Helen Scales

speaker

228 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 30 Jul

Helen Scales’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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In Our Time · Seashells · 30 Jul 2026 podcast

I think we've probably lost something like 95% of the native oyster reefs that used to fringe this island of ours.

But now there's a lot of awareness of that disappearance, whereas before, you know, a couple of generations ago, probably didn't even realise there used to be such enormous habitats.

And lots of efforts are being made to put oysters back in the ocean and to find ways of rewilding, if you like that word.

There are other really extraordinary habitat we have up in Scotland are flame shell reefs.

These are little clams that...

make nests in the seabed.

They create these little sticky fibres and sort of hold the seabed together, combined with bits of sand and grit and things.

And they have these bright orange tentacles sticking out, which is why they're called flame shells.

And one particular place in Loch Caron in Westeros, there was...

A while ago, it was clear that scallop dredgers were coming in and really destroying this really important habitat that's a place for nursery for other animals to grow up in.

But when that damage was noted, an emergency marine protected area was put in place, which can happen if there's an important ecosystem, important species that's in trouble.

And already within about five years, we were seeing recovery of that habitat and a spreading even of this amazing flame shell reef there.

So it absolutely can happen.

The ocean is very capable of recovering and growing back to abundance.

We just have to give those species a chance.

And you can see the scars, right?

So you can see how big the muscles are from the shape that's left on the inside of a shell.

Oh, yeah.

And we haven't talked about sea butterflies.

They fly.

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