10 years on, Scotch & Oysters is still a great Highland pairing

On the shores of a North Sea estuary in the Scottish Highlands, a 181-year-old whiskey still marks a ten-year environmental achievement: the introduction of 112,000 native European flat oysters into the Dornoch Firth. Led and funded by the Glenmorangie Company, it is the product of a tripartite collaboration of business, scientists and naturalists known as DEEP, ‘The Dornoch Environmental Enhancement Project’.

Scientifically coordinated by marine biologists at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh and supported by the UK’s Marine Conservation Society, the project was conceived more than ten years ago and is designed to improve biodiversity and water quality in North Sea estuaries through of the heroic oxygenation and filtration of the humble oyster.

Birth of an idea

In many ways, it’s a triumph of what in today’s parlance would be the buzzworded meaning of “manifestation”—that the alchemy of creativity, determination, and relentless focused work can deliver seemingly unattainable goals. When the ‘DEEP’ debate began more than a decade ago, this alchemy, combined with conservation orders from the UK and the European Union, was all that was in the works.

Drawing from exploration of collapsed reefs in the area, divers and marine biologists have agreed that the native European flat oyster has thrived in these waters for thousands of years, as it has throughout Europe. But in the nineteenth century, overfishing, storms and disease virtually wiped out the species, removing not only a food source but also a powerful natural water purifier.

And so a strategy was born, and all that was left to do was execute it.

112,000 Down, 3.9 Million To Go: But Who’s Counting?

112,000 might sound like a lot of oysters, and of course it is. But the stated population target from the beginning has always been four million. This would be a self-sustaining reef.

The team includes Glenmorangie’s Director of Corporate Social Responsibility, Hamish Torrie, DEEP’s Chief Scientist, Heriot-Watt University Professor Bill Sanderson, and Calum Duncan, Head of Policy and Conservation at the Marine Conservation Society.

Keeping in mind that in 2014 the starting point was zero oysters, the DEEP team shared both the stress and joy of formulating an environmentally responsible plan, tracing supply chains, promoting the program literally around the world, ensuring permits of all kinds from the government and environmental agencies, and costing the potential millions that have been spent so far on DEEP.

“This is a forever thing and it takes a long time,” says Torrie. “This is a long-term rehabilitation. Once you’ve set aside that amount of time, you need to get it done. Nothing is permanent when it comes to financing. We are very confident that we can continue but, in the long term, we need other partners to come and join us.”

The Dornoch Dancer

Surrounded by water as Scotland is, and given the nature of the DEEP project, a major expense for several years has been the ongoing costly demand for boat bookings. Glenmorangie recently bought a tough little fish farm-style boat christened the ‘Dornoch Dancer’, capable of carrying up to eight passengers. It is also intended to carry oysters and reused shells for bedding or ‘substrate’ to around a dozen different developing reefs in the Firth. She’s not a heavy-duty construction-grade boat, but she’s sturdy and purpose-built by local Highland boat company, Leco Marine.

Sanderson’s team is still mapping the bed of the Dornoch Firth, shucking and carefully checking each new oyster to prevent contamination from other aquatic environments that oysters experience while breeding.

“One of the things Hamish told me at the beginning was that nobody wanted a flash-in-the-pan project. it had to be done carefully and with evidence peer-reviewed and published at every stage,” says Sanderson. “So we took our time and took the time to build the environmental story, look at today’s survival rates and experiment with optimizing the recovery process before we started crunching the numbers.” He’s optimistic that the foundation has been laid for more rapid reef expansion, but the question has been from the beginning, where does a project like DEEP find four million oysters? “As far as challenges go,” says Sanderson, “getting enough oysters is still difficult sometimes.”

The Marine Conservation Society’s Duncan leads the charge on conservation policy and advocacy, is emphatic about the whiskey company’s vision for DEEP and broad corporate responsibility everywhere. “Achieving climate goals,” says Duncan, “requires transformational change. The flip side of this is that transformation can be challenging and this shows the importance of having a plan on how to take industry and sectors of the economy to help them transition to a more nature and climate friendly way work. I think this is the big political challenge. Examples like this are really important because they show what can be done.”

Next stop: 200,000 Oysters

“When we started ten years ago, there were two or three other oyster projects going on. And now in Europe there are about 50. We’ve led the way,” says Torrie. “From the beginning, we made a public commitment to make the first 200,000 oysters. And then to really expand the project we will need to bring in other partners. Cooperation in the environmental space is absolutely vital. We all want to see the same result – an improved environment.”

Early results are in

About six years ago, looking out over quivering Dornoch from the banks of the Firth’s by the Glenmorangie distillery, Sanderson thought “I like this place. It’s quite exciting. And I imagine going out on a boat, someday in the future, and being able to look down and being able to see the bottom, because the water quality is going to be so much better because of all the oysters in the system.” Still working on this change. But the transformation is underway. “The biodiversity effect is felt where the oysters are,” says Sanderson. “There are more lawns with animals and algae and crabs and so on. Our research shows that we can expect a doubling of diversity in these areas over the next ten years, and this will be very evident in oysters.”