Show Us your Mussels Project
We at Edinburgh Shoreline need your help...
Blue mussels are beautiful blue – black bivalves with a pearly interior which settle as tiny spat after 3 or 4 weeks in the water, grow a beard and grow on rocks or in extensive mussel beds on beaches or other artificial surfaces.
They are economically and environmentally important filter feeders used for food around the world.
In the Forth they were used for bait for line fishing and many scalps (mussel beds) were worked out, for example at Tyninghame and Bo’ness where in 1803 ‘a large fleet of Newhaven fishermen arrived and almost wholly removed an extensive scalp’.
The loss of the mussel beds would have profound effects on the marine environment with the loss of that filtering capacity and of the food source at every life stage.
As a result of historic and current pressures we know that blue mussels are in decline around the Scottish coast.
The graph shows increases and decreases in abundance of rocky shore species around Scotland between surveys in the 2000s and visits to the same locations in 2014/15. Blue Mussels showed the most significant decline, and this has continued since then.
This information was extracted from a Marine Scotland case study https://marine.gov.scot/sma/assessment/case-study-intertidal-rock
Can you help?
We would like to get a better understanding of what is going on. So we are embarking on a Citizen Science project to find out exactly where blue mussels are in the Firth of Forth, how abundant they are, whether and where they are settling as babies (spat) and what their survival rate is.
Would you like to be part of this research which is a collaboration between Edinburgh Shoreline and Heriot Watt University?
If so we would like you to choose a 1 kilometre square and visit the shoreline at low tide to look for blue mussels.
The time commitment we ask for is a walk once per month in your chosen square to check what blue mussels you can find and track how this changes throughout the year.
We’ll provide a guide to help spot them & how to capture information, both through photographs and a little data.
If you fancy getting involved then please check our online map and select a square, ideally one that hasn’t been selected already, and contact us so that we can update our map and send you details. Don’t worry about areas that have hard sea defences, as blue mussels are often found attached to walls and boat ropes etc.
The darker blue squares are not coastal, but are fully sub-tidal, and should not be selected unless you are a boat owner or snorkeller who can check these areas with confidence, at your own risk.
Map Link: Show us Your Mussels (google.com)
Volunteer Guide
If you are keen to volunteer, you can download this leaflet for more details of how to get started.