Scottish Seabird Centre

What we do

For 25 years the Scottish Seabird Centre has been helping people to learn about Scotland’s marine wildlife, habitats and iconic seabirds. Their visitor attration - a Millenium Commission supported project - is located on the edge of the Firth of Forth in the seaside town of North Berwick, East Lothian. This gives them unparalleled access to amazing coastal seascapes and underwater environments, including the Bass Rock which supports the world’s largest colony of Northern gannets.

About Us

The Scottish Seabird Centre is an award-winning conservation and education charity, dedicated to inspiring and educating people about the Scottish marine environment, motivating them to care for and support conservation projects to protect it. It is supported by an award winning independent visitor attraction.
Based in the beautiful seaside town of North Berwick, the charity’s vision is “to help ensure that Scotland’s marine environment is healthy, wildlife-rich, valued and enjoyed by all”. They aim to deliver this by inspiring and educating people about the Scottish marine environment through the exhibits in their visitor attraction, their education and outreach programmes and award-winning conservation projects including the long running SOS Puffin.
The Scottish Seabird Centre opened in May 2000 and has won multiple awards for tourism and sustainability. It leads and contributes to a range of high-profile conservation and education projects, to protect and restore marine wildlife and habitats around Scotland.
The 2019 refurbishment was made possible thanks to major funding from the Coastal Communities Fund and Wolfson Foundation, as well support from Scottish Enterprise Foundation, the Hugh Fraser Foundation, the Robertson Trust, the Ellem Foundation, the Dulverton Trust and other generous donors, including the Charity’s own Founding/Life members and volunteer group.
Follow the Scottish Seabird Centre on Facebook/ScottishSeabirdCentre. Twitter @SeabirdCentre and Instagram @seabirdcentre
For more information on the Scottish Seabird Centre visit: https://www.seabird.org/about-us

Key Facts about Scotland’s marine environment

Scotland has over 18,000km of coastline, in excess of 900 islands, 61% of the UK total sea area.
The area of Scotland’s seas is about 6 times the land mass of Scotland.
Scotland’s seas support an amazing diversity of wildlife with over 6,500 species recorded.
A third of Europe’s breeding seabirds are found in Scotland.
Underneath the water Scotland supports important marine habitats such as cold-water coral, kelp forests and flame shell beds (an important blue carbon resource)..
Seabirds are one of the world’s most threatened groups of vertebrates and one in three species are globally threatened with extinction, including populations of Atlantic Puffin (Fratercula arctica) and Black-legged Kittiwakes (Rissa tridactyla) which are enjoyed by visitors to the Firth of Forth.
Important marine species include basking sharks, dolphins, porpoises and seals. About 35% of Europe’s harbour (or common) seal population also occur in UK waters with 83% of these found around Scotland’s coast.
Our oceans are important natural resource for combatting the effect of climate change. 83% of global carbon cycle is circulated through the world’s oceans and our coastal habitats account for around 50% of the total carbon sequestered in ocean sediments.
Healthy seas, however, have huge potential to provide natural solutions to the climate emergency by locking up carbon and helping the planet to cool.
In the last 50 years we have lost 2% of the oxygen in our oceans as a direct result of climate change, this is already having a devastating impact on our marine eco-systems and if left unchecked will be catastrophic for food security the world over.