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Open Seas

Promoting sustainable seafood from Scotland's Seas

illegal fishing

Are Scotland’s fish stocks in good condition?

The Scottish trawl fishing lobby has recently declared that there are “more fish in the sea than ever“. We consider the facts behind the headlines.

“Another component of the threadbare dossier produced by the greens to attack the industry is “over-fishing. This myth really needs to be put to bed, once and for all.”

Elspeth MacDonald, chief executive of Scottish Fishermen’s Federation, The Scotsman, August 2021

In recent months, some of the main trawler lobbyists, the Shetland Fishermen’s Association and its parent organisation, the Scottish Fishermen’s Federation (SFF), have made far-fetched statements that dismiss overfishing as a “myth”, environmental concerns as “misguided” and amazingly ask whether “environmental NGOs are recommending mass starvation?” – this last statement is from organisations who have lobbied for their members to land more than 45% of their catch directly to foreign ports, bypassing our own food system and workers in Scotland entirely.

These comments are apparently aimed to distract from calls for parts of the fishing industry to reduce its carbon footprint and environmental impact. The industry lobbyists instead claim that “North Sea fish stocks are in a tremendously healthy state“, or recovering and indeed that “there are more fish in the sea than ever”. It is vitally important to assess whether these statements are factually correct. [Read more…]

Secretive government scallop dredge group documents reveal inaction

Redacted documents disclosed through a Freedom of Information request reveal just 14 REM installations on Scottish dredge fleet since 2018 despite £2m of public money and a secretive Government-run scallop industry group

The Scottish Government has been promising to fit Remote Electronic Monitoring (REM)* systems to the Scottish scallop dredge fleet since 2014. This has been made more imperative by ongoing reports of illegal dredging inside marine protected areas (there were six such reports between March and November 2020 during the peak of the pandemic).

In 2018 the then Cabinet Secretary Fergus Ewing committed £1.5m of public money to buy scallop dredge companies the tracking devices – this shifted to £2m when they finally agreed the contract. In 2019 the former fisheries Minister Mr Ewing set up something called the Scottish Scallop Sector Working Group – the SSSWG. However, no information about this group was made public. In 2019 a Parliamentary question at Holyrood made its existence public, but no other information was shared.

Earlier this year, we contacted the Scottish Government to request [Read more…]

A Seaspiracy in Scotland? Fishing for the truth

The new documentary Seaspiracy has sparked a huge amount of debate about the impacts of fishing in our ocean. Many have called it out as alarmist, especially in its apparent conclusion that people should stop eating fish. As a charity that seeks to expose unacceptable fisheries but also promote sustainable seafood we don’t agree with every aspect of the film, but in its broad sweep of the issues, the documentary highlights some of the major sustainability problems that are sadly of concern right here in Scotland and the UK…

Once relegated as a niche environmental issue, Seaspiracy has catapulted the ecological decline of the world’s oceans to public prominence, beaming it to a mainstream Netflix audience that is increasingly sceptical of big business and hungry for consumer information.

Seaspiracy tries to cover a lot of ground and begins very much at entry level, assuming little knowledge of the main problems affecting our [Read more…]

The quiet deregulation of Scotland’s fisheries

 

The Scottish Government’s new ‘Fisheries Management Strategy’. has been long in the making. Has it been worth the wait? Unfortunately it signals a quietly regressive approach which risks deregulating our fishing industry, back-sliding on EU rules, and opens the door to overfishing.

This new ‘Fisheries Management Strategy’  represents the biggest change in fisheries management in a generation, as Scotland leaves the European Union’s Common Fisheries Policy and follows this new Strategy. 

Despite the gravity of this change, there has been no parliamentary opportunity to scrutinise the Strategy, or the detail of fisheries management more generally. A Ministerial statement in the Scottish Parliament scheduled for Tuesday 15th December was cancelled and MSPs have since had no opportunity to debate it.

On the surface, the Strategy appears to be a pioneering and innovative in its aim to make Scotland a  ‘world-leading fishing nation,’ but what stands out is its failure to even mention the declining health of our marine environment and the poor condition of many fish populations, let alone set out a plan for their recovery. Scotland’s west coast cod populations have declined dramatically and remain in poor condition. ICES now advises “there should be zero catch in each of the years 2021 and 2022”. So while industry and government have spent time haggling about the share of fish stocks in the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement, a more foundational concern is the health of the fish populations themselves. [Read more…]

Transparency is a fundamental tool for deterring illegal fishing

Earlier this week, the Herald ran a front page story ‘Justice in secret for skippers that flout laws at sea’. 

The news article focussed on concerns raised after the Scottish Government declined to disclose the identity of vessels given fines for suspected illegal trawling inside Loch Gairloch, an area of inshore seabed known to hold vital habitat for spring spawning herring. 

This is an issue we have been following for some time. Reports of illegal fishing in protected areas of Scotland’s seas are sadly all-too-frequent and despite increasing awareness of the problem, it’s still happening. This is in part due to the under-resourcing of fisheries enforcement in Scotland, but also because the legislative regime itself does not effectively deal with – and deter – illegal fishing. Sustainable fishermen, and our environment, are now paying the price:  illegal dredging or trawling can entail huge collateral damage to marine wildlife and also compromise the sea’s productivity for other fisheries. Back in 2018, we collaborated with local divers to investigate the seabed after reports of illegal trawling in Loch Gairloch. In July this year, the Scottish Government confirmed that two vessels were issued ‘Fixed Penalty Notices’, each for £2,000 for illegally fishing inside the Gairloch closed area. [Read more…]

Dredging in the dark

The success of Scotland’s seafood sector relies upon a reputation of high-quality, sustainable and traceable fish, and yet the Scottish Government is continuing to sit on its hands in the wake of repeated instances of illegal scallop dredging. We document a recent incident of suspicious fishing activity in the Sound of Mull, and explain how inaction by the Scottish Government is undermining the recovery of our marine environment – and why vessel tracking could help solve the problem.

Ram-raiding MPAs

In recent weeks, community organisations, fishermen and environmental groups have spoken with one voice to highlight the systemic failure by Marine Scotland to effectively manage Scotland’s inshore fisheries and protect and enforce fishing rules in Marine Protected Areas (MPAs). A series of incidents of both damaging and illegal scallop dredging prompted 42 organisations – including our own – to sign a joint letter to First Minister Nicola Sturgeon calling for the Scottish Government to enforce fishing laws in MPAs and rethink the lack of management, which currently leaves 95% of Scotland’s inshore waters open to scallop dredging.

Our view is that without improved management, the productive potential of our seabed will continue to be eroded by poorly regulated dredging. This means coastal communities, businesses and our broader inshore fishing sector are being disadvantaged by a degraded marine environment. [Read more…]

Open Seas statement on illegal and damaging dredging in Gairloch

Scallop dredging pulverises our seabed, and yet it is permitted through about 95% of our coastal seas. What we have seen in Gairloch are the actions of a few greedy fishermen, for whom 95% of it is not enough. These scallopers have decided to decimate one of the few small areas protected from this damaging form of fishing.

We need to get this fishery out of our sensitive and vulnerable coastal sea, unless in areas where the fishery can itself prove it is sustainable for it to be there. We also need to establish a proper means of tracking the boats so that illegal fishing like this is stamped out for good.

The blame in this instance lands firmly with Scottish Ministers. The current regulation of scallop dredging is pitifully inadequate. This Government is failing to protect our natural heritage by allowing one of the only places where herring are still spawning to be destroyed in this way. Unless they take action soon, they will be turning their back on not only our marine environment, but the future of our fisheries and the rural economy in places like Wester Ross. Real stewardship of our seabed would be to the long-term benefit of Scotland.

In just four years, scallop landings in Scotland have declined by roughly 30% (2013-2017). There is an underlying problem that needs to be addressed urgently.

For more information and background to this issue, read ‘Probe into alleged scallop dredging in protected area‘.

We will continue to update our own news page with more detail.

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…]

Members of:

Scottish Rewilding Alliance
Our Seas coalition
Slow Food Scotland
Scottish Food Coalition
UKELA Scotland
Stop Climate Chaos Scotland