The third consecutive inshore fish survey was successfully carried out around Fair Isle at the end of July by a team from UHI Shetland working aboard the MFV Atlantia II. Thanks to a week of good weather and a new survey net, the team were able to repeat and expand on the previous years’ trawl survey coverage to a total of 10 locations. Initial observations show catch to be generally characterised by high adult haddock abundances in combination with a variety of other fish species.

The UHI Shetland team were also able to successfully deploy several benthic baited remote underwater video (BRUV) landers and some pelagic camera drifts – a new methodology introduced in this year’s survey. The Orkney Skate Trust design of BRUV aims to capture the dorsal view of mobile fish species which is particularly helpful when identifying individual flapper skate by their dorsal spots. This information is uploaded into Skate Spotter – a national database for cataloguing flapper skate. A number of flapper skate were also tagged as part of the Shetland Flapper Skate Tagging project.

The drifting BRUV is designed to capture the pelagic (mid-water part of the water column) species of fish, not captured during previous years’ surveys. We hope to share some of this incredible footage with you soon.

The Fair Isle inshore fish survey is an important component of the Fair Isle DR MPA research programme. It collects important baseline data on the abundance and size distribution of demersal (near to the bottom of the water column) fish species from within the Fair Isle DR MPA and also allows direct comparison with data collected around Mainland Shetland in the Shetland inshore fish survey. Survey data, including BRUV footage will be analysed, and a comprehensive survey report will be produced. You can read previous years’ survey reports here.

Well done, and thank you to the UHI Shetland team! This survey was kindly supported by the players of the People’s Postcode Lottery through the National Trust for Scotland’s Love our Nature project.