On the banks of the Glenmorangie Distillery in Scotland’s Dornoch Firth, where oysters were overfished to extinction a century ago, an ambitious restoration collaboration by a business, a university and a marine conservation society has been going on for almost a decade.

Begun in 2014 as part of the distillery’s wider sustainability strategy, the Dornoch Environmental Enhancement Project (DEEP) aims to introduce four million European native oysters by 2030 into the protected area of the Dornoch Firth, next to the distillery.

After archaeological research showed that oysters had existed in the area for 10,000 years, scientists tested the waters for survivability. In 2017, the scientists took 300 oysters from the UK’s only sizable wild oyster population in Loch Ryan and carefully placed them in two experimental sites in Dornoch firth. More than 80% of the experimental oysters survived.