Marine institute announces ‘heartbreaking’ redundancies

The Scottish Association for Marine Science is seeking redundancies after forecasting that a 10 per cent budget cut will be required to avoid a deficit in 2015-16.

The independent charity has an annual budget of £10 million and employs 166 people at the Oban-based Scottish Marine Institute. In a statement, it said that the financing problem related “largely to the global economic downturn since 2008, with less investment available for marine science”.

Axel Miller, the association’s acting director, said it had been able to stave off the need for redundancies until now by “performing better year on year”.