Edinburgh Napier University

  Fishy Tales is an outdoor theatre and marine species identification event intended to engage public audiences with local marine ecology and the West of Scotland Herring Hunt (WOSHH) research project. It is funded with £10k by NERC's Growing Roots Programme NERC. By telling the story of a young selkie looking for her family, we will lead audiences on an exploration of some of Scotland’s richest marine habitats, relaying along the way, the interdependence between species & their habitat.
Expected outcomes for this project are to: (i) turn ‘scientific knowledge’ of the interrelations between marine species & habitat into ‘common knowledge’, enabling the public to understand the importance of habitat conservation; (ii) build public confidence in identifying marine species visible from the shore; (iii) enable a wider range of people to join in and record signs of herring presence in nearshore waters using the “Herring Hunt” web app to report sightings to WOSHH and therefore contribute to marine conservation in their area; (iv) thereby increase public engagement as citizen-scientists.