The establishment of site condition monitoring of the sea caves of the St Kilda and North Rona Special Areas of Conservation with supplementary data from Loch Eriboll

Abstract

• The report presents a study which initiated site condition monitoring of the sea caves within the St Kilda and North Rona SACs. This was done to establish a baseline biological data set that would facilitate the assessment of the condition of the habitats in the future and to allow a judgement to be formed on the current condition of these habitats. A total of 85 potential cave sites have been identified within the SAC based on a combination of historical records and direct observation. All available information on caves has been collated into a cave inventory. Four caves were subject to SCM. One was fully intertidal, one was fully subtidal and the remaining two included both intertidal and subtidal components although monitoring effort was focussed on the subtidal in both cases.