Gerrans Bay

On 20th December 2023 the community of Gerrans Bay in South Cornwall, discovered an application had been submitted to create a 110-hectare commercial seaweed farm for the next 50 years a few hundred metres from the shoreline. 

No pre-consultation with the community had been undertaken prior to a Facebook post being shared by a member of the local Parish Council who had learnt of the application third-handfrom the MMO website. This was followed by a Facebook post on a local community site from the CEO of Biome Algae asking people to email her if they had any concerns…..about a plan and company nobody knew anything about 24 hours earlier. 

According to the applicants’ documents the site would include 9,400 buoys, including many that would be permanently lit, and a deadline was set by the Marine Management Organisation of the 11th January, 2024 to receive any objections. As is now known, the plans were identical in every way to the ones subsequently lodged in Port Quin by Biome Algae and many of the documents were direct copies from one application to the other.

As with Port Quin neither an Environmental Impact Assessment nor independent research were included to demonstrate what the impact would be on Gerrans Bay. Likewise there was little evidence showing how a commercial seaweed farm the size of 176 football pitches would meet MMO guidelines to protect the environment, human health and/or prevent interference with legitimate uses of the sea in the specific location of Gerrans Bay.  

Lacking much of the necessary information from the applicants, the communities of Portscatho, Gerrans, Rosevine and Veryan were forced to cancel Christmas to fight fiction with fact, asking one simple question: Is Gerrans Bay a suitable, sustainable and sensible location for a 110-hectare commercial seaweed farm for the next fifty years. 

This question was taken up and championed by Cherilyn Macrory MP, the then local MP, and many major news platforms including the BBC, ITV, SKY, the Times, The Daily Telegraph, the Guardian, the Daily Mail, the Daily Express, CNN and Cornwall Live. In each case much of the focus was on commercial enterprise attempting to privatise public space for financial gain without any meaningful effort at pre-consultation.  

Helpfully there were dozens of factually incorrect statements in the applications. Some of themore eye-catching included:

• "We have come to an understanding with the fishing community in the area who have all supported the application". This was not true. In fact, the fishing community, were united in their opposition, caused in part by Biome Algae’s own documents stating “We acknowledge that locating the farms will displace fishing effort” and “We recognise the under 10m fleet will be affected” [the entire local fleet is under 10m]. In parallel the one letter of support from the fishing community turned out to be written by someone married to a key member of Biome Algae’s team in Port Quin.

• “Its location is inshore and not overlooked by residential properties or coastal pathways”. The location was planned to be a plain sight of the three largest employers in the area (The Hidden Hut, the Nare Head Hotel and the Driftwood Hotel) who all rely on tourism for their trade, dozens of houses and adjacent to the world-famous South-West Coastal Path. 

• “The closest seal population is located on the Isles of Scilly. The common dolphin has been sighted in the area, albeit rarely”. This was also not true with just over 14,000 seal sightings in the previous 11 years including many pups demonstrating the Roseland as a sensitive and important seal site. 

• "The project will significantly increase local employment, bolster local economies and will make use of existing skilled workers as well as training new ones. The farm and its processing capabilities will support businesses in the local region”. This statement was found to be highly misleading as the seaweed farm was proposed to be managed from Falmouth, situated several miles from the site, with the seaweed (once harvested) being processed in Devon, at a location a hundred miles from Falmouth. Seaweed farms traditionally require low maintenance, meaning little was expected in terms of local employment & investment in the Portscatho and Roseland community. In fact, no evidence could be found of any net economic gain to the local community, most especially when the impact of the seaweed farm was considered in comparison to the threat posed to the proven local economic benefits of fishing and tourism to Gerrans Bay. This threat was also not helped by the applicants’ own submission stating they did “not believe that this proposal will directly promote or facilitate sustainable tourism”; a statement best evidenced by the proposed location being directly in the path of Portscatho’s 150 year old regatta. If the seaweed farm were approved the regatta, and the tens of thousands of pounds it generates annually for local businesses, would have had to have been moved away from the village or be cancelled altogether.  

Due to the strength of local feeling, as well as the vocal support of the media, the applications were eventually withdrawn on the 5th January, 2024. As part of the withdrawal Biome Algae committed as “responsible operators” the need to support, and have the support of, the communities within which they operate. They went on to commit to the creation of a feasible project outside of Gerrans Bay “developed with community representatives from an early stage – where we can build positive relationships and demonstrate the wider value and benefits of the seaweed project”.

The next ‘feasible project outside of Gerrans Bay’ is Port Quin.