A fleet of seagoing drones – unscrewed survey vessels (USVs), to use the correct term – have completed survey work for a major new cable route that will link the huge Ossian floating wind farm, off North East Scotland, to…
Revisions to the economic link conditions saw increased landings of mackerel and herring by Scottish-registered pelagic vessels into Scotland in 2023, with more than 50% of their tonnage landed into Scotland. The new conditions introduced on 1 January, 2023 cover…
The Scottish government has set out how it intends to allocate the additional quota Scotland has received as a result of Brexit. This follows a consultation that ran from November 2023 to January 2024, which offered seven different options for…
The two Scottish POs that lost their legal challenge to the Scottish government’s new economic link conditions, requiring Scottish vessels to land 55% of their catches in Scotland by 2025, have confirmed they will not appeal against the decision. The…
Brexit has added ‘considerable’ burdens for Scottish seafood traders, and while trade with the EU is manageable, it is ‘sub-optimal’ at present, according to Seafood Scotland. It says there are a number of additional trade barriers which hampered trade ‘significantly’…
Scottish industry leaders have reported a challenging start to the year for some parts of the catching and processing sectors, with fishing hit by bad weather in January and February and demand and prices affected by the high cost of…
An appeal by the Scottish government against the 2023 ruling that its failure to ban trawling and scalloping was in contravention of Scotland’s National Marine Plan, which sets out steps to protect the marine environment, was heard in Scotland’s highest…
The legal challenge to the new economic link licence conditions by part of the Scottish pelagic fleet was rejected by judges in the Scottish Court of Session last week. The conditions were amended from 1 January, 2023, with a requirement…
UK and Faroe negotiators were continuing to work on a fisheries deal for 2024 last week, and agreement was understood to be ‘imminent’. About 12 of the larger boats in the Scottish whitefish fleet work at Faroe at various times…
A ground-breaking pilot project is being set up in Scotland to protect the welfare of fishing vessel crews and provide them with a route for formal grievance procedures. The new Worker-Driven Social Responsibility (WSR) programme for UK fishing is the…
