Why Scotland's failure to protect its seas simply cannot continue

Who doesn’t love a sea view? Scotland has glorious ocean vistas by the bucketload. But looking out to the horizon, we rarely think about what lies beneath. Scotland’s deep seas are home to extraordinary creatures, from whales and sharks to bioluminescent anglerfish and clams that can live for over 500 years.

Our deep ocean environment is currently in the conservation spotlight, with a public consultation open on measures to restrict certain types of fishing in offshore marine protected areas. A separate consultation on inshore areas is long overdue.

Offshore marine protected areas are home to unique and vulnerable species, including cold-water corals and sea sponges. The habitats they form play a critical role in ocean health, providing oases of food and shelter for a huge variety of other species, including commercial fish stocks. The ecosystems found there are also key to helping tackle the climate crisis, providing important, long-term carbon stores.

Proposed restrictions on trawling

Most of Scotland’s offshore marine protected areas were designated in 2014, yet commercial fishing that threatens wildlife is still allowed to operate in most areas shallower than 800 metres depth. The proposals being consulted on include restrictions on trawling which damages large sections of vital seabed habitats.

Largely, the current proposals are not new. The Scottish Government put forward plans for managing fishing in offshore marine protected areas in 2016 following extensive workshops with fishers, scientists and environmental organisations. Implementation of the plans was delayed by Brexit and Covid.

A pod of pilot whales in Loch Carron, South Uist (Picture: Jeff J Mitchell) | Getty Images

However, a stronger protection option is now proposed for some sites, which would mean the tailored fishing restrictions would apply across the whole site, instead of just parts of it. This would help ocean ecosystems to start to recover, rather than just protecting some of what remains following decades of damage.

These are not HPMAs

The current proposals are unrelated to highly protected marine areas, which were shelved last year following widespread concern from coastal communities. Introducing HPMAs would have meant banning all fishing and some other commercial activities (but not recreational access) in selected parts of Scotland’s seas. Locations for potential HPMAs had not been identified before they were shelved.

The current proposals are to restrict certain types of fishing in existing offshore marine protected areas. Some lower impact forms of fishing would be allowed to continue in many sites, while restrictions would apply to activities that pose the greatest risk to the species and habitats present. The boundaries of these defined and limited areas are very clear.

Globally, marine protected areas play a crucial role in safeguarding ecosystems, promoting sustainable fisheries, mitigating climate change and supporting coastal communities. But in Scotland, we’re seeing very few of those benefits, because the failure to implement protections means that most of our marine protected areas, both offshore and inshore, are largely ineffective. That’s why it’s so important that the current consultation leads to effective protections finally being introduced.

Marine protected areas are not the whole answer to the loss of biodiversity in Scotland’s seas. But implementing and enforcing the stronger protection option in those areas is a crucial step to helping our seas recover. Scotland’s deep seas give us far more than we might imagine when looking out to sea, and now is the time to give them the protection they need.

Esther Brooker is marine policy officer at Scottish Environment Link