Fisheries management measures within Scottish Offshore Marine Protected Areas (MPAs): consultation analysis

Introduction

This report provides an analysis of responses to questions from the consultation on proposed Fisheries management measures within Scottish Offshore Marine Protected Areas (MPAs). This public consultation ran from 19 August 2024 to 14 October 2024.

Policy Context

The Scottish Government's vision for the marine environment is of clean, healthy, safe, productive and diverse seas: managed to meet the long term needs of nature and people. To help achieve this, The Scottish Government have committed to consult on fisheries management measures for both offshore and inshore Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) where these are not already in place. The Scottish Government proposes to implement fisheries management measures at 9 Special Areas of Conservation (SACs) and 11 MPAs in Scottish offshore waters (collectively referred to as MPAs throughout this document, unless otherwise specified). The offshore area extends from the limit of the territorial sea to the UK Continental Shelf Claim Limit. This policy proposal fulfils duties in domestic legislation (including legislation that implemented the requirements of EU Directives), as well as contributing to UK and international networks of MPAs.

The objective of implementing fisheries management measures within these MPAs is to enable the achievement of site conservation objectives, assigned at designation. The sites in question have been designated and their features identified as requiring protective management following MPA selection guidelines. The Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009 then places a duty on the relevant public authority to further the achievement of the conservation objectives of MPAs. The Conservation of Offshore Habitats and Species Regulations 2017 outline the requirement for SACs to be managed in a way that maintains or restores the protected feature to favourable conservation status.

The Consultation

Breakdown of consultation content and coverage

This consultation consisted of two parts:

• Part 1: Consultation on the proposed fisheries management measures
• Part 2: Consultation on the amendment to the West of Scotland MPA boundary

Under Part 1, this consultation sought views and comments on proposed fisheries management measures for 20 MPAs which occur wholly or partly in the Scottish offshore region.^[1] These are listed below in Table 1 and Table 2. An explanation of the rationale for additional sites, including those identified as requiring measures but not addressed in this consultation, follows Table 1 and Table 2.

Three Special Protection Areas (SPAs) that have been identified as requiring measures but not addressed in this consultation are, Seas off Foula SPA, Seas off St Kilda SPA and Outer Firth of Forth Banks Complex SPA. These sites are designated across the boundary between the inshore region (0-12 nautical miles) and offshore region (12-200 nautical miles). The measures for these sites are being taken forward as part of the programme of work identifying measures for inshore MPAs and were therefore not included within the consultation.

Four wholly offshore sites which are not considered as requiring further fisheries management measures are Hatton Bank candidate SAC, Hatton-Rockall Basin MPA, Turbot Bank MPA and North-west Orkney MPA. This is because there are already suitable fishing restrictions in place. These sites are therefore also not included within this consultation.

In addition, as The Sandeel (Prohibition of Fishing) (Scotland) Order 2024 came into force in March 2024, measures for the Turbot Bank MPA are no longer required and are therefore not included within this consultation.

Views and comments were sought on the key draft documents which provide the rationale for the proposed management measures, as well as assessments of the potential impacts and benefits of these measures.

The consultation and the associated documents refers to sites designated under section 116 of the Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009 as Nature Conservation Marine Protected Areas (NCMPAs). The term MPA is used to collectively refer to these NCMPAs and Special Areas of Conservation (SAC).

Under Part 2, this consultation sought views and comments on the proposed amendment to the West of Scotland NCMPA boundary. This is proposed to aid in the implementation of fisheries management measures within the MPA and resolve an issue with the original site boundary designation.

Number and type of consultation questions

The consultation contained a total of 24 closed and 45 open questions, broken down as follows:

Questions 1-10 were general questions on the overall policy and the supporting documents, namely:

• Sustainability Appraisal (SA);
• Strategic Environmental Report (SEA);
• Socio- Economic Impact Assessment (SEIA);
• Draft Fisheries Assessments
• Partial Business Regulatory Impact Assessment (BRIA); and
• Partial Island Communities Impact Assessment (ICIA).

These consisted of two closed questions (inviting support/neutral/oppose responses; with multiple choice options), and eight open questions (inviting a free text response option: e.g. explain your answer, any other comments).

Questions 12-30 then gave the option to provide site specific comments for the 20 MPAs with measures proposed.

These (12-30) were each broken into sub questions consisting of one closed question with multiple choice option of support, neural or oppose. Then followed by either one or two open questions on the associated proposed management measures for each site. Fifteen sites had two open questions, and the remaining five had only one open question.

Questions 32 – 33 consisted of one open question and one seeking a closed and open response.

Appendix 1 of this report contains a complete list of consultation questions.

Aim of this report

This report presents a robust and systematic analysis of the material submitted in response to the consultation. The structure of the report follows the structure of the consultation paper and considers the responses to each consultation question in turn.

Approach to the analysis

The analysis seeks to identify the most common themes and issues. It does not report on every single point raised in the consultation responses. All responses where the respondent has given permission for their comments to be published will be made available on the Citizen Space website.

Equal weighting has been given to all responses. This includes the spectrum of views, from large organisations with an international or UK remit or membership, to individuals’ viewpoints.

Tables demonstrating a breakdown of the number of responses to each question are included at the beginning of each section. It should be noted that these tables present findings both including and excluding campaign responses.

It should be noted that this consultation is heavily influenced by the volume of campaign responses. Tables including the figures for campaign responses are included in Appendix 2. Therefore, all tables in Appendix 2 are broken down by:

• Type of response (individual or organisation)
• Whether a response is a campaign response or not
• Campaign responses broken down by specific campaigns

There were three key campaigns that responded to this consultation and their responses have been handled as follows:

• Oceana: Direct response to Q3 on full site management for all 20 MPAs covered by the consultation. Therefore, question 3 has been coded as support and the individual questions for each MPA have been coded as support or Option 2 (Full Site) for each individual MPA. The standard campaign response for this campaign is included in Appendix 3. There were 2034 responses from this campaign,
• SE Link: The SE link responses indicate support for full site fisheries management in offshore MPAs. The letters also state that the ‘bespoke restrictions designed for each marine protected area should apply across the whole of that area’. Therefore, question 3 has been coded as support and the individual questions for each MPA have been coded as support or Option 2 (Full Site) for each individual MPA. The standard campaign response for this campaign is included in Appendix 4. There were 1646 responses from this campaign,
• SWFPA: Campaign responses related to the SWFPA note support for Option 1 (Zonal measures) in 15 of the sites and support for full site protection at the 5 sites where this is the only option. They note opposition to Option 2 for all sites where this is an option. The standard campaign response for this campaign is included in Appendix 5. There were 19 responses from this campaign.

This analysis report quotes and paraphrases some of the comments received. However, this does not indicate that these comments will be acted upon or given greater credence than others.

In line with qualitative reporting practices, phrases such as ‘many’, ‘several’ or ‘some’ have been used to indicate the volume of responses in relation to the particular points or themes discussed. Here, ‘many’ or ‘most’ can be understood as the majority of respondents, ‘several’ or ‘some’ as a smaller subset of respondents, and ‘a few’ as a minority of respondents. Phrases like ‘one respondent’ or ‘one participant’ are used where a respondent raised pertinent points that summarised, or contrasted, the views of others.

It should be noted that the arguments for each option at each site are generally repeating those from the opening questions of the consultation. This is true for many of the sites. Therefore, the following analysis will state where these arguments are reiterated, and specific comments for each site that have emerged from the qualitative analysis will be further explored.

Comment on the generalisability of the consultation findings

As with all consultations, the views submitted in this consultation are not necessarily representative of the views of the wider public. Anyone can submit their views to a consultation, and individuals (and organisations) who have a keen interest in a topic – and the capacity to respond – are more likely to participate in a consultation than those who do not. This self-selection means that the views of consultation participants cannot be generalised to the wider population. For this reason, the main focus in analysing consultation responses is not to identify how many people held particular views, but rather to understand the range of views expressed and the reasons for these views.