Scallop numbers at record high, but inshore developments bring “clouds on the horizon”
Shetland’s scallop stocks are at their highest level on record, according to the government’s latest assessment.
Fisheries managers tempered any celebration, however, with concern that the number of upcoming inshore developments threatens to squeeze the scallop fleet onto smaller and smaller grounds.
“Right now we have a sustainable fishery,” said Alastair Cooper, chairman of the Shetland Shellfish Management Organisation, “but looking forward there are clouds on the horizon.”
Shetland bucks a national trend for both stock health and the number of scientific surveys, according to an annual government assessment published earlier this month.
Of just less than 100 survey trips in 2022, 67 were completed around Shetland. The same year Shetland produced over a quarter of Scotland’s scallops — more than any other region in the nation.
While environmental campaigners continue to fret the impact of dredging on seafloor habitats, the government’s assessment concludes that the fishery itself is sustainable.
“Successive years of strong recruitment have driven a steady increase in [scallops] to the highest levels seen in the time series,” the scientists conclude.
Other regions paint a more mixed picture — the East Coast has suffered “relatively low” recruitment, while numbers in the North East have been “fluctuating around an average level” since the 1990s.
Mr Cooper put that down to a number of protective measures implemented by the SSMO since it took charge of regulating the isles’ inshore waters at the turn of the century — from limiting the times skippers can fish, to the number of dredges on a boat and the number of licences for boats themselves.
“That keeps effort at a level that we think is sustainable,” he said. “But you have to keep watching the science.”
Earlier this year academics at the University of the Highlands and Islands used vessel track data to conclude that just over five per cent of Shetland’s inshore waters are actively dredged.
That area is at risk, Mr Cooper said, from encroaching subsea cables, an upcoming consultation on how to manage inshore marine protected areas and the growth of salmon farming.
“There are things on the horizon which are going to reduce the area scallop men can fish,” said Mr Cooper.
The government’s assessment only includes data up to 2022. More recent data from the SSMO confirms stock health but shows a gradual decrease in the amount of scallops landed since 2022.