Fisheries and climate change: opinions from the wild capture fishing sector

3 Methods and data

Questions were designed to address the climate change actions listed in Scotland's Fisheries Management Strategy. Question topics included the estimation of greenhouse gas emissions, changes to behaviour, gear and deck machinery to reduce emissions, and the climate impacts on the sector.

The survey launched on 1 November 2021 to coincide with the 26^th UNFCCC Conference of the Parties (COP26), and concluded at the end of December 2021. The questionnaire was shared with key stakeholders through established email distribution lists, as well as through social media and other channels (e.g., Fishing News). Those key stakeholders who had not engaged throughout the period received further targeted emails to encourage participation.

In total, 66 responses were received. Respondents came from a range of backgrounds (e.g., skippers, producer organisations, fishing associations, processors, consultancy, NGO and research/academia; Figure 1a and Table 1). Most responses from outside the fishing industry did not identify with a specific fleet segment. Therefore, the fleet segmentation shown in Figure 1b and Table 2 is based only on respondents from the industry. Twelve respondents didn't identify with a particular fleet segment (i.e., selected 'Other'). These include a coalition (1), federations or membership bodies (7), fishers whose main gear was not listed (2), and fishers with interest in more than one of the listed gears (3).

For this analysis, the 12 categories in the original survey were grouped to six categories: fishing industry (i.e., vessel owner/skipper, producer's organisation, processor, fishing association, coalition), public sector (i.e., Scottish Government and non-departmental public bodies), research (i.e., academia and independent research organisation), NGO, consultancy and other (Table 1). The public sector view summarises the personal views of respondents (4) working in the public sector.

Responses have been calculated as a percentage of the total number of participants (i.e., a percentage of 66). Particular focus is also given to responses by those active in the fishing industry, and, therefore, for some questions, the responses of the industry representatives are shown as a percentage of the respondents in these categories (i.e., a percentage of 39).

Analysis of free text answers was semi-quantitative: the authors reviewed answers and created a summary of the main points per question, and for some questions a quantitative analysis of certain themes in the responses was conducted.

Given the relatively small total sample size (66 respondents) and due to the skew in respondent backgrounds (39 industry representatives, nine research, ten NGO, four public sector, two consultancy and two other; Figure 1 and Table 1) due care should be taken in the interpretation of the responses as they may not be representative to the wide range of stakeholders who make up the fishing sector or have an interest in the fishing sector.