Blue Carbon Yell

Community Energy Scotland

This exhibition and workshop was funded by the Carbon Neutral Islands project. The project is supporting six Scottish island communities towards achieving net zero by 2040, demonstrating the climate-resilience and low carbon potential of islands. In Shetland CNI are working with the Yell community to support them in achieving their net zero aspirations.

The project is led by the island communities who have worked together to identify ideas and priorities for their islands and turn these into real tangible actions that will help decarbonise local economies, increase resilience to climate change, and provide wider social and economic benefits.  

Carbon Neutral Islands project is a Scottish Government Programme being led by Community Energy Scotland.

The Scottish Blue Carbon Forum defines blue carbon as the carbon captured and stored in marine and coastal ecosystems that accumulates over long timescales through natural processes (e.g. photosynthesis).

Blue carbon habitats are increasingly recognised as a nature-based solution in tackling climate change and, in conjunction with some terrestrial habitats, can help to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide via natural sequestration and carbon capture.

In addition, these habitats also play many other vital roles within marine ecosystems:

• Providing habitats for a diverse range of marine species including spawning and nursery areas for commercially valuable fish and shellfish.
• Where these habitats create dense beds, they can help stabilise sediments.
• Habitats such as kelp absorb wave energy and so lesson the risk of coastal erosion and flooding.

Shetland’s blue carbon habitats include:

• Seagrass beds
• Horse mussel beds
• Maerl beds
• Brittle star beds
• Kelp forests
• Saltmarsh

Thank you so much to everyone who came out to visit our exhibitions in Burravoe and Cullivoe. It was lovely to chat to so many enthusiastic and interested people.

Attendees were able to learn about the blue carbon habitats around their island and how important it is that we better understand them. 

Those who attended the workshop led by Dr. Rebecca Giesler were able to explore how they can be directly involved in finding out where these habitats are and learnt survey planning and data collection techniques enabling them to accurately map them.

If you missed the workshop but would like to get involved, please contact the North Yell Development Council. Email: office@northyell.co.uk

We would especially like to hear from interested wild swimmers and snorkellers, drone pilots or paddleboarders/kayakers.

As part of the project an identification guide for wild swimmers and snorkellers was developed. The guide provides information on the main kelp species that form dense forests, how to identify them and the role they play as a blue carbon habitat.

• Download the Kelp ID guide.