Inshore Fisheries Management Improvement: call for evidence analysis report

Introduction – About the Call for Evidence

Background

The IFMI Programme was developed in 2024 partly in response to stock assessment advice and stakeholder concern, highlighting sustainability issues with Scotland’s crab and lobster stocks. In addition, a number of our key stakeholders representing a range of views had voiced a desire to move away from the existing national approach to inshore fisheries management. The programme seeks to consider available management mechanisms to improve the sustainability of these and Scotland’s other inshore fisheries.

A selection of interim management measures were developed to respond to pressure on these specific stocks following initial engagement with our Fisheries Management and Conservation (FMAC) Inshore Subgroup in 2024. The exercise to develop these however highlighted that most management options would benefit from some form of regional variation, something that the current management framework is not well placed to deliver.

Scotland’s inshore fisheries are primarily managed through the UK Fishing Licence framework alongside other mechanisms to deliver a suite of technical measures such as Minimum Landing Size, gear restrictions, and quota allocations. However, structures to develop, implement and enforce regional variation in measures are currently somewhat limited.

A regional approach to management has also been called for in evidence given by stakeholders to the Rural Affairs and Islands (RAI) Committee in the Scottish Parliament during recent committee sessions^[1][2][3]. The RAI Committee evidence reinforced that a more discrete, localised approach to fisheries management carries many benefits. The Scottish Government is therefore keen to explore how a new framework for inshore fisheries management would support the delivery of Scotland’s Fisheries Management Strategy along with wider objectives and commitments. Stakeholders have expressed their support for this approach.

Parallel to this Call for Evidence, we have been reviewing other work streams related to inshore fisheries management. This has included a recent review of our Regional Inshore Fisheries Group (RIFG) network^[4], as well as FMAC and the FMAC Inshore Subgroup. These reviews have now been published and alterations have subsequently been made to each of these stakeholder engagement channels to improve their effectiveness. They will be further considered alongside wider objectives, priorities and requirements of the Scottish Government (e.g. Scottish Government’s Programme for Government 2024-25, National Marine Plan including Regional Marine Planning, The Fisheries Act 2020, etc.) as we develop a new framework for managing our inshore fisheries to ensure structures are complementary and appropriate connections made. We also brought in Interim Measures for crab and lobster on 12 May 2024 to provide some relief for these fisheries whilst wider work is underway to develop a new inshore management framework. These have recently been reviewed and amended to ensure they achieve the right balance of environmental and economic factors and are consistent with our obligations under the UK Fisheries Act 2020.

Our Fisheries Management Strategy outlines our commitment to working with stakeholders, and this framework offers an opportunity to strengthen existing arrangements. The IFMI programme will consider a structure that enables a greater focus on strategic decision making both regionally and nationally, in a way that enables each to complement the other. It will help us to manage fishing activity within the space available, and consider how responsibility for management and delivery can be shared whilst respecting the ultimate accountability of Scottish Ministers to the Scottish Parliament and the general public.

Aims of the Call for Evidence

The aim of this Call for Evidence was to gather the necessary expertise to inform the development of an improved inshore fisheries management framework in Scotland.

Discussions with our FMAC Inshore Subgroup and network of Regional Inshore Fisheries Groups (RIFGs), as well as broader engagement, highlighted the complexity and diversity of views relating to future inshore fisheries management. It was recognised that this diversity of views could not be gathered through FMAC and the RIFGs alone; we therefore sought to facilitate input from other relevant experts in the topic. Issues raised by the FMAC inshore subgroup informed the drafting of this Call for Evidence, which sought input from people with expert knowledge of inshore fisheries in Scotland (e.g. academics, fishers, national and regional fisheries representatives, eNGOs, seafood processors, coastal communities). We anticipated input to range from papers and data to relaying of personal experience and expert opinion to inform development of this policy.

Our vision is that this framework will enable us to tailor a wider range of fisheries management tools to the changing needs of our marine environment and fishers, on a regional basis, using the best available scientific data.

Details of the Call for Evidence

The Call for Evidence was open for a twelve-week period, from 26 November 2024 to 18 February 2025. Respondents were invited to answer 14 questions, which were broken down as follows:

• Part 1 - You and Your Business (questions 1 & 2)
• Part 2 - Current inshore fisheries management in Scotland (questions 3 & 4)
• Part 3: What Does Successful Inshore Fisheries Management Look Like? (questions 5, 6 & 7)
• Part 4 – Regional inshore fisheries management (questions 8, 9, 10, 11 & 12)
• Part 5 – Governance & Co-management (questions 13 & 14)

The majority of the questions were open questions to give us the qualitative information that we require to develop this framework, however questions 1, 2 and 8 were closed. Questions one and two were multiple choice, and 8 offered a Likert scale (a scale from strongly favour to strongly oppose that allows respondents to express their level of agreement with a statement) to gauge support for a regional approach to Scotland’s inshore fisheries management. Question 10 combined multiple choice with an open text opportunity enabling respondents to explain their answer.

A number of acronyms have been used throughout the drafting of this report. For ease of reading, these can be found within Annex A which provides a Glossary of terms.

In some cases, respondents submitted data and other evidence sources to support their response. These have not been described within this report which specifically seeks to report on the responses to the Call for Evidence. They will however be considered in parallel to this report as the IFMI framework is developed.

Analysis methodology

This report provides a thematic analysis of responses to the Call for Evidence, where each question was reviewed in turn, with every response read and then key themes within these responses identified. The analysis and reporting was done in house by analysts from the Marine Analytical Unit in Marine Directorate and followed social research standards and protocols ensuring objectivity, impartiality and robust analysis. Due to the number of respondents, and volume of information provided, it is not practical for every response to every question to be detailed in this report. Some respondents provided very detailed responses, which were considered in this analysis, but individual responses are not detailed in full in this report. Full responses to the Call for Evidence, where publication permission was granted, can be found on Citizen Space.

Where appropriate, quotes from respondents are included in the report to illustrate key points or provide examples. Only quotes from respondents who agreed to have their responses published are included in this report. Effort has been made to ensure that quotes represent balance across a range of stakeholder groups and views, and no more than two quotes are provided from individual respondents.

As described previously, most of the data collected in this Call for Evidence was qualitative. Qualitative analysis of open-ended questions such as many were in this Call for Evidence does not permit the quantification of findings. However, to aid the reader when interpreting the findings, a methodology is used to convey the frequency of which themes were identified in the written responses:

A majority of respondents refers to more than 51 respondents.

A common theme is raised by 25 or more respondents.

Several respondents refers to 15 to 24 respondents.

Some respondents refers to 6 to 14 respondents.

A small number of respondents refers to 2 to 5 respondents.

One respondent refers to the response of 1 respondent.

This approach is only used to present the prevalence of themes within responses to the Call for Evidence. It does not necessarily represent the importance of a theme.

The themes which were identified most frequently for each research question are presented in this report allowing a range of views to be detailed. Themes with four or more responses are detailed in text and often broken down into sub-themes. These sub-themes are sometimes only raised by singular respondents, but are mentioned due to the prevalence of the wider theme. Themes with two or three responses are presented in an ‘other’ section, and themes mentioned by only one respondent were not included in this summary report. This use of this approach was slightly different for the analysis of questions 8, 10, 11 and 12, where a smaller number of explanations meant that themes with two or three responses were detailed to offer some insight to views. For these questions, the approach used is detailed at the beginning of the summary of responses for each research question.

Quantitative analysis is provided for questions 8 and 10, where response options were provided to the respondents.

We ask readers to keep in mind the below considerations when reading this report:

• A Call for Evidence openly invites anyone with ‘expert knowledge’ of inshore fisheries in Scotland to submit a response. Therefore, individuals and organisations who are more interested or knowledgeable in the topic are more likely to have responded than those who do not have this interest or knowledge. Respondents are self-selecting and therefore this analysis does not necessarily represent the views of the entire population of Scotland, or of everyone with an interest in this topic.
• In some cases responses were received to one question but aligned better with a different question; these responses were considered when reviewing the most relevant question based on the analyst’s best judgement.
• All responses are given an equal weighting throughout this report. This means that we recognise that a response of an individual has the same weight as a response from an organisation which may represent many members.
• The number of respondents for each question may not match the total number of respondents to the Call for Evidence. This is because not every respondent responded to every question.