Business and Regulatory Impact Assessment on Pelagic Fisheries Management Plans

Footnotes

1 The relevant UK fisheries authorities for the pelagic FMPs are the Scottish Government, the Welsh Government (two of the plans), the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs, and the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs in Northern Ireland

2 Annex A of the JFS was amended in December 2024.

3 Internal analysis of Scottish Government fisheries management data.

4 Fisheries Act 2020

5 consumption by one user reduces the amount available to others

6 difficult to exclude people from using the resource

7 costs or benefits of economic activity to third parties, such as wider society, that are not reflected in market prices

8 Joint Fisheries Statement

9 SG internal fisheries management data, August 2025. Figures may differ from the published UK sea fisheries annual statistics report 2024.

10 Scottish Sea Fisheries Statistics 2024 - gov.scot: Table 47.

11 Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act 2015 – Definitions of small and micro business

12 UK business: activity, size and location - Office for National Statistics: 2025, table 4

13 Changing fish distributions challenge the effective management of European Fisheries

14 Climate change projections of commercial fish distribution and suitable habitat around north western Europe

15 Baudron et al. (2020) describes a “wasp‑waist” ecosystem as a food web structure in which a small number of highly abundant mid‑trophic pelagic species (e.g. herring, mackerel, sprat) form a narrow “waist” linking lower trophic levels (plankton) to higher predators such as seabirds, marine mammals and larger fish.