Scotland’s coastal fisheries are focused on shellfish. Scallops and Nephrops (otherwise known as Dublin Bay prawns, langoustine or Norway lobster – we’ll call them prawns), caught mostly for the European export markets, make up the majority of fish and shellfish coming from this area. Although both species can be caught in a few different ways, most scallops are caught by dredging, and most prawns are caught from bottom trawling, normally otter or twin rig.
Dredging and bottom-trawling are unsustainable, whether because of the scale and impact of the direct damage they cause to the seabed or through the knock-on impact of suppressing recovery of fish populations due to bycatch. We explore these impacts in detail below.
This unsustainability has been widely accepted for a long time, but neither Scottish Government nor the seafood and fishing industries appear able or willing to resolve the issues. Here are just a handful of occasions when they have committed to change and then failed to follow through:
- In May 2017, the Scottish Government’s Environment Minister Roseanna Cunningham promised to limit the damaging impact of bottom-trawling and dredging on seabed habitats throughout Scotland’s inshore waters via the ‘Priority Marine Feature Review’. Implementation of fishing measures were promised by Mairi Gougeon (now Minister for Rural Affairs) by the end of 2019. This protection has yet to be delivered.
- The main scallop dredge lobby group (the Scottish Whitefish Producers Association) acknowledged problems of illegal and damaging fishing following what happened in Loch Carron, and said publicly that its fishing members had “volunteered to avoid certain areas of known sensitive marine habitats in recognition of their importance” and was producing maps. These maps have never been published despite requests. Open Seas suspects they do not exist. We continue to see legal damage to areas known to hold sensitive habitats.
- The Scottish Government promised to implement vessel tracking by 2019. Vessel tracking has yet to be rolled out across the Scottish scallop dredge fleet. Currently just 14 Scottish scallop dredgers have had the kit fitted and there are only 100 or so vessels. No progress has been made at all on the bottom-trawl fleet, despite a Scottish Parliament motion voting for robust, tamperproof tracking for all fishing vessels in 2018.
There are always opportunities to make these fisheries more sustainable – for example avoiding sensitive areas of our seas or switching to alternative, lower impact methods. Technical changes to fishing gears to avoid bycatch and habitat damage might also have a role to play. However, we have yet to see the necessary leadership from industry or government to take these opportunities.