Bottom trawling and scallop dredging — industrial fishing methods that rake the seabed — continue in about 95% of Scotland’s coastal waters, including within designated marine protected areas, according to marine conservation groups. The practice persists despite the Scottish government’s designation of 37% of the country’s waters as marine protected areas, with only a small fraction of those areas having management measures in place to enforce protection.
The destructive methods accelerate both ocean degradation and climate change. Bottom trawling burns nearly three times more fuel than other fishing methods and disturbs seabed sediments, releasing stored carbon into the ocean. A 2023 Marine Conservation Society analysis found that banning bottom trawling in U.K. offshore protected areas could deliver a net benefit of up to 3.5 billion pounds ($4.7 billion) over 20 years through increased carbon storage, pollution removal, and recreation opportunities.
Bally Philp has fished the waters off Scotland’s Isle of Skye for more than three decades, checking his baited traps methodically in some of the country’s most carefully protected seas. Yet across nearly the entire rest of Scotland’s coast, industrial fishing vessels continue to rake the seabed with impunity.
“The inshore archipelagos on the West Coast of Scotland used to be full of fish,” Philp said. “We have no commercial quantities of fish left inshore at all.”
The decline began in earnest in 1984, when a longstanding 3-mile ban on bottom trawling around much of Scotland’s coast was repealed. Fish landings in areas such as the Clyde plummeted, and catches of many species now stand at only a tiny fraction of their historical levels.
The Scope of the Problem
Bottom trawling and scallop dredging — methods that drag heavy nets across the seafloor, crushing marine habitats — continue in about 95% of Scotland’s coastal waters, including within designated marine protected areas, according to marine conservation groups. The practice persists despite the Scottish government’s designation of 37% of the country’s waters as marine protected areas, with only a small fraction of those areas having enforcement measures in place.
This pattern extends beyond Scotland. A 2024 report from the Marine Conservation Society and Oceana found that 90% of protected marine sites across seven European countries — including the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, and Spain — experienced bottom trawling between 2015 and 2023, with vessels logging 4.4 million bottom trawling hours in those protected waters.
Ecological and Economic Consequences
The ecological impacts ripple outward. Bottom trawling burns nearly three times more fuel than other fishing methods. The nets disturb seabed sediments, releasing stored carbon into the ocean. Bottom trawlers often discard a substantial portion of their catch back into the sea, and survival rates for discarded marine life are typically very low.
Marine biologist Caitlin Turner explained the cascading effects. “If you degrade the habitat, then there’s less places for juvenile fish to live and spawn in,” she said. “This affects the abundance of the animals in the area. It trickles upward — you’ll have less of the bigger animals that feed on the prey animals.”
The economic case for stopping the practice is substantial. A 2023 Marine Conservation Society analysis found that banning bottom trawling in U.K. offshore protected areas could deliver a net benefit of up to 3.5 billion pounds ($4.7 billion) over 20 years, accounting for increased carbon storage, pollution removal, nutrient cycling, and recreation opportunities.
A Fractured Industry and Supply Chain
Yet the damage to small-scale fishing communities is already severe. Scallop diver Alasdair Hughson spends four days a week at sea, traveling far from his home in Dingwall and his two children, because nearby coastal areas have been too degraded to support his work. “If there was no need to increase the size of vessels and move about and become more nomadic, we would have just stayed the way we were, because why wouldn’t you?” he said.
Philp, who comes from three generations of fishers, says he will be the last in his family to make a living in the industry. He taught his two sons, now 20 and 30, how to fish, but he has discouraged them from making it a career. “We’re at the arse end of something that was once really good,” Philp said. “Unless we can turn that around, why would anyone want their kids to do this?”
The impact extends beyond fishing families. Miles Craven, executive chef at Wickman Hotels on the Isle of Skye, said sourcing local seafood has become increasingly difficult. “There is a huge demand from tourists and it is difficult to meet these demands,” Craven said. “I have noticed it get incrementally harder in the last eight years.” More than 80% of seafood eaten in the U.K. in 2019 was fished or farmed outside U.K. waters, according to the World Wildlife Fund.
Government Response and Restoration Efforts
The Scottish government had indicated it would launch a consultation on fisheries management measures for coastal protected areas in late 2025. In December, officials announced the consultation would be delayed at least six months. The government cited upcoming parliamentary elections and late delivery by external contractors for the postponement.
Scientists and community groups are already designing restoration approaches, including efforts to restore seagrass and oyster populations. Conservationists say this work will be insufficient without reinstating a coastal limit that protects at least 30% of Scotland’s inshore seas — part of an international target to protect 30% of land and sea by 2030.
A Scottish government spokesperson said 13% of inshore protected areas are currently closed to certain types of bottom trawling and scallop dredging, and additional measures are expected in the coming years that will allow Scotland to exceed the 30% protection target by 2030.
Philp said he sees a path toward recovery but is frustrated by the pace. “The more aware I become about the nuances of fisheries management and the marine ecosystems that we’re working in, the more despair I feel because I know we can get it right,” he said. “I know we can fix this. I despair at the fact that we’re being so slow to fix this.”
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