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

Appendix 3: Oceana campaign response

Oceana campaign response to Scottish Government public consultation on fisheries management measures within Scottish offshore Marine Protected Areas.

19 Aug – 14 Oct 2024

Dear consultation team,

I am writing in response to your ongoing consultation on management measures for Scotland’s offshore marine protected areas (MPAs). Please note that I do not wish for my response to be published, and I do not consent to being contacted again in the future.

I urge the Scottish Government to protect Scotland’s seas, and safeguard the incredible wildlife and thriving livelihoods they can support, by banning bottom trawling and dredging completely throughout all of the sites under consideration.

Therefore, in response to consultation question 3, I ask that you register this email as my response in support of the option for proposed full site management measures for all 20 MPAs covered by this consultation.

In response to consultation question 4, I wish to comment that there is strong scientific evidence that properly protected areas are good for both marine wildlife and local livelihoods. Yet, in many MPAs, fishing vessels are still permitted to drag heavy metal gear and nets, which can be as large as a football field and weigh several tonnes, across the seafloor scooping up marine life. These fishing practices are akin to bulldozing and can destroy seabed habitats within minutes.

Such destructive forms of fishing should have absolutely no place in supposedly protected areas. I am deeply concerned that the Scottish Government, despite its commitments to marine conservation, still permits most of Scotland’s MPAs to be dredged and trawled. Last year, Scotland’s offshore MPAs were subjected to almost 6,000 hours of apparent fishing by vessels equipped with destructive bottom-towed fishing gear, Oceana data analysis has revealed. This poses a direct and immediate threat to our precious wildlife, to crucial carbon stores, and to the livelihoods of many small-scale fishers around our coastline.

I welcome this consultation as an opportunity to put a stop to this destruction and to ensure proper marine protection by banning the use of bottom-towed gear in offshore MPAs. I am responding to ask you to do this by taking the option for full site management measures for all 20 sites covered by this consultation.