivery of enhancement in most cases we definitely do need more of a strategic approach which really needs to be articulated in the national marine plan I think taking it from where we've got to with all the policy framework in place now and the requirements for delivering enhancement but actually articulating that and what is it is it protected I mean it is protected areas protecting blue carbon sources biogenic reefs really looking at the kind of basic fundamental support system within the environment that supports the species that we have I very much agree and we need to translate high level objectives have our high level objectives and then work out what that actually means in terms of change management change priorities and funding and ensuring that we have the sort of strategic grasp to make change that moves the environment in a positive way and I think that's the next big challenge for the next phase of marine planning I'm not wishing to contradict you but I'm surprised that you wouldn't have thought there was a value in a project by project approach too I mean it's all very well to have a high level approach but actually doing things achieving things usually won't mean a project by project approach high level aspirations of themselves are fine but I think you can often test things out at the project level I think often it's helpful to test things out at the project level and then apply them more widely so from that basis but I mean I know for example in the world of trust we have a number of projects in health, in education but it's only when that approach is applied nationally that you really get a big change and I think in terms of marine we're at the stage of we're building up our evidence base we're starting to understand what our real problems are so to have that vision which is bigger than just a small project is I think the next step Thank you for putting me in my place Final question and it is directed at Linda Rossberg because there are arguments from Scottish Wildlife Trust have made the argument it's an opportunity through oil and gas decommissioning to create a marine stewardship fund and I guess it's a case of oil and gas has put a lot of benefits from the marine environment and now they're coming up to the decommissioning stage there is an opportunity there to perhaps give a bit of payback but is that something that you have a view on? I mentioned this earlier that that was very much something that we've put forward as an idea a few years ago when we gave evidence on it recently to the Scottish Affairs Committee a controversial notion because a number of environmental organisations believe very strongly that all the structures should be removed and their arguments both ways but some of the science says that there is a benefit in some cases in a small number of cases in not removing the structures and that therefore there would be some financial saving to the industry and that a substantial proportion of that saving could then be put to good environmental uses so that's the fundamental idea as I say it's a fairly controversial idea but there is research evidence behind it Is it controversial because of the kind of county intuitiveness of leaving effectively litter in the seabed or is it controversial because the industry is not on board with the suggestion that you've made that they should be taking the saving particularly controversial with environmental groups because of the history of this argument it would also be controversial with fishing interests who I think would expect to see the structures removed to free up those fishing grounds again so it's controversial from a number of different places but the cost of decommissioning are very high and so we're simply highlighting the fact that it is good to look at these issues it would have to be looked at extremely carefully that the risks are there I know that there is concern that could you could you trust enough to be sure that nothing noxious had been left inside is your sampling good enough that there would be all these sorts of questions but so we've simply put it forward as an idea that this merits some consideration and that there could be benefits Charles Nathan I think certainly worth exploring her leaving structures in situ but in terms of the moneys that might be available I think it's worth noting that they're actually subsidised to deliver the decommissioning so it's not actually money that's sitting to one side currently it's money to be spent in the future so it's almost kind of nonexistent in that context so it depends on how what you decide to do if there is a decision to leave them in situ then considering what moneys might have been saved and actually removing those facilities that money then has to come from government, UK tax base but has decommissioning not been built into the sort of the fact that when they actually were putting forward for licensing for developing those fields that decommissioning had to be factored in as a cost as part of a long-term business plan so certainly there is a requirement of a decommissioning plan to be in place and to be reviewed as you progress through the age of the development but some, certainly the earlier projects that were installed are of such a scale and size that decommissioning technology doesn't exist to be able to remove some of these structures from the water so what was delivered or installed pre-1990s I think it was and then subsequently from then until now but in terms of the actual expenditure I don't think, I don't know we don't have to ask an industry representative to detail to what costs have been foreseen in planning that decommissioning but in terms of I guess my wider question about a marine stewardship fund you know is that something that oil and gas as they make decisions around decommissioning whether whatever they do and money is into a marine stewardship fund I mean is that something that certainly support it and worth exploring as an opportunity final question from John Scott just about liability for such structures left on the seabed to whom would that whose liability would that be after 20 years shall we say it there must be or 50 years we understand it, it's the company is liable in perpetuity liable in perpetuity that would be one of the issues that would have to be even if this was a government suggestion I think I mentioned the Gulf of Mexico example and there I think some monies change hands in order for liability to be accepted by another party which I think is the state government obviously there are risks to that in terms of they've got to plug a well and that plug has to be strong enough and robust enough to exist for 100, 200 years and who's going to go back to check it in 50 years time all those costs that are associated with it so it's not a straightforward something Patricia Hawthorne might wish to come into on being an industry representative is that the situation you're happy with the liability and perpetuity certainly from a renewables perspective I think all our decommissioning plans are priced on removal of kit although the point of having an environmental impact assessment at the time is to ensure that that is done in the best possible way and if there's good reason for leaving something there then that discussion can be had at the appropriate time I think just moving back to the point that you made previously about building enhancement into that one of the challenges in these projects is trying to anticipate what the decommissioning costs will be so that's the decommissioning cost that we know about in terms of taking infrastructure away to try and build in something to do with enhancement which we can't define 25 years before the event could mean paying for something that isn't relevant at the end of the day so I think we just need to be very careful about how we expand that concept but at the moment as far as I'm aware decommissioning is predicated on everything being removed I want to thank you all for your time this morning we are that concludes our meeting today and our business in public it's next meeting on the 18th of June the committee will consider amendments to the climate change emissions reductions target Scotland bill at stage 2 we'll now move into private session and ask that the public gallery be cleared as the public part of this meeting is now closed