Current status: Answered by Gillian Martin on 12 February 2026
To ask the Scottish Government what area of Scotland's seabed located within the proposed Priority Marine Feature management area options, as published in September 2025, has been subject to towed bottom-contact gear, such as scallop dredging and trawling for nephrops, since the publication of the consultation on protection from these practices in July 2018.
The following table sets out the area (in km2) within the proposed Priority Marine Feature (PMF) management areas (options 1 & 2) that have been subject to towed bottom-contacting fishing activity. These figures are drawn from the available dataset used to inform the assessments underpinning the consultation on the proposed PMF management measures. The years used are between 2015 and 2022 (the years of 2020 – 2021 were not considered representative of regular fishing activity due to the Covid pandemic and so were not included). It should be noted that the dataset relates only to vessels over 12 metres in length that are required to carry an electronic Vessel Monitoring System (VMS) and therefore does not capture activity by smaller vessels.
Option 1 | Option 2 | |
Total area of proposed PMF areas (km2) | 922.2 | 1223.7 |
Total area fished by towed bottom contacting gears (km2) | 142.6 | 235.1 |