The Crichton Business Case Study: SeaScope Fisheries Research Ltd
Vancouver Island, Scallop Disco lights(!) and Dumfries… hopefully that has caught your attention, but it’s all in a days work for SeaScope Fisheries Research Limited!
Formed in 2012 Seascope, who have part of their organisation based in Dumfries at The Crichton, provides fisheries research and monitoring solutions of the highest quality, independent of government or industry influence. The SeaScope team are a group of highly experienced professional sea-goers and researchers, who, since the company was created, have grown and their technology and insight has aided developments in ensuring with vast experience of working in the fishing industry as scientists.
Using technology that they have sourced from Canada, SeaScope can support vessels to accurately monitor their catch and bycatch, which enables wider monitoring assessment of the health of fish stock. Closer to home, they are working in the Solway Firth reviewing the cockle beds, working in partnership with the University of Glasgow, Fruits of the Sea, and Marine Scotland Science.
At their peak in the early 1990s, the cockle beds in the Solway Firth produced more than 5,000 tonnes a year, worth about £5 million, from the Solway Coast. However, dwindling stocks saw a licensing system introduced and a full fishing prohibition order in 2011. Along with SeaScope’s recent cockle stock surveys and assessments, there is work being undertaken to trial redistributing cockles from densely populated to less dense areas, to evaluate if this will improve growth rates and reduce density-dependent mortality rates. Watch this space!
In addition, Seascope have worked with a range of varied partners from the European Space Agency on the STAR-Fish project and Marine Scotland producing seabed video surveys of Marine Protected Areas, to working with Fishtek in the Mediterranean developing shark scaring devices called Sharkguard, an electric pulsed device designed to mitigate shark and ray bycatch in longline fisheries. And all of this from their office here in Dumfries!
If you’re interested in finding out more about basing your business at The Crichton, or would like to know about office space available in Dumfries, don’t hesitate to get in touch with our properties team, or head to our ‘Business at The Crichton‘ pages.