Fishing quota - additional allocation from 2024: island communities impact assessment

Step Two – Gather Your Data And Identify Your Stakeholders

Data available about the current situation in the islands

Scottish Sea Fisheries Statistics are published annually by the Scottish Government and detail the species landed by port district. Fishing vessel registrations by administrative and home port are published by the UK government.

Table 1 shows the numbers of sector and non-sector vessels currently administered by designated island Marine Directorate fishery offices.

The total number of vessels is 1944, of which 673 are administered by island ports and 558 of these are non-sector vessels.

Source: Marine Directorate Sea Fisheries data.

Note: The island ports of administration were selected as Kirkwall, Lerwick, Portree and Stornoway although this does not necessarily mean that all administered vessels fish and land into these ports and it is acknowledged that there may be additional vessels administered by mainland district ports which would fish and land into island ports. For example Oban and Campbeltown districts also administer fishing vessels landing into island ports including Mull, Tiree, Coll, Islay and Colonsay. The converse is also true and some island administered vessels may fish and land on the mainland. In addition there are fishing vessels which operate nomadically and will on occasion land into island ports depending on where they are fishing at any given time.

In 2022, the total tonnage and value of all landings into key island districts are shown below:

• Shetland 54,775 tonnes with a value of £82,258,000
• Stornoway 2,923 tonnes with a value of £12,554,000
• Orkney 2,034 tonnes with a value of £7,659,000
• Portree 1167 tonnes with a value of £8,113,000

The tonnage and value of landings of shellfish, demersal and pelagic species into Orkney, Shetland and Stornoway districts are shown in Table 2 for 2022

Source: Scottish Sea Fisheries Statistics 2022 supplementary table 32

With the exception of Shetland, most vessels operating from or landing catches to island ports are targeting shellfish species which either have no total allowable catch limit, or in the case of Nephrops norvegicus has a total allowable catch that is typically only occasionally fully utilised and for which there is no Additional Quota (except in ICES area VII where few island-based vessels operate).

4,117 fishers were working on Scottish vessels in 2022, representing 0.2% of the total Scottish labour force. Although employment in the fishing fleet is a small percentage of total employment in Scotland, employment in fishing accounts for a higher percentage of employment in island communities (Shetland: 5%, Orkney: 2%; Na h-Eileanan Siar: 2% and in Argyll and Bute 1%).

Table 3 shows the number of fishers employed on Scottish registered fishing vessels by designated island districts for 2022. The island districts account for approximately 30% of the total fishing workforce with Shetland accounting for over 14%.

Source: Scottish Sea Fisheries Statistics 2022 supplementary table 45

Current employment rates are shown in Table 4 and show that in all cases the islands have overall better employment rates than Scotland as a whole.

Source: Office for National Statistics Highland's employment, unemployment and economic inactivity - ONS

Average crew share earnings and number of vessels for selected fleet segments and districts is shown in Table 5. It can be seen in the case of the island districts that Shetland has virtually all the 10m & under line vessels although the average crew share is smallest and also all of the over 10m pelagic vessels where crew share is highest. In contrast Stornoway has higher numbers of 10m & under creel vessels. Shetland also has no over 10m nephrops trawlers whereas Stornoway district has the greatest number (17 vessels).

Source: Data from 2022 Scottish Sea Fisheries Statistics and 2021 Seafish Fleet Interrogation Tool. Pelagic figures are from 2019 estimates published by STECF.

Previous AQ allocations to sectoral groups containing vessels with island administrative ports are shown in Table 6. Shetland FPO has received 11.8% of the sectoral demersal AQ allocation and 27.6% of the pelagic AQ allocation for all 33 vessels which have island administrative ports. Individual recipients of fishing quotas, i.e. exclusive of vessels in the non-sector, can trade their allocations, which makes it harder to draw a direct line between distributed quota and benefit to any island.

Note: Vessels with administrative ports do not necessarily operate out of or land into these ports, and likewise vessels with mainland administrative ports may use island ports.

The allocation and uptake of Special Allocations to the non-sector in 2022 are shown in Table 7. North Sea Cod uptake was very high at 130% indicating that AQ was insufficient to meet demand. Both saithe and mackerel also had good uptake.

The proposed increase in Special Allocations represents an additional opportunity to the non-sector with a value of approximately £570000, or 1.7% of the turnover of this fleet segment (Table 8).

Source: Values estimated from 2022 Scottish Sea Fisheries Statistics.

Note: these are only estimates based on if the proposed system was used in 2022. Quota varies between years, as does realised landed value, so this will not be an accurate reflection of value in future years.

Sectoral vessels have the option of leasing quota to meet catching goals. Prices for leased quota vary between stock and species and are not typically published due to the associated commercial sensitivity. An overview of the typical prices from previous years is presented in Cross (2021)^[1].

Key Stakeholders

Key stakeholders were identified as all Scottish commercial fishing vessels, UK Fish Producer Organisations, Scottish recognised Quota Management Groups and vessels without a sectoral affiliation, fishing associations (including island based fishing associations), environmental groups and regional inshore fisheries groups (RIFG).