Blue Marine warmly congratulates the Scottish Government on its decision to protect significant areas within 20 offshore marine protected areas, delivering an additional ~50,000 km² of seabed safeguarded from damaging bottom-towed fishing. This long-awaited step offers a vital lifeline for marine biodiversity and supports ocean recovery, benefiting wildlife, fisheries, and the climate.
While we wholly support the full spatial protection granted to some sites, we would point out that for some sites large areas of designated protected features remain exposed to bottom trawling, contradicting the latest scientific advice. In several cases, ecologically important habitats have been left vulnerable simply because they overlap with active fishing grounds.
With over 90% of offshore MPA seabed now at last protected from damaging bottom trawling (equating to > 170,000 km²), this represents huge progress for Scotland’s marine environment. We urge the Scottish Government to match this impressive ambition in the offshore by implementing strong protection measures in inshore marine protected areas where bottom trawling is currently allowed in 92%. Inshore protection is beneficial to marine life, climate and small-scale fishers and has the strong support of the Scottish public.
Background
On 1 September 2025, Scottish Ministers laid the order to implement long-awaited fisheries management measures for 20 Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) in Scotland’s offshore waters, protecting an area of ~50,000km2 from damaging fishing practices. These measures will come into effect on 16 October 2025 .
Blue Marine welcomes this long overdue decision on fisheries management measure in offshore MPAs, which will see an additional 50,000km² of offshore MPA seabed protected from damaging bottom towed fishing practices. This is a significant and essential step toward ensuring that MPAs can function effectively and meet their conservation objectives to protect nationally important habitats and species such as deep-sea coral gardens, Leafscale Gulper sharks, Ocean quahogs and rocky reefs.
Of the 20 offshore MPAs assessed, five will now benefit from full site protection, where both demersal mobile and demersal static fishing gear will be prohibited throughout the entire site. For the remaining 15 sites, the Government has opted for a zonal management approach. While this offers variable levels of protection, the majority of the designated features in these sites will finally be protected over ten years after they were designated.
However, for some of these sites there are significant areas of the designated feature* that remain unprotected. While we support the government’s decision to protect a larger area of the protected features in the Central Fladen and East of Gannet and Montrose Fields MPA than were originally proposed in the public consultation – it is disappointing that the measures fall short of governments own conservation advisors recommendations, and will allow damaging bottom trawling to continue in a significant area within these sites. Under the current decision significant proportions of some protected habitats remain exposed to the most damaging types of fishing, and will never recover.
Specifically:
- Central Fladen MPA: 38% of the burrowed mud feature (the site’s designated feature) within the MPA, will remain unprotected.
- East of Gannet and Montrose Fields MPA: 30% of the protected mud feature within the MPA will remain unprotected.
- Firth of Forth Banks Complex NCMPA – this option leaves over 40% of the designated protected feature, subtidal sands and gravel, subject to demersal mobile gear.
- Geikie Slide and Hebridean Slope NCMPA – the zonal option would leave 70% of the designated protected feature, offshore subtidal and gravel, unprotected from demersal mobile gear, as well as 10% of the burrowed mud habitat.
While we acknowledge the Government’s decision to expand zonal protection in some sites, we still believe the current level of protection is insufficient to achieve the conservation objectives and ensure these features are in a favourable condition. Mud habitats are particularly rich in carbon**, and relatively scarce in UK waters, so reducing their protection to continue to allow trawling ignores their contribution to the importance of their carbon-storage and biodiversity properties.
We are encouraged by the Scottish Government’s commitment to monitoring, evaluation, and adaptive management, as outlined in the Scottish Biodiversity Strategy. It is vital that, where monitoring shows that sites are failing to meet conservation objectives, full site closures are swiftly implemented.
Overall, this decision represents a positive first step. With an additional ~30% MPA seabed afforded protection bringing the total to > 90% of the offshore MPA seabed. This is a move that strengthens Scotland’s marine conservation ambitions.
However, this progress must now be extended to inshore MPAs and Priority Marine Features (PMFs)* in inshore waters (waters <12nm from the coast). Currently, only 3% of inshore waters are protected from bottom trawling, and just 8% of the area covered by inshore MPAs has any form of protection. This is a glaring gap that continues to undermine the effectiveness of Scotland’s MPA network.
Implementing robust fisheries management in inshore MPAs and protecting PMFs will help restore marine biodiversity and fish stocks, support sustainable marine resource use, and strengthen coastal communities, particularly the long-suffering small-scale fishing sectors. Most of Scotland’s inshore MPAs and PMFs have remained unprotected since 2014**, undermining their potential to deliver environmental and socio-economic benefits.
We urge the Scottish Government to ensure that inshore MPAs are afforded full site protection.
Notes
- Priority Marine features (PMFs) are habitats and species that ar
** In 2014, a suite of 30 new MPAs was designated. This suite included 13 offshore NCMPAs, which added to some of the offshore SACs already designated. In 2015, the Scottish Government began developing proposals for fisheries management measures in offshore MPAs and SACs in collaboration with marine stakeholders. The measures would have been adopted through European law – the Common Fisheries Policy. The process to gain approval for the measures from European member states had begun in 2016. Then ‘Brexit’ happened, and the Scottish Government had to follow a different process to implement the offshore MPA fisheries management measures.
