History

Our origins

The vision for our charity came from a local businessman and community councillor Mr Bill Gardner MBE in the late 1980s. A keen ornithologist he spotted the opportunity to use technology to bring the wildlife of the Firth of Forth closer to people, whilst minimising disturbance to it.

It took a further 10 years of hard work by a dedicated team of volunteers (led by Frank Thomas) and supporters and the support of Sir Hew Dalrymple the owner of the Bass Rock, to bring the vision to reality. The charity was formally registered on the 12 February 1997 (SCO25837). The charity is supported by a not-for-profit trading entity Scottish Seabird Trading Limited (SC183214) which was registered on the 28 February 1998.

Neil Rankin CBE was the founding chairman of the charity and Tom Brock, a zoologist and tourism manager with international experience in waterside revitalisation, was appointed as its first CEO. Tom led the organisation until 2018.

Opening our visitor centre

The initial construction of the charity’s visitor centre started in March 1999 and the building was officially opened on 21 May 2000 by the then HRH Prince Charles, Duke of Rothesay. The Centre received a signifcant proportion of its funding from the Millennium Commission which used UK National Lottery funds to support communities in celebrating the turn of the Millenium.

The Centre played a significant part in the economic regeneration of the harbourside area and town of North Berwick, East Lothian. The distinctive building, with its swooping copper roof designed to resemble a bird’s wing, created a stunning new landmark at the harbour.

David Windmill took over the chairman role in July 2012, steering the charity through a period of significant change. Initially a major capital programme of work was delivered in 2016 to add an additional underground tunnel to extend the exhibition space by creating a ‘flyway tunnel’ to explain bird and marine mammal migration patterns. The tunnel remains a popular part of the experience today.

A bigger role in marine science communications

A business case was developed in 2015 to transform the existing facilities of the charity to create a National Marine Centre for Scotland. The development of the business case and supporting activity plans was funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund. The objectives were to increase the impact and reach of the charity’s objectives by helping people become more knowledgeable about the marine heritage, to create new partnerships that would share contemporary insights on marine science and to help build marine environmental citizenship.

The proposals required planning permission to be secured to wrap an extension around the existing site, creating additional exhibition and modern learning spaces over two floors. That permission was refused by East Lothian Council in November 2018, following a local opposition campaign from stakeholders around the harbour area and in the local community. The opposition was primarily to the physical building plans rather than to the aspiration to do more to communicate information about Scotland's marine environment to wider audiences.

Developing our conservation, education and community activities

Susan Davies, FRSB was appointed as the new Chief Executive between January 2019 - January 2025. With this appointment the Trustees signalled their intention to focus much more prominently on the conservation, education and science communication objectives of the charity, as well as fostering better relations with the stakeholders around the harbour areas and in the local community. Significant progress has been made towards meeting these aims.

Refurbishing our visitor attraction

An extensive refurbishment project of the core of the visitor attraction was fully implemented in 2019. The Discovery Experience was transformed with new story boards, digital and mechanical interactives, and virtual reality of the underwater world to better tell the story of the importance of Scotland’s seabirds and the marine environment. Our learning hub was modernised to better support our educational and community-based activities. The welcome areas, café and retail offer were also refreshed with a much stronger sense of the charitable objectives throughout and a product range that better reflects ethical, local and sustainable principles. Signficant investment was also made in the re-development of our website and adding new content to this continues today.

The refurbishment works were funded by donations from the Coastal Communities Fund, the Wolfson Foundation, Scottish Enterprise, Ellem Foundation, the Hugh Fraser Foundation and AEB Charitable Trust, alongside a range of other small charitable foundations and individual donations. The design ideas were developed in partnership by Glasgow Science Centre and delivery was through a range of specialist contractors. We are grateful to all for their support.

A significant upgrade of the remotely operated camera technology on the Bass Rock and supporting infrastructure was also completed – funded by the Dulverton Trust and The Robert Barr Charitable Trust as well as other charitable trusts and individual donations. The donations from our Friends for Life and Founder Members also made a significant contribution to the camera upgrades. The classroom refresh was funded by the Robertson Trust and Ellem Foundation.

Throughout the refurbishment project the Charity received support, both creative ideas and direct funding, from its active Volunteer Group.

Looking to the future

Following consultation with local and national stakeholders a new Strategic Plan (2020-25): Inspiring people to care for our marine environment was launched, setting out our vision of “helping to ensure that Scotland’s marine environment is healthy, wildlife-rich, valued and enjoyed by all”. The four pillars of this strategy – Conservation, Education, Community and Experience will provide the platform for the charity to engage in a wider range of projects across Scotland which bring the charity’s purpose to the fore.

Challenges along the way

Like many organisations the Charity faced challenges through COVID-19 which rocked the financial foundations. We had to launch an urgent appeal to help survive the short-term financial impacts and with the backing of people including the natrulist and TV presenters - Chris Packham and Simon King - £200k was raised from our members, individuals, local and national government and through trusts and foundations. This ensured our Charity was able to remain open, and whilst visitor numbers took a while to return to previous levels, we quickly settled back into the pursuit of our conservation, education and community based activities.

Who could then have foreseen the devastation of highly pathogenic avian influenza (avian flu) in 2022. The disease rampaged through many seabird colonies and the Northern gannets on the Bass Rock suffered severe declines of between 25-30%. During this time we became one of the go-to organisations for information on the impact of avian flu from the world's media with our CEO fronting the unfolding storyline for us. Avian flu also led to new science partnerships being forged with the University of Edinburgh and the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology to monitor the impact of the disease on the world's largest Northern gannet colony.

In 2024 the heart of our visitor attraction was severely damaged by a signficant internal flood forcing the closure of our wildlife theatre and Discovery Experience for a further 9 months whilst the building dried out and to allow for the reinstatement works to be progressed. Given we were a Millenium funded project our assets will need substantial investment to refresh and replace these in the coming years to keep the attraction viable.

Opportunities

In 2024 we also received - thanks to the players of the national lottery - a £250k award from the National Lottery Heritage Fund to support the appointment of three new positions to our organisation to help further build capacity and capabilties to improve our financial resilience and the environmental sustainability of our organisation. This presents some exciting opportunities for the future including trialling a new marine heat energy system SeaWarm.