Perceived Health of and Threats to the Marine Environment

In 2021, the Scottish Government commissioned research on Ocean Literacy. This took the form of a questionnaire with 3055 members of the public taking part. The full document can be found following this link. The data from this document is at a national scale.

Respondents were asked about their perception of the health of the oceans at a Global and Scotland level. Most people ranked both global and Scottish ocean health as either 'Neither Good nor Poor' or 'Poor'. However, there was a clear view that Scotland's seas are of better health than global ocean health. 

Respondents were also asked what they considered to pose the biggest threat to the Marine Environment in Scotland. It should be noted that there is no right or wrong answer. However, some were particularly revealing:

• The most common answer was Marine litter and Plastic Pollution (73%) followed by Chemical Pollution (55%) and Overfishing (51%). 
• Climate Change (50%) was the fourth most common answer, although positions two, three and four were very close.
• The oceans becoming more acidic (25%) was ranked 10th which, it could be argued, shows a higher degree of knowledge of threats to the marine environment than expected as this is not especially well-covered in the general media.