Healing the seas
Still wet with the water of Brodick Bay, diver Chris Rickard pulls cockle shells from a bag at his waist. The opening sides of the bulging bivalves are snapped off, as if cut with a chisel.
“The cockles feed on the seabed with just their tops showing and the dredger cracks the top off them,” he says. “They have no chance.”
The Community of Arran Seabed Trust (COAST) has enlisted Chris to inspect the impact on the seabed of a scallop dredger seen here, 100m from shore, two weeks earlier. As well as the shells, Chris has film showing characteristic ‘tram track’ dredge lines running through a bed of maerl – a delicate coral-like plant – that was already
