Draft Fisheries Assessment – Wyville-Thomson Ridge SAC: Fisheries management measures within Scottish Offshore Marine Protected Areas (MPAs)

5. Management Options

5.1 Overview of management options

Management measures are being considered by Scottish Ministers and any decision as to which measures out to be taken forward will follow upon a statutory public consultation exercise. Any such decision will also be taken in line with the Scottish Ministers obligations in relation to the exercise of their functions.

For Wyville Thomson Ridge SAC, in response to gears identified as damaging through this assessment and also site specific JNCC advice (JNCC Advice on Operations), management measures are required to avoid adverse effects on site integrity from demersal trawls activity. Accordingly the option of no management is not considered further.

One management option has been identified as suitable for the protected features and has been considered. The socioeconomic impacts and costs of the management options have been assessed within the Socio-Economic Impact Assessment (SEIA) and Sustainability Appraisal (SA) and are not discussed within this fisheries assessment. Nor are other considerations, statutory and non-statutory, which the Scottish Ministers may be required to take into account when assessing whether the imposition of a particular measures is appropriate.

This section assesses the suitability of the management options solely in light of the conservation objectives, biological characteristics of the protected features, fisheries measures in place, and current activity levels for Wyville Thomson Ridge SAC.

5.2 Assessment of management options

5.2.1 No additional management

The assessment identified that management measures would be required to avoid adverse effects on site integrity from mobile demersal gear (demersal trawls). Thus the option of no management is not considered further.

5.2.2 Zonal management

Zoned fisheries management would be introduced to reduce/limit pressures, whereby a proportion of the site would be subject to prohibitions.

This is would involve:

1. Demersal mobile gear exclusion from proportion of site (Figure 5)

2. Demersal mobile and static gear exclusion at proportion of site where indicator of VME are present (Figure 5).

Under this option, 1022 km² of the total 1023 km² Annex I reef within Wyville Thomson Ridge SAC would be protected from demersal mobile gear, thereby reducing the risk of not achieving the conservation objectives for the site.

In addition additional measures for demersal static gear are considered for the area where the VME indicator species have been identified in association with the Annex I reef, due to their particular sensitivity to demersal static gears, in known areas where available records provide evidence of the existence of VME habitats and known fishing activity has been recorded.

Having considered the conservation and fisheries management advice from the statutory nature conservation bodies, and the wider evidence contained within this assessment, Scottish Ministers consider the zoned management measures will not affect the maintenance or restoration of the reef feature to/in favourable condition within Wyville Thomson Ridge SAC and the management measures are sufficient to avoid an adverse effect on site integrity.

5.2.3 Full site exclusion

Full site exclusion would remove/avoid all pressures associated with fishing activities using demersal mobile and static gear across the whole site, Figure 6.

Removing all pressures associated with demersal mobile and demersal static gears would support the restoration of the reef feature to favourable condition, such that, subject to natural change the extent and distribution of the qualifying habitat in the site, the structure and function of the qualifying habitat in the site; and the supporting processes on which the qualifying habitat relies are restored thereby ensuring the integrity of the site.

Given the available evidence, Scottish Ministers consider that a full site exclusion to all demersal mobile and demersal static gear would support the restoration of the reef feature to favourable condition and this management measure would be considered sufficient to avoid an adverse effect on site integrity of Wyville Thomson Ridge SAC.

5.3 Management options conclusion

Scottish Ministers consider that adopting no additional management measures for mobile demersal fishing would pose the risk of adversely affecting the site integrity of Wyville-Thomson Ridge SAC. At current activity levels, fishing using static demersal gear (longlines) is not considered to pose a risk to the site integrity of Wyville-Thomson Ridge SAC. Scottish Ministers consider that additional management measures to VME features would be necessary to avoid adverse impact of the feature.

Scottish Ministers consider that both the zoned management measures and full site exclusion, outlined above, would be sufficient to avoid an adverse effect on site integrity.

The decision on which management option is to be taken forward will be taken in light of all relevant duties incumbent upon the Scottish Ministers in relation to the exercise of their functions and following upon a statutory public consultation exercise in which views on the options under consideration are invited.