We at Edinburgh Shoreline were keen to meet a representative of the Dale family in East Lothian who run a number of businesses in East Lothian and are farmers, fishers, founder members of the Lobster Hatchery at North Berwick and they own the seagrass site at Tyninghame where Restoration Forth have been working over the last couple of years to augment the seagrass meadow with the larger seagrass – Zostera marina. Tommy Dale was up for a chat so we met at the East Linton Mart a cluster of commercial units owned by the Dales with businesses ranging from yoga studios, Brose oat milk, a drama workshop, guitar maker and the Mart Farm Shop plus more – well worth a visit and now right next to the newly opened East Linton station.
While studying at SRUC Tommy had an idea to develop a sustainable recycling solution for garden Waste and several years down the line Caledonian Horticulture based in East Fenton, near North Berwick currently operates across 12 sites producing composts, topsoil, sand mixes and biomass fuels. The company works hard to increase sustainability and part of their One Planet Pledge (https://www.oneplanetpledge.org/ ) is to contribute 2p per litre of diesel used towards environmental restoration and carbon reduction projects, plant a tree for every bulk bag of firewood sold and offer free compost to schools and community groups.
Honing his entrepreneurial skills as a young man Tommy would go with a friend to Port Seton to buy Nephrops and sell them on at a profit to local restaurants. On one occasion the fisherman had also picked up a skate and was offering skate wings for breakfast. Tommy was shocked at the casual nature of dealing with this catch when the fisherman had no market for it so he said he would have it and transported it to one of the tanks at the lobster hatchery [1]where it was resuscitated and successfully returned to the sea.
During lockdown Tommy found a dead guillemot on the beach at Seacliff which was entangled in a tartan Covid face mask. Unable to function it had died of starvation. This was one of those defining moments and as World Ocean Day approached and holding up two dead plastic entangled guillemots Tommy pledged on Social Media to ‘remove 70% of the detritus from the Scottish coastline in the next five years…’ Within 24 hours his post had been viewed 10,000 times. There was no going back. The Scottish Coastal Clean Up was born and so far has removed 35 tonnes of marine plastic from Scottish beaches. More information about how you can help or get involved here: https://scottishcoastalcleanup.co.uk/
Tommy talked about the salmon nets in his family’s ownership which intercepted the returning salmon to the River Tyne when the harbour at Seacliff would have sheltered the small cobles. Net and coble fishing was a traditional method of catching salmon which was practiced until recently on river estuaries around the Scottish coast.
The Bass Rock with the world’s largest colony of Northern gannets sits just offshore from the Seacliff estate. Tommy and his family are well practiced in the art of guga rescue when young gannets wash up on the beach exhausted and starving under stormy conditions. With care and a lot of liquefied fish they can recover like this pair ready for release:
The health of the sea of course relates to how land use practices in the catchment determine the extent of soil erosion and pollutants entering rivers and streams flushing out into the sea. The Dale family have extensive farm land in East Lothian and it was good to hear from Tommy about their move to minimum till farming. If you want to avoid ploughing you have to have the gear to direct drill into land which is still vegetated, protecting the soil from drying out or from the effects of heavy rainfall, feeding the soil biology and building organic carbon. There are clearly some skilled engineers in the Dale family and they have designed and built this direct drill machine – see this demo from Tommy’s Uncle:
Tommy has a real commitment to the environment and getting stuff done. We hope to work with him in the future.
LEONIE ALEXANDER
APRIL 2024
[1] More on the Lobster Hatchery in this interview with Jane McMinn – https://edinburghshoreline.org.uk/edinburgh-shoreline-meets-jane-mcminn-at-north-berwick/
