Scottish Marine Bill

The Marine (Scotland) Bill has now been passed by the Scottish Government.  The aim of the Bill is to provide a framework to safeguard our marine environment and to manage the seas properly to ensure that they continue to deliver economic benefits for future generations, within environmental limits.  It strives to achieve a balance between extracting opportunities for the more traditional sectors, such as sea fisheries, aquaculture, and oil and gas, with the demands of our new sectors, such as renewable energy and wildlife tourism.  It also attempts to deal with emotive subjects such as seal culling.  For anyone interested, the bill can be found here.  This is probably not it's final form.  At about 150 pages, it will take some reading.  If you are really sad, the various stages / debates / discussions are all the be found here. 

An important piece of legislation, that has by and large, went unnoticed.