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Sustainability in Scotland's Seas

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UK Government Fisheries White Paper

The UK Government released a White Paper outlining their intention for replacing the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) on Wednesday. On Thursday Scottish Cabinet Secretary for Fisheries Fergus Ewing condemned the document as a Westminster “power grab” – power over fisheries has long been devolved to Holyrood (and the Senedd and Stormont). Here’s a quick summary of our view on what the White Paper means for sustainable Scottish seafood.

Context

As has been established elsewhere in the Brexit proceedings, despite leaving the EU in March 2019, the UK will in effect follow EU fishing rules in 2019 and 2020, only by 2021 will we have properly Brexited from a fisheries [Read more…]

Scallop dredging: eco-label the problems away

Open Seas statement on scallop dredging ecolabel decision

Yesterday (20th June 2018) the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) rejected our objection to the re-certification of the Shetland scallop dredge fishery. As a result, the MSC will now permit the fishery to sell dredged scallops using its blue tick label, despite the dredge fishery continuing inside Marine Protected Areas (MPA) and on other areas of sensitive habitat.

We think the decision, and the way the MSC have gone about making it, highlights a systemic failure in the MSC’s certification processes, and not only undermines the recovering health of our marine environment, but also shows that what MSC consider to be ‘sustainable’ is out of step with what the Scottish [Read more…]

Stories from Scotland’s Seabed

Scotland’s seas are packed full of amazing life – the basking sharks that migrate to our west coast each summer are the world’s second largest fish, the Bass Rock is the world’s largest gannet colony and the cold water coral gardens on the Hebridean Slope hold some of the oldest living creatures on the planet. Some of the species that live in our seas are not just important in themselves; just like the redwood forests of the Pacific Northwest or the heather of our own peat bogs, they create and maintain the structure of our interconnected marine habitats. Here we look at where those species live, where they used to live and understand what the future may hold for them…

Juvenile Fish Habitat, (c) Open Seas

Healthy seabeds form the foundation of our seas. They are integral to its health and its ability to provide us healthy, sustainable seafood.

Introduction

From vast forests of kelp, to shoals of sandeels, muddy sea lochs to cold water corals, Scotland’s seas are rich in life. These species form an interwoven web of life, the marine ecosystem. Together this connected web provides the living, breathing and working sea that delivers fish to our tables, provides water, oxygen to nourish our lives, and circulates and captures carbon dioxide in a way that helps stabilise our climate. [Read more…]

Grey fish: Scotland’s seafood traceability problem

The recent incident of illegal dredging in a Scottish MPA has exposed a serious problem for producers and consumers of Scottish seafood, highlighting that we don’t know, with any geographical accuracy, where much our seafood comes from. Our follow up investigations suggest that legally and illegally caught fish and shellfish is being sold alongside one another, with buyers unable to distinguish legal catches from illicit ones. With increasing consumer demand for sustainable food with assured provenance and traceability, this article explores how improved vessel monitoring can solve the pressing problem of “grey fish” – fish of no proven origin – in our supply chains.

On Friday 25th January, two scallop fishermen – Davy Stinson and Steve Barlow –  hand-diving for King scallops off Scotland’s west coast, encountered evidence of damage to the seabed consistent with scallop dredging. The divers saw the tracks of scallop dredges on the seabed and a trail of broken scallop shells. The shells were cracked open, containing the scallop flesh, or ‘meat’, still inside, indicating that the damage had been inflicted recently (seabed scavengers, like crabs and lobsters had not yet moved in to eat the dying shellfish). Dredge damage is unfortunately not an unusual sight, but this damage was witnessed inside a Marine Protected Area – and also a Special Area of Conservation, designated under EU law – where scallop dredging has been banned since 2007. [Read more…]

Open Seas Evidence Behind Scallop Dredge Certification Concerns

We recently voiced our concerns about a seafood eco-labelling process for a scallop dredge fishery and have been publicly criticised for doing so. Polarised debate is clearly not in anyone’s interests, but we take accusations about our use of evidence and accuracy very seriously, and so here lay out our evidence and the reasons why our concerns remain accurate and valid. [Read more…]

Eco-labelling concerns for dredged scallops

Open Seas’ mission is to promote more sustainable fishing in Scotland. It is with some regret that we are now challenging the proposed re-certification of the scallop dredge fishery in Shetland.  Unfortunately the possible re-certification of scallop dredging here, under its current management regime, risks green-washing an important certification standard that should represent a benchmark for sustainability.

Scallop dredging is one of the UK’s most damaging forms of fishing. Dredge boats tow heavy rakes with metal teeth several inches long that dig into the seabed, dredging out the scallops. In April of 2017 the severity of damage caused by scallop dredging was revealed when a vessel towed through a well-known flame shell reef in Loch Carron. The killing of species other than scallops and the flattening of seabed habitats, means dredging has and continues to have a profoundly negative impact on the health of our seas. However, it does not have to be this way. Dredging in some [Read more…]

Cleaning up the ‘cleaner fish’

Wrasse are beautiful, charismatic fish that play a key role in the ecosystems of Scottish inshore waters. However, as Scottish salmon farmers now look to ‘cleaner fish’ as a way to address the industry’s sea lice problem, rising commercial demand is having potentially catastrophic impacts on wild stocks of wrasse. We take a look at the issue, find out what we know, what we don’t know and what we really should know about the environmental costs of the unprecedented demand for ‘cleaner fish.’ Our research indicates there is a systemic flaw in current fisheries management, which has failed to take precautionary steps to regulate this new fishery.

 

The sea lice problem

A big commercial concern for salmon farmers is sea lice: natural parasites that biologically weaken the health of salmon by feeding on their flesh and [Read more…]

Prawn potential: the benefits of more sustainable seafood

A new industry report is shedding light on the economic and environmental opportunities and consequences of fishing for prawns in our inshore waters. It’s part of a broader story of regulatory inertia and environmental decline in our inshore fisheries. However, debate is now growing around the case for spatial management as a way to restore more sustainable fishing and rural employment in Scotland.

Prawns are a big deal for Scotland. ‘Nephrops’ are large orange-pink prawns sometimes called Dublin Bay prawns, langoustine and scampi. Back in the 1960s only a few tonnes were landed each year, but it is now our second most valuable stock, worth £79m.

Unfortunately, the emergence of this fishery has come at an environmental cost. People want [Read more…]

Loch Carron No More

What happened in Loch Carron exemplifies a fundamental problem with the way we manage our inshore fisheries. How can we move forward?

What Happened?

This month a scallop dredger working along the west coast of Scotland, to the east of Skye and intermittently transmitting from its Automatic Information Service (AIS) transponder, entered Loch Carron. The vessel was observed in the sea loch – by several witnesses – towing around the area known to hold fragile and productive flame shell beds (we have spoken to several of these people directly). The flame shell reefs were well-known to many, and local fishermen attest that they hadn’t been dredged for at least 10 years, perhaps 15 or 20.

A squad of dedicated divers arrived at the site just a few days later and documented significant and extensive damage to [Read more…]

The cost of Scottish Marine Protected Areas, a year down the line

We published a paper in March 2017 about the impacts of Scottish MPAs. We re-publish it here in full.

Abstract:

  • In early 2016 Scottish Government established fisheries restrictions in Scottish Marine Protected Areas to protect vulnerable marine ecosystems.
  • The ‘mobile’ fishing sector (i.e. the part of the fishing industry most likely to be affected by these MPA) raised many concerns about the negative impact the restrictions could have on coastal communities.
  • A year has now passed and this analysis has been undertaken to assess what impacts the restrictions have had on landings of scallops and Nephrops (the two species most targeted by inshore fisheries) at several key Scottish ports.
  • Assessment shows that landed weight and value have not been impacted at the majority of Scottish [Read more…]

Mackerel & Beets

We’re pretty chuffed about launching our website, so to celebrate we’re giving away my ma’s mackerel & beetroot recipe – totally free of charge, a once in a lifetime opportunity!

Around this time of year mackerel landings are tailing off so get some sustainable mackerel whilst you can. Even better, go out and catch some yourself, the fish will soon be returning to our sea lochs and [Read more…]

Coming Soon…

We’ll be publishing regular blogs, covering various bits of our work. Keep an eye out for them here.

In the meantime, follow us on twitter or instagram or medium.