Coldingham Loch is a freshwater loch in the parish of Coldingham, in the Scottish Borders area of Scotland, in the former Berwickshire, between Coldingham Moor and St Abb's Head. The loch is a natural spring-fed 22-acre (8.9 ha) loch, about 300 yards (270 m) from the sea and about 300 feet (91 m) above sea level; it is used for fly fishing for rainbow trout and brown and blue trout. The area is also used for pheasant shooting.
Loch is the Irish, Scottish Gaelic and Scots word for a lake or for a sea inlet. It is cognate with the Manx lough, Cornish logh, and one of the Welsh words for lake, llwch.
Coldingham is a village and parish in Berwickshire, Scottish Borders, on Scotland's southeast coastline, north of Eyemouth.
The Scottish Borders is one of 32 council areas of Scotland. It borders the City of Edinburgh, Dumfries and Galloway, East Lothian, Midlothian, South Lanarkshire, West Lothian and, to the south-west, south and east, the English counties of Cumbria and Northumberland. The administrative centre of the area is Newtown St Boswells.
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The Scottish Borders Council has described Coldingham Loch as "eutrophic open water, with high levels of plant nutrient, turbid water caused by high plankton levels; coarse fish generally dominant; in natural state supports high levels of biodiversity; often important wildfowl sites".
Plankton are the diverse collection of organisms that live in large bodies of water and are unable to swim against a current. The individual organisms constituting plankton are called plankters. They provide a crucial source of food to many large aquatic organisms, such as fish and whales.
Biodiversity refers to the variety and variability of life on Earth. Biodiversity typically measures variation at the genetic, species, and ecosystem level. Terrestrial biodiversity is usually greater near the equator, which is the result of the warm climate and high primary productivity. Biodiversity is not distributed evenly on Earth, and is richest in the tropics. These tropical forest ecosystems cover less than 10 percent of earth's surface, and contain about 90 percent of the world's species. Marine biodiversity is usually highest along coasts in the Western Pacific, where sea surface temperature is highest, and in the mid-latitudinal band in all oceans. There are latitudinal gradients in species diversity. Biodiversity generally tends to cluster in hotspots, and has been increasing through time, but will be likely to slow in the future.
