Scotland's future catching policy: strategic environmental assessment report 2026

1. Non-Technical Summary

The Scottish Government undertook a sustainability appraisal (SA), incorporating the requirements of the Strategic Environmental Assessment^[1] to inform its proposed programme of Scotland’s Future Catching Policy (FCP). The resulting sustainability report was consulted on alongside a consultation from 15 March to 7 June 2022. The SA Report set out the potential impacts (both positive or negative) on the environment arising from the overarching package of fisheries management proposals to improve sustainable fishing practices. This overarching package did not contain detail on specific fisheries management measures.

This update to the 2022 SA is specifically concerned with the FCP workstream to improve technical and spatial selectivity measures to reduce unwanted fish catch and catch of other sensitive marine species. Building on the 2022 SA report, this report outlines the findings of the proposed selectivity measures for fishing activity which takes place in Scottish waters. These selectivity proposals specifically relate to the following fleet segments that operate in Scottish waters:

• Large mesh demersal
• Mixed fleet demersal
• Small mesh demersal
• Gill Nets
• Long Lines
• Pots and Creels

This updated SA has been produced in accordance with Environmental Assessment (Scotland) Act 2005. The following issues scoped into the assessment remain the same as the 2022 SA:

• Biodiversity, fauna and flora
• water

This assessment focuses on how the proposed selectivity measures to reduce unwanted catch of both fish and other sensitive marine species could give rise to both significant positive and negative environmental effects. The findings of this assessment have been used to inform the development of the selectivity proposals.

The assessment was conducted against a baseline that primarily used existing evidence on the state of the marine environment set out in The UK Marine Strategy Part 1 published in 2019. Additional sources of evidence were used to establish the status of environment in relation to issues, such as climatic factors, not covered by the UK Marine Strategy (UK MS). The historical impact of fishing activity on the marine environment has been considered part of the baseline. Our assessment used the best available evidence to reach a suitable judgement on the environmental effects of the selectivity proposals.

This report sets out those plans, programmes and environmental protection objectives, both international and domestic that the fisheries policy authorities consider relevant to the selectivity proposals.

This report considers the selectivity proposals for the large mesh demersal fleet, mixed demersal fleet, small mesh demersal fleet, longlines and pots and creels fleet segments on those issues scoped into this assessment with the potential positive and negative environmental effects of the selectivity proposals assessed.

The assessment has concluded that selectivity proposals do have a significant positive impact on fish stocks and sensitive marine species and beyond these direct impacts on wider biodiversity aspects such as water quality and climatic factors.

The assessment of the likely negative effects of the selectivity proposals did not identify any negative effects that posed a significant risk to the environment. The selectivity proposals, where appropriate, will be developed to avoid any potential negative effects identified by the assessment process. The environmental effects of implementing the selectivity proposals will also be monitored to identify unforeseen adverse effects at an early stage, so appropriate remedial action can be undertaken.