Ask Scottish Ministers to cap the harm in our coastal seas

Our seas need help. Only 5% of Scotland's inshore seas are protected from high-impact fishing, such as bottom-trawling and dredging. Invaluable marine habitats and key species in our inshore waters are still being harmed by these fishing methods. Our inshore waters are especially rich and fragile and our government should not be allowing uncontrolled, harmful fishing methods in them. Protecting inshore waters would safeguard both marine life and sustainable fishing jobs that rely on a healthy seabed. 

We need the Scottish Government to introduce comprehensive, area based management of our inshore waters to make them sustainable. This needs to include an ‘inshore cap’ which would cap levels of activity that harms our inshore waters and be an important step forward in protecting our seas. 

The Bute House Agreement between the Scottish Government and the Scottish Greens, signed in 2021, promised “to consult as soon as is practicable on proposals to apply a cap to fishing activity in inshore waters” and “set a ceiling from which activities that disrupt the seabed can be reduced in the light of evidence as it becomes available”. 

Yet, two years on, we are still waiting.