2. The Scottish Fishing Fleet
This chapter brings together information on Scottish fleet structure, fishing effort by the Scottish fleet, and the number of fishermen employed in Scotland. A summary description of how the UK fleet is regulated is provided as background to assist interpretation of the statistics.
2.1 Regulation of the UK Fleet
A fishing vessel is a boat used to catch sea fish for profit. Every UK fishing vessel - with certain limited exceptions - engaged in commercial sea fishing is required by law to be registered with the Registry of Shipping and Seamen ( RSS), part of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency. In addition all commercial fishing vessels must have a licence which specifies conditions which must be adhered to by vessel owners when fishing activity is being pursued. For the purpose of this statistical bulletin, active vessels are those which are both registered and licensed as of 31 st December of the year of reference. Scottish based vessels are those licensed at (and administered by) a Scottish port.
Licences authorise the sea areas in which a vessel can fish and the species of fish that can be targeted. Restrictive licensing was introduced in 1983 following agreement of the Common Fisheries Policy ( CFP) by the European Commission and has been used as the main tool to control UK fishing opportunities to meet the European Union regulations for sustainable fisheries management. Initially, the licensing regime only covered vessels over 10 metres registered length fishing for a number of designated species in specific areas. However, the coverage of licences has progressively extended over the years to cover all species for both the over 10 metre fleet and 10 metres and under fleet. The capacity of fishing vessels in terms of vessel tonnage and power is also controlled through licences. With a finite number of licences in existence and no new licences made available, this places a ceiling on the total number and capacity of vessels in the UK fishing fleet. In order to licence new vessels, fishermen must acquire one or more existing licences from other previously licensed vessels. When licences are transferred, or aggregated to form a larger licence unit, capacity penalties are applied. These capacity penalties together with the restricted number of licences on issue, form a mechanism resulting in reductions in the capacity of the UK fleet. Further reductions in the capacity of the UK fleet have resulted from successive decommissioning schemes. Designed to conserve vulnerable whitefish stocks, particularly cod, decommissioning removed vessels from the fleet in 1994-1997, 2001-2002 and 2003-2004.
2.2 Size of the Scottish Fleet
The number of active Scottish based vessels has fallen to 2,150 vessels in 2010, the smallest fleet size ever recorded, representing a 16 per cent decrease since 2001 ( Table 2.1 and Chart 2.1). In reflection of the fall in the number of vessels, the total power of the Scottish fleet also decreased. The total fleet power at 400,913 kW was 15 per cent lower than in 2001 ( Table 2.1). These decreases reflect the impact of the two decommissioning schemes in 2001-02 and 2003-04.
Chart 2.1 Size of the Scottish Fleet: 2001 to 2010.
Statistics on the tonnage of vessels are complicated by revisions to the methodology to determine vessel tonnage. Various national and international standards collectively known as Gross Registered Tonnage ( GRT) were revised to a common EU standard known as Gross Tonnage ( GT). A phased programme of re-measurement was introduced in the UK in 1996, completed by the early part of 2004. Consequently year on year tonnage comparisons should be made with caution, since the tonnage figures provided take no account of the phased replacement of GRT with GT during the period 1996-2003. Engine power statistics in earlier years have been underestimated to an unknown degree due to under declaration of engine power on vessel licences. A concessionary licensing arrangement and a timetable for compliance was introduced in November 1999 and vessel owners had until the end of 2004 to declare their true engine power. This is a factor underlying the increase in the recorded average engine power between 2001 and 2004.
2.2.1 Size of the Scottish Fleet by Length
The Scottish fleet comprised 1,485 10 metres and under vessels which accounts for over two thirds of the Scottish fleet ( Table 2.1). At 665 vessels, the over 10 metres vessel fleet in 2010 was 30 per cent smaller than in 2001 while the 10 metres and under fleet was seven per cent smaller than in 2001. The total registered engine power of the 10 metres and under vessels in 2010 was 78 thousand kW , one fifth of the total power of the Scottish fleet. The average power of the 10 metres and under vessels was 53 kW per vessel ( Table 2.2). The total power of the over 10 metres fleet in 2010 was 323 thousand kW , a decrease of five per cent since 2005, the first year by which owners had declared their true engine power [1]. In contrast the average power of the over 10 metres vessels was 485 kW per vessel, an increase of three per cent since 2005. These opposing trends of decreasing total fleet engine capacity and increasing average engine power per vessel can be explained by a combination of factors: (i) the reduction in the number of vessels in the over 10 metres fleet; and (ii) the "natural wastage" of licensed engine power that often accompanies the aggregation of several licences onto a single vessel [2].
2.2.2 Size of the Scottish Fleet by Age
Over half of the Scottish fleet are known to be at least 20 years old ( Table 2.2). Vessels under 10 years, which comprise 12 per cent of the fleet, had a total power of 137,759 kW which accounts for about one third of the total power of the Scottish fleet, substantially more than any other age category.
2.2.3 Size of the Scottish Fleet by Administration District
Figure 2.1 shows the number of vessels by fishing method at each administration port in Scotland. The chart shows the relative size of the fleet broken down into the over 10 metres sectors and 10 metres and under fleet. The administration district of Stornoway with 193 vessels has the greatest proportion of the 10m and under fleet under its responsibility, while Fraserburgh with 113 vessels has the highest proportion of the over 10m vessels under its responsibility ( Table 2.3).
2.2.4 Size of the Scottish Fleet by Fishing Method
The demersal sector comprised 256 vessels in 2010 which represents 38 per cent of the over 10 metres fleet, while the pelagic sector at 24 vessels accounted for four per cent of the fleet and the shellfish sector represented 58 per cent of the fleet with 385 vessels ( Table 2.4 and Chart 2.2). Since 2001, prior to the introduction of the decommissioning schemes, the number of vessels in each of the over 10 metres sectors has decreased by 46 per cent, 33 per cent and 12 per cent respectively for demersal, pelagic and shellfish.
Chart 2.2 Number of vessels by fishing method: 2001 to 2010
Figure 2.1 Number of vessels in the Scottish fleet by district: 2010
2.3 Effort in the Cod Recovery Zone
Fishing activity can be measured in various ways, of which the most common to date has simply been the number of days a vessel spends absent from port in an area of sea. However, in order to allow for the fact that more powerful vessels can have greater impact on fish stocks, another common way of measuring fishing effort: multiplies the days at sea by the power (in kilowatts) of the engine of the fishing vessel and expresses this as kilowatt-days ( kW days).
One aspect of the Cod Recovery Plan ( CRP), introduced to protect weakened cod stocks in EU waters, is to limit fishing effort in an area called the Cod Recovery Zone - see map on Page 1 and the Glossary - to limit cod mortality and thus seek recovery in the stock. A new approach to effort management was taken with the revision of the CRP in November 2008. The new system is based on effort ceilings for Member States expressed in kilowatt-days for various regulated gear types - see descriptions in the Glossary and Table 2.6. The revised CRP provided for successive decrements to the fishing effort deployed by Member States in the gear categories considered most important to cod mortality; but also provided for Member States to 'buy back' those effort cuts where cod avoidance and other measures were considered to make a contribution to stock recovery.
Effort by the Scottish over 10 metres fleet using regulated gears was dominated by whitefish and Nephrops gears in the North Sea and West of Scotland ( Table 2.6 and Chart 2.3). Effort using whitefish gear stood at 10.4 million kW days in the North Sea and 2.4 million kW days in the West of Scotland in 2010. Between 2001 and 2004 in the North Sea and from 2001 to 2005 in the West of Scotland, whitefish gear effort dropped substantially, by 59 per cent and 69 per cent respectively. These decreases in effort reflect the reduction in fleet capacity resulting from the decommissioning schemes in 2001-02 and 2003-04. Following these substantial reductions, effort continued to decline, albeit less rapidly, until 2007. Effort in the North Sea increased slightly between 2007 and 2009, but fell again, by 15 per cent, in 2010 to reach the lowest level of the decade, at about one third that in 2001. This reflects in part the decreased effort ceiling for this gear type set by the CRP. Effort in the West of Scotland has been increasing since 2007 and in 2010 was 19 per cent higher than in 2007, though still substantially lower than in the early years of the decade.
Effort by the Scottish over 10 metres fleet using Nephrops gear in 2010 was 8.3 million kW days in the North Sea and 3.8 million kW days in the West of Scotland ( Table 2.6 and Chart 2.3). Compared with 2009, Nephrops gear effort decreased by less than one per cent in the North Sea but by 16 per cent in the West of Scotland. Looking at the longer term trends, Nephrops effort in the North Sea rose markedly, by 87 per cent between 2001 and 2003, and has been roughly stable since 2003. In the West of Scotland, Nephrops effort, after peaking in 2003 at 5.8 million kW days and dipping to 4.6 million kW days in 2005, was comparatively stable between 2005 and 2009 but dipped substantially in 2010 to reach the lowest level in the decade.
Chart 2.3 Effort of Scottish vessels using selected regulated gears in the Cod Recovery Zone: 2001 to 2010
2.4 Number of Fishermen
The number employed in the Scottish catching sector was 5,218 in 2010, a decrease of 191 (four per cent ) fishermen compared with 2009 ( Table 2.7 and Chart 2.4). There was a decrease of 146 regular fishermen in 2010 compared with 2009 and a decrease of 37 part-time fishermen. At a district level Fraserburgh has the highest portion of fishermen in total employment, at 789 fishermen, followed by Ayr, with 559 ( Table 2.8).
Chart 2.4 Number of fishermen employed on Scottish based vessels: 1970 to 2010
