 Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the fourth meeting of the rural affairs island and natural environment committee in session six. Before we begin, can I remind all those committee members using electronic devices to switch them to silent? Before we begin the meeting, I have apologies from Jim Fairlie, but can I welcome Emma Harper, who is sitting in as his substitute? Emma can invite you to either declare any interests or say that you have no relevant interests to declare. Our first item of business is an introductory evidence session on fisheries and aquaculture, and I would like to welcome remotely to the meeting our first panel of industry stakeholders. This morning, we have Elaine White, the executive secretary of Clyde Fisherman's Association, Elsbeth MacDonald, chief executive officer for the Scottish Fisherman's Federation, Tavish Scott, chief executive of the Scottish Salmon Producers Organization and Jimmy Bucking, chief executive officer for the Scottish Seafood Association. Before we move to members' questions, I would like to first invite our panellists to make a very brief opening remark. I am afraid that we have only got one hour for this session, and I politely request that you keep your opening remarks to no more than a few minutes. The advantage of you appearing remotely is that I can turn you off at will, so if you could keep your remarks to my mum. First of all, I would like to invite Elaine White to make an open remark and then move to Elsbeth, Tavish, and last but not least, Jimmy Bucking. Thank you very much for having us here. My name is Elaine White. I am the executive secretary of the Clyde Fisherman's Association, which has just under 50 boats now. In the last few years, we have lost quite a number of boats, and I think that that speaks to what we will be talking about today. I am also a member of SEFA, which is a national organisation of just over 400 boats. Today, I think that the main thing that I want to concentrate really on is capacity, resilience and potential, because, obviously, Brexit and Covid have certainly shown some issues in our markets, in our process, in our infrastructure, and our opportunity to fish. Those are the key issues that we would want to focus on in going forward. Thank you very much, Elaine White. You have certainly set the bar very high in terms of your opening introduction, so that is great. Can I move on to Elsbeth, please? Good morning, convener and committee. I am afraid that I will not be able to match Elaine for brevity, but thank you very much for inviting us to take part in today's session. SEFA very much welcomes the opportunity to engage with parliamentarians throughout our industry, and we hope that you will find today's session useful. I do not need to repeat again the turbulence that fishermen have faced in the last 18 months. That summarised in the briefing document that I have submitted in advance of today's session. I think that what is important today is that we look forward and not back, and we focus on the future challenges and opportunities. I just want to say up front and very clearly that this industry is about producing food, and not just any food, but healthy nutritious food, with an extremely low carbon footprint, and food that is produced from renewable and sustainable wild fish stocks without the need for high inputs of things like fertilisers or chemicals. Wildcots, Scottish fish have a lower carbon footprint than all other sources of animal protein and, indeed, many plant-based sources. It is absolutely right that, I am sure that we will be speaking today, that Scotland and the UK are rightly focused on transitioning our economies to net zero, and Scotland is blessed with fishing grounds that are not just highly productive, but are also well managed. That means that we have a great asset on our doorstep in our seas to help us on this pathway to net zero, and we must not lose sight of that. We are concerned by some of the commitments in the co-operation agreement between the Scottish Government and the Scottish Greens, which gives the impression of prioritising conservation over climate smart food production. An SFF is really proud of our track record in working with the Scottish Government over the course of many years on the identification, designation and management of marine protected areas, and thus far the focus has always been on achieving a balance. We want to see that approach continue based on good evidence, co-design and transparency. I would also like to briefly highlight to the committee the importance of our sector and having space to operate. Scotland's seas are increasingly crowded as the blue economy expands. Offshore renewables will clearly be a major contributor to the energy transition that is needed to achieve it at net zero, but we must have equitable and effective marine planning that enables coexistence between our industries. If Scotland is to become a net zero country with a thriving society and economy for the benefit of all, we need both of those sectors to succeed. I will stop there. Thank you very much. How does that stand? Is that any better? That's grand. Thank you. Good morning, convener. Sorry, Mr Carson, that idea cut me off before I even started. I think it was too much for it. I am very welcome with Elspeth to join this committee this morning. I have an open invitation to you and indeed to all your colleagues to visit a sea farm at any stage that you would like to learn more about our industry. We are very pleased to see parliamentarians from all political persuasions with us at any stage. There are just three points to highlight this morning. First, there are labour challenges for our sector, along with many other sectors in the Scottish economy at this time. We welcome as a sector a flexible UK-wide immigration policy in addition to the measures that we want to instigate as a sector ourselves with our colleagues in education. Secondly, the acute pressure, and you will well appreciate this, is a member of a rural constituency, Mr Carson, on housing in rural areas. It is a very, very acute issue for our sector in terms of our people and their employment in rural and island Scotland. Finally, on transport, you will not be surprised to hear me say that the needs of our sector in terms of exports both bringing product into the central belt of Scotland and then on to export out of Scotland and across the UK is creaking at the moment. We need some Government assistance just to ensure that that transport infrastructure is frankly better than it is at the moment, both in terms of servicing the islands but also in other ways as well. I am happy to rest at that. Good morning, convener and committee. Thank you for the opportunity to come and present you guys. SSA is a membership of 80, which covers small, medium and large processors and a range of processing from shellfish, pelagic to whitefish. We cover a lot of the seafood. I would just like to start by saying that the opportunity to come here and engage with you guys is fantastic. Travis and I called for a task force way back in January, and it just let you see what happens when the industry and the politicians of all persuasions and Governments come together and work for the collective good. I would like to thank, put in record the Victoria Prentice, David Juckett, Fergus Ewing and Mary Gougeon, who have been at that task force and have delivered well for the industry, so it is great. Exports are continuing to flow daily. Demand is good from our EU customers. It is the politics in between guys that is the problem, so we need to get better and smarter at how we work with our EU counterparts because the demand is there. We have the product and we need to make sure that we can get that product to our customers. I would also like to say that, had it not been for the food standards Scotland and the environment and health officers, along with Seafish and Seafood Scotland, they have done a sterling job, and it should go on record that, without all those stakeholders working again collectively, we have managed to get this huge block that we had back in January to move out a bit, although there is much work to be done. I think that that is enough for the moment, but, as I said, I am really happy to be able to engage with you. We need to work together and we have so much ground to cover, so I will be quiet for a moment and I am sure that I will get another opportunity to speak. Thank you. I very much appreciate your brief introductions, and I am sure that you will have the opportunity to add a lot more as we go through the questioning. We have a series of questions. I am going to kick off looking at the impact of Covid-19 and EU exit on the Seafood trade. I have already heard about the excellent engagement from stakeholders in the Scottish Seafood export task force, and I know that the sort of very small or what it would appear to be very small issues like a system that did not know the difference between monkfish cheeks and monkfish tails and was able to solve issues like that, which had big repercussions in the industry. It is my understanding that, Tavish, you played a role in trying to digitise records and in such like to streamline the system. That task force has now completed its work, and there is a Scottish Seafood industry action group. However, can I go to each member in turn and ask how imports and exports of functioning nine-once-on, and what on-going and unresolved issues is the new Seafood industry action group likely to have to address? If we start with, Jimmy, we will start with you. Thank you once again for getting me to come back so quickly. One of the things that I have to say is that Seafood is now flowing. It is still as much work to be done. The continuation of the new form of a task force is welcome because we are still at issues that we need to address. Far be it we have now just learned in the last 24 hours that the EU will continue to have concessions for incoming imports, but we as an industry will have to continue to endure the imbalance of that on an outward trajectory. If I can just give you a simplification, we have a wagon and a tractor pulling fish. Everything in that wagon, the pallets, the fish, everything has to be certified, approved and stamped going outwards. The wagon then gets to its destination in France. It unloads, everything is checked, all is good. The same wagon goes to the next pickup station, and it picks up goods coming in. There are absolutely no checks and that wagon comes back into the UK seamlessly. That is how unbalanced this whole thing is. That is where, until we get equality, we are going to find it hard to find our EU counterparts, to come to the table and find a smoother, more faster way of supplying our seafood. Nonetheless, seafood is actually getting to its destination, but we have just got to overcome those problems. I would like to just quickly highlight this, because this is really important. The key to this is having vets at the hubs to certify the seafood. The private sector on its trajectory coming out of lockdown can and will pay more for vets if it needs it. Therefore, we have got to make sure, ministers and officials, that we have got something in place that helps us to keep the attention of those vets in the critical areas of the hubs. Without them, nothing is flowing, so I think that that is a really important matter that I would like you to note down, because without the vets, the seafood is going nowhere. We are losing out to the public sector and the private sector hand over first in this, so I will finish there. I move on to Tavish to give the view of the agriculture industry. Thank you, convener. Just a couple of points start to Jimmy Buchan's very fair analysis of the situation. First, on the export system into Europe, we need that digital system to replace the paper-based system that we have at the moment. If a committee were minded to ask on progress of that, we would be very grateful, not just in my sector but across seafood more generally. That would be very helpful. The other side to it is, as the number one food export business for Scotland depends on long-haul air as well out of Heathrow. To some extent, that market may start to emerge again out of Scotland, but broadly speaking, Heathrow is the hub. In terms of the far east and the west coast of North America, there is, as you will well appreciate, not much long-haul being going on right through the Covid period. That is a development that we will probably see coming back over the next couple of years. I think that all of us who export seafood long-haul into very important and bigger markets have had that market closed down. Your question about the Covid recovery relates directly to that. We have seen more product going into Europe, more salmon going into Europe than into the long-haul markets—France being the biggest market for salmon that we have. The final point that I might make for the committee's interest is just on the HMRC. Their export stats have been inaccurate in terms of salmon over the first nine months of the period from 1 January. Again, if the committee were minded at some stage just to have a look at that, we would be very grateful for that, because those stats are very important both of course for Scottish and UK Government purposes, but even more so for our sectors. It is really important now that we are not in the European Union that those export stats are accurate and on time. That has not quite been the case over this period. I think that Jimmy and Tavish have given a very clear and concise account of the situation that we have seen this year. If we turn back the clock last year and look back at the disruption that the industry suffered as a consequence of Covid, I think that the comment that I would just make is that, although the Covid situation is clearly much better in the UK and elsewhere in our marketplaces, if last year taught us anything, it might be quite hard to predict what might happen in the future and whether there might be some further disruption as a consequence of Covid. What that showed last year was the very high reliance that the industry has on the hospitality sector and on our obviously very valuable export markets, as have already been discussed. Perhaps there is something there that we might need to think about going forward in terms of how we can perhaps encourage greater domestic consumption of our product and not be so reliant on that hospitality sector, which, as we have seen over the past 18 months, has been subject to very significant disruption. Eileen, can you give us an idea of how the last nine months have been for the fishermen on the coalface? It is not a good analogy, but those going out in boats on a day-to-day basis, how has the last nine months been and how do you see it going forward? If we could go back further than that and just say that we always saw these problems coming with the market, not that that was not a constitutional stance, we were neutral, but we just felt that the market was a major issue when everyone was talking about access to stocks because that 96 per cent, 86 per cent of our stocks go to the EU, so we always seen that as being an issue. It pays—it does us no good to have been right on that fact that we were at Cassandra and pointed out that we needed better planning. In terms of how it is being for the fishermen, it is absolutely awful. Things are picking up slightly, but I have the shaman who is still being paid the same for the prongs that they wear at the height of the pandemic. The issue that a lot of our members are very concerned about is the buying back into the EU market. As things improve, some of the prices that we are doing is buying our way back into markets that we might have lost to Norway, Ireland and so on. We are still keeping the prices extremely low for the smaller fleets. In terms of the fishermen and the money in his pocket, it might be getting slightly better, but it is still not where it has to be for the resilience of the fleets. The other thing that I am concerned about is what happens with Northern Ireland. That is very much linked to our infrastructure. A lot of our prongs go to Northern Ireland at the moment to be fully processed into Scampi, which is a massive part of some of our fleets. If we continue to have issues, it will probably be moved down the line. I can see us having problems. I would very much like us to have more infrastructure at this side of the water to make sure that our fleets are secured in terms of processing. Things are very much improved. I thank all of our politicians for coming together in the cross-party group to work through some of the implementation issues, but I think that we have to be very aware that the fishermen at the coal phase are still—the resilience is very, very low, and their prices are not what we would hope they would be. I caution that with a sense of the ability to have potential there to look at it better. If I could just carry as well prices and capacity in terms of people processing, in terms of people sending away the prices of the increased use paperwork and the time that it takes to do that paperwork, it is what can be very, very difficult for the small rural communities, and I think that we just have to have a good nice sense of that. I am now going to move on to questions on labour. I will start with Karen and then move on to Mercedes. I am glad to hear that there have been some movements forward, however tentative some might be with that. As we are all aware of the news reports of fresh seafood rotten in the back of lorries, fish markets empty and boats tied at the harbour, it was quite upset for a lot of people to see. It is nice to hear some positivity going forward there. Jimmy, I know that you have been very vocal, as well, and rightly so, on the issues of labour shortages, which is a massive problem here at the north-east coast, but what I really want to get to the bottom of when I ask the panel is that we are often here—and I have used this phrase myself—the double whammy of Brexit and Covid. For the benefit of the committee, can you clarify for us from your perspective exactly what are the Brexit issues, what are the Covid issues, because I think that that is essential to come up with the targeted solutions, and what do you believe should be prioritised really within our gift here in regards to labour shortages and haulage problems? Thank you for that question, Karen. The two are linked, but they are two separate issues, the Covid and the Brexit. If we take the Covid, we are returning to some sort of new normal, we might say. It is not normal, but it will be a new normal. That, in itself, within the workplace creates problems, as people are absent from work due to being either having the illness or being in close contact with someone with the illness. Industry is going to continue to limp through this one way or another until either the vaccine overcomes the problem or we find other solutions within the workplace. I am not saying that it is creating all the problems, because I think that this labour shortage was coming to us long before there was Covid, long before there was Brexit, because I have been raising this issue with Government and Government ministers for over four years. The shortage of labour has been coming possibly with Covid and Brexit that has exaggerated and made it a much more front-line problem. However, I would rather look at how we solve the problems. The problem cannot be solved. The Government can change the shortage occupation list, which was on the advice of the Migration Advice Committee. It can also give concessions to industry. The industry is calling out for labour. Labour seems to be in a shortage not only in the UK now, but it is now becoming apparent that there are shortages in lorry drivers right across Europe. It appears that the sector where people are no longer finding an attractive place to work, and with other job opportunities, especially with hospitals that are better working hours and better working conditions, that is where people are seeking views. We are going to continue to have this labour shortage. In my opinion, we need to open up to more global workforce of people who we cannot pull from or find other solutions within the UK workforce or people who are available for work to be put into the areas where the work is. That might be a problem. Here in North East Scotland, where we work and live within an oil and gas industry, unemployment is relatively low and we do not have the amount of people in the bodies that we cannot pull from. We have to get the people into the area or move the factories to where the people are or find an alternative solution. That is where we need to sit down. As I have said, both Governments, industry stakeholders work through those problems and come up with action plans and solutions that can help the industry. I just wanted to support Jimmie Buchan's point about the need for a flexible UK immigration policy, because the issue that we have had in the processing sector in the salmon industry relates particularly to processing, whether it is in Fort William or in Recife, where there is a large Māwi processing business. That is simply about the lack of labour. In many part of Scotland, there simply are not the people that Jimmie rightly says to attract. We have done everything as companies to produce better terms of conditions, to improve everything about working in a processing plant, but the labour force simply is not there. We would strongly support any work done with the United Kingdom Government on a more flexible approach to immigration, because there are no two ways about it. Many people who did work in our processing sector before came from Eastern Europe. They were very valued members, both of our businesses, but also of our communities, and we would welcome that returning. Anything that the committee might wish to do on that, we would be very grateful. Elaine McLean would like to make a comment. Yes, thank you. Just to back up what everyone else has said, but in terms of a lot of the areas where we work, it is very rural. It is not a case of paying low wages, but it is a case of getting skilled people to come in and do their job. In terms of labour policy, I would agree that we very much have to do something, because in terms of the catching sector, if we cannot catch wild fish, we do not have any processing or anything else onward from that, so I think that it is what we can do to support those people in boats that have left or the rural areas where we do not have access to work posts that we have to work on as well. Thank you. Can I come to Mercedes for further questions on this topic, then, Alistair, on a supplementary question? My question relates to labour, particularly off the back of what Jimmy Buckin was saying about the need for a global workforce. I have had constituents in the north-east region who have raised concerns with me about the living and working conditions of some workers in the industry, particularly workers coming from international areas, for example from the Philippines. I am interested to hear from the panel what more you think can be done to protect the rights and wellbeing of workers locally, from Scotland, from Europe and internationally, as well as what can be done to create decent jobs in local communities as well. I think that this is probably one for you again, Jimmy. First of all, I am quite alarmed that you are saying that there may be issues, and if there are, I am happy to take this up on a separate issue with you on a case-by-case basis, but I am not aware of any issues of misuse of our good relations that we have with our international communities. I am happy to take that up offline. I think that what we need—this is one of the points that I would like to raise—is that we need investment from the Government with grant assistance and vision that we need to make our workplaces attractive so that we become less dependent on the use of global workers and that our local nationals, our local people, see it as a good career move. We are now operating in some of our older fish units, which were built 30 or 40 years ago, which are far outdated for what we would expect in a modern workplace. We need that investment and innovation. One of the things that I have learned in my short time in this job is that, where innovation comes in, I always thought that that pushed jobs out, but it does not. It allows you to upskill the existing jobs so that they become the operators of innovation. However, to get that, it is high investment and we need the policies and the enthusiasm and vision of stakeholders and Governments to drive that forward so that we have a trailblazing processing industry that people want to work in rather than shy away from it. Elspeth, can I bring you on this topic, please? Yes, thank you, convener. Certainly, some of the fleet in the north-east is indeed reliant on international crew, and there are fairly stringent visa conditions, obviously, from the UK-wide immigration system that constrain and control how that works. In relation to the question, if there are particular issues that the committee member wishes to take up separately, I would be very happy to do that, as he suggested. There is certainly a lot of work going on in the industry to try to make sure that wherever you are from, if you are working in the fishing industry, your rights are protected. We have something called the Fisherman's Welfare Alliance, which is a network of industry bodies trying to make sure that we have the right measures in place, and that the industry is compliant with the international labour organisation requirements on fishing crew. There is a lot going on in the industry, as I said. There are certain visa conditions that limit what international crew are able to do when they are working in the UK, but if there are particular cases that the committee member would like to talk about, please get in touch with us separately. Notwithstanding everything that people have said about the need to invest in the future on a homegrown workforce, I am taking it that the panel would agree that there is an urgent situation that requires the availability of visas on an emergency basis. I am keen to know whether people like Tavish or Elaine or the others would support the UK Government taking such a measure. The other related issue is that, in many areas, as you will be familiar with, as the panel will know, especially in island areas, there are some sectors that are simply struggling to find a workforce at all. That has implications for how we work together on issues such as housing. We will not have a workforce wherever we are from if there is nowhere for them to live. I agree with Dr Allan's assessment of that situation. He will not be surprised to know that I am in Lerwick today, and exactly those issues were discussed just an hour ago before the meeting started. I absolutely endorse the point that he makes with regard to any measure that the UK Government could look at in the context of UK immigration policy. Flexibility is what we need, as we have all argued this morning to the committee. We would be very supportive of any work that Parliament wishes to do in that area to seek to find a system that would give us just a little more flexibility, is the simple word there. On Dr Allan's point about housing, I again very much endorse that it is a significant issue for the salmon farming sector now in every part of Scotland, particularly acute in the islands. Also, if it is one of the other sides to Covid, what we have seen in my home in Shetland is increases in pressure on housing, because people have sought to leave, as it were, the mainland of the United Kingdom, if I could put it that way, and find property and housing in our parts of the world. That has increased housing pressure, and therefore there is less available for young families, young people working folk who are employed, for example, in the salmon farming sector. I suppose that you might say the downsides to Covid and to the whole difficult period that we have been through as a country and as an economy has been that increased pressure on house prices in rural areas. It is very difficult for all of us, and certainly in the salmon farming sector, that would be the case. We have worked really hard on that to put money into development trusts, to housing initiatives in the areas in which we farm. We will do more of that in the future, whether it is on islands or on the west coast of Scotland. However, I would be keen to work with housing associations and other providers on any solutions, frankly, Dr Allan, that could assist us in providing more housing for your constituents, and indeed people who live broadly in rural Highlands and Islands. Thank you. I bring in Elaine Brifley. Yes, thank you very much. I agree with the points that Tavish has made. I always favoured the daily system, which looked to get new people in from local areas and to recopulate from the domestic population. However, the Norwegian system, which in the north of the country takes on over 60 per cent of, usually, Russian or Eastern European workers, if required. However, that is not a national policy everywhere else. However, we have to look at the decopulation issues that we have in certain areas, particularly in the west of Scotland, and try to marry them up. What I am very worried about is that maybe that has been conducted in silos. We have to marry that up with how we are making marine policy, because sometimes, if decopulation is as much of an issue as other issues that are being made in different policy spheres, we have to balance them against each other as well. We are absolutely completely gay with a visa system, which is resilient and works with the old manias. Thank you very much, Elaine. I now get a move to Beatrice, who has got some questions on landings and vessel tracking. My first question is about the interaction between the future fisheries management strategy that was published last at the end of last year and the programme for government's commitment to deliver a step change in marine protection. I wonder if I could get the panel's thoughts on the potential trade-offs between the two. I know, Elspeth, that you touched on that in your opening remarks. That question is going to be a really key challenge as we go forward in this parliamentary term. The future fisheries management document was published by the Scottish Government towards the end of 2020. There had been quite detailed consultation in the development of that strategy, which took place during 2019. The strategy publication in 2020 set out the Government's direction. We now see, with the co-operation agreement between the Green Party and the Scottish Greens and the Government, a rather different complexion in terms of the step change on marine conservation. Certainly, a lot of additional things in that co-operation agreement were not envisaged in the future fisheries management strategy. Clearly, there is a lot still to be discussed between Government, industry and stakeholders in terms of what the priorities are going to be and how the respective programmes of work are going to go forward. The key element from our sector's perspective is making sure that the right balance is found, as I said in my opening remarks. We have a successful industry here producing a climate smart food stuff. If we are to be constrained in how we do that, there have to be considerations of the implications of that, not just on the fleet, but you then have to fill that protein gap, if you like, with food from other sources that perhaps are worse for the environment and have higher emissions, for example. I made that point also in my opening comments. We have had a really good track record in the industry of working with the Government on marine conservation. We have been very involved in the development, identification and designation of marine protected areas. That has been a really co-operative and constructive process. There has been a lot of trust built up between the Government and the industry in doing that. It has been a very effective one. It is one where the focus has been about achieving the right balance between conservation objectives and economic objectives. Going forward in the next stage of work that is to be done on marine protected areas in terms of the management measures and the new work on developing highly protected marine areas, which are to cover at least 10 per cent of Scotland seas, it is important that the Government and industry work closely together in the same transparent, trusted and collaborative way. It is important that an evidence-based approach is clearly taken to that. There is a lot to do in terms of now working through with the Government how these priorities are going to play out, because there were a number of priorities in the future efficient management strategy. We now have a number of new priorities from the programme for government. There is only so much resource to take those priorities forward, so there is much to do in terms of understanding the priorities of those, but then there will be a great deal to do in that consultative and collaborative approach as we go forward. It would be a great tragedy if we were to lose the trust, confidence and collaboration that we have had thus far. I can only support what Elspethus King has said before us, because although we are not directly involved in the catching of the fish, we have a duty to market the fish. The fish that is coming from sustainable sources and is being harvested in a responsible manner, we do support. It is kind of important for our marketing arm of our industry that we are aligned with it, but our direct involvement is limited. If I were to add anything to that, I think that we need to be doing more for our own marketing arm from those fisheries. I think that we have got to get more people eating more seafood and therefore the confidence for people to do so comes from that particular side of how the fish is harvested and managed. We do support it, but we are not directly involved with it. If you have a brief question, yes, thanks. If I could turn to Elspeth again, it is about the future catching policy. I noticed in your submission that you were referring to the ISIS advice and particularly referencing the North Sea Cod. We hear locally that there is plenty of cod in the sea but the scientific evidence does not seem to agree with that. Do you want to expand on the point that you are making in your submission? Certainly. For context, it might be helpful for the committee to understand that, over the past two years, the ISIS catch advice for North Sea Cods has reduced somewhere in the region of about 80 per cent, which is massive. It had a huge impact on white fish pellets in Scotland. For context, for the committee to understand, the scientific modelling work that underpins the advice that comes from ISIS, the catch advice, is based on a model of the whole of the North Sea. It has become very evident over the last 20 years or so that feces are on the move probably in relation to climate change and that there is a very noticeable northward movement of many species as temperatures be it land or sea warm. We are seeing a situation now where the North Sea cod population is migrating north, which is why we still see a lot of cod in Scottish waters. The model that underpins the ISIS advice for North Sea cod is based on the whole of the North Sea. The situation that we find ourselves now is that we have a model that is recommending significant cuts to North Sea cod, but yet, in Scotland, we have abundant North Sea cod in our waters. We are keen to try to push both Governments for, and we have certainly been discussing this with both Governments, furthering to be some independent sense check of that ISIS advice that comes from one source. It is not subject to independent challenge. We have also been in many discussions with both Governments again about how we can work with ISIS to actually change that North Sea cod model and for it to reflect the fact that we have a northward migration of fish stocks. However, that will take some time to do, and in the meantime, it is really important that we have some independent challenge and sense check of that ISIS advice to say, you know, actually, does this look right? Does this reflect what fishermen are seeing at sea every day, because at the moment it doesn't? Thank you. Thank you. Members, I am very conscious of the time limitation, so I am going to move on to regulation and salmon farming in questions from Rachel Hamilton. The panel will be aware that, in the previous parliamentary session, there were inquiries on salmon farming, and we also had a report last year from the Salmon Interactions working group, which highlighted the challenges in the sector and the need to improve efficiency and regulatory change to meet those environmental objectives that were highlighted. So my question initially is how will members of the panel, and I presume it will be Tavish Scott, who will start off with this, will move beyond the status quo and ensure that the current regulatory framework is efficient and it is as effective as it can be? Tavish. Thank you, convener. So two very obvious points on that. Firstly, and I think we made this point in our submission to the committee at the tail end of last week, we responded very fully to all the committee reports produced in the last session of parliament. There is a considerable weight of evidence in those submissions, and I'm sure members have had a chance to peruse those submissions. They illustrate all the progress that we've made across all the recommendations that previous committees of this parliament have made. The second observation is that, as I noticed, the committee was asking the cabinet secretary last week. Professor Russell Griggs has been appointed to review the regulatory system in Scotland. We strongly support and endorse that appointment and also the work he's now doing, both with our sector and our individual companies and also with many other interests across the salmon farming sector. I know, having asked him, that he plans to speak to a great variety of people in drawing his recommendations together, which he plans to make, as I understand it later in the year, and that will obviously then be a report that the Government will consider and decide how to take forward. Our principle there is very simple. We don't want less regulation, we want better and more streamlined regulation, and that I think is in the interests both of the marine environment and also in the interests of a sustainable aquaculture industry going forward. One, I may say that the current Government I'm pleased to say entirely support and indeed I think one of the parliamentary questions that was just answered to Rachel Hamilton absolutely made that point. So I think we're very comfortable with that territory and we believe it's moving in a positive direction both for all the people who work in our sector, 3,000 people across the member companies and another 10,000 in our supply chain, but the other point just on the interaction group, the wild salmon interaction group, what that of course noted is that there are 12 pressures on wild fish and what we've asked the Government to do in publishing their response, which I understand is due in the next month or so, is to make clear what progress has been made on all those pressures on the wild fish and that's an agenda that I share with Annan Wells at the Fisheries Management Scotland and with many other people who work in the wild fish sector. That's an agree piece of work, we want to see and understand the science and the evidence behind that and I hope that Rachel Hamilton might endorse that approach, which is based on science and understanding rather than possibly on some of the rhetoric that floats around in this particular area. Hi, thank you panel for coming along. Scotland and salmon farming are synonymous I think and I'm interested to hear more about the innovative work that is happening, I believe about 75 per cent of the supply chain is in Scotland, but also how this work impacts on the environmental side of things, so how you're reducing the environmental impact of salmon fishing. Thank you. Thank you, sorry for the delay, I was just waiting for my microphone to be operative there. Look great question, Jenny Minters was very knowledgeable about this sector and we appreciate her interest in the sector and yes, on innovation, what I think is fascinating about our supply chain and its weight and range right across Scotland and there is not a constituency in Parliament that does not have part of the salmon farming supply chain in it, is that it is driving innovation, it is driving new ways of adapting to the circumstances we're in, looking for sustainable solutions and that comes from a headline document we produced last year, a sustainability charter aimed at making our sector net zero in greenhouse gas emissions in line with government and in line with the United Nations requirements placed upon all of us, both our citizens and us of companies and we will play a very active role in driving that forward and that's where I think the market will come up with solutions because many of our supply chain work not just in Scotland but they also work as Scottish companies in international places too and they are building on expertise and learnings from for example Norway and Fero in providing more environmentally appropriate solutions for Scotland. So this is an exciting world, we're very pleased that it's developing at such a rate and I suspect that here it is one where politicians at government level setting out big targets around for example those greenhouse gas emission targets are helpful for industrial sectors because they make us focus on what we must do. Practical example yesterday I was up in USound and then very north of Shetland looking at the vessels that take crews out to salmon farms and also the generators that are on our barges in terms of how our fish are fed, all those are now being looked at in the context of more of renewable sources of battery power of other ways in which we produce power so as to reduce our emissions and that will happen right across the sector from the very far south of Scotland right up to Unston the north. So those kind of innovations are happening, they're happening a pace and I believe that when we as a sector publish a very transparent annual report into our sustainability charter we'll be able to provide Jenny Minto and colleagues with lots of evidence as to what we're doing and how much more we want to do in the future to be truly a sustainable industry going forward into the into the next decade. Thank you, I've now got a very short supplementary from Emma Harper. It's actually not for right now, it was just to see I can come in after alyssa Rallon. That's great. Okay, could I ask Ariane for her questions on climate ecological crisis please? Thank you, convener. Yeah, so yeah, thank you panel for coming today, it's very good to hear you know the challenges you're faced with and I'd be interested to hear a bit about your approach for the climate and ecological crisis. So we as we know Scotland sees play a key role in the climate by storing carbon but they're susceptible to a number of threats to our activity and what I'm aware of is that some of the activity is bottom contact and midwater fishing as being the most geographically widespread and direct pressure on our marine environment and that commercial fishing also contributes to greenhouse gas emissions although I heard in introductions from some of the panels that that's maybe less so the case. So we're looking at impacts of ocean acidification sea level rise and the changing ecology which we could have heard from Elspeth about the fish moving further north. I mean I think what I just want to say is from the outset I'm looking for you know a long term future for fishing and so it's about you know how do we look at look at what we're doing right now which is overfishing and move to a more sustainable practice. So I'd love to hear from the panel about you know the kinds of views that you have on what a just transition would mean for the fishing industry and the coastal communities and if I start with Elaine. Thank you yes of course that this is a concern it's a change more than anything else that we have to be responsive to and I guess my first my first spot would be that we need to look at science that's what we have to be doing and we have to be doing more scientific research particularly I feel in the inshore not only on the environment on the seabed the sediment various things like that but also on the stocks because while we're talking about cod moving north we're also seeing things like skate and spardog moving into areas of greater numbers as well so we have to have responsive science I would say one of the things that we need to do is get our government working in a reference style fleet with our fishing industry so that we can see where there may be problems and where there may be opportunities to have a sustainable fishing fleet as well in terms of a just transition I know that devil fisherman has spoken to this about me and it does feel like something they're on the periphery of and we need to be a little bit more engaged in it because I think if something is done to people they don't they don't tend to like it they like to be involved in it so I would agree that but what I do think is with the climate and with everything else that we're talking about it we can't make any decisions in silos we need to be thinking about what's happening with the local communities how they're sustainable how the environment's sustainable everything in the whole because I'm just going back to what Ellsworth was talking about the MPA process and the PMF process that actually probably keeps us awake more than anything else not because we don't want to protect those features we absolutely do but it's getting that balance right and getting the science right to know that we actually are doing something that isn't going to harm communities or is going to allow sustainable development to continue because right now I went for the MPA process we didn't have as good an experience as Ellsworth can recall I was there and in our regional area it did lose trust of fishermen so whatever we do we have to take them with us any good fisherman should be an environmentalist and I think that's the key thing and in terms of licensing and that's another thing that we really have to be looking at because the main space is becoming very is becoming multi-use it's not just fishing there's various other things we could quite focus on the impacts of fishing we are talking about renewables we are talking about different types of marine activity like cable laying etc and I think we have to be looking at that licensing and the whole as well and going forward to make sure that we're doing the right thing to environment. Thank you can now get Ellsworth to respond please. Thank you I was delighted to hear the committee member say that she was looking for a long-term future for fishing because that's absolutely what we are looking for too and I think if I could just make an observation I've been in this role just just over two years and I think one thing that struck me very early on in this job was just how many family businesses, how many generations of families are in this industry you know this is not an industry that people come into for the short term it's an industry that people are and families have been invested in for generations and nobody has a greater need for this industry to have a sustainable future than the industry itself. I would just like to also maybe just respond to the point about overfishing I think there was some interesting statistics that were published by the University of Highlands Islands in Shetland recently showing that whitefish biomass in Scottish waters are actually a record high in modern times so I think it's really important to recognise that whilst there certainly has been overfishing historically in our waters the situation has very significantly improved and I think that comes down to having good management and good collaboration between between government and industry but I absolutely echo Elaine's point about having robust and better science I think so much of what we are doing is underpinned by science so we have to make sure that that science is good and is up to date and is absolutely robust and subject to challenge. I think again if we think about the contribution that the fishing fleet makes to greenhouse gas emissions I think the figure for the UK fleet is somewhere in the region of 0.17% of the UK total which I think really is very small when you compare it to other sectors. Farming for example 11% transport 25% the emissions from this industry are really relatively small that's not to say we are complacent about the fact that we are in a fairly good place there are clearly more things that we can do and there are more things that we will be doing I think it's really important to understand that one of the ways in which obviously one of the probably the biggest contributor that the fishing industry makes in terms of emissions is through the use of fuel because our vessels obviously have to be powered to go and catch fish but fishing for healthy and abundant stocks is really the most fuel efficient way to do it so the fact that we have healthy and abundant stocks in most of our cases is an efficient way for us to fish and it's clearly obviously going to be better in terms of emissions too but we're always looking at how we can reduce our fuel costs and therefore reduce our emissions there is work that the industry has done over many years and you see that if you look at the way that fishing vessels have have changed the shape and the dynamics of them over the years to make them more fuel efficient there's a lot of work that has been done and will continue to be done in terms of designed a fishing gear to to minimise its impact both on the seabed and also to therefore make it more fuel efficient use and I think to you know we have to look at innovation we look at the announcement recently from the UK government about the hydrogen strategy it's very it's very promising to see that the marine is included in that strategy and that fishing vessels will be part of that you these are all ways that we need to be looking at innovative innovative ways forward and and also we need to think a bit about investment I think Tavish mentioned a moment ago looking at what the fish farming industry could do around things like generators that's exactly the same sort of challenge that that we face in our industry if we can look at investment into port facilities that for example can use shore based power from renewable sources and that reduces the reliance that vessels have on using their generators when they're when they're in port so there's much to do there's by no means is the industry complacent and I think the industry starts from a good place and we will continue to go forward in that manner thank you thank you can ask ever series for questions on this topic please yeah thanks convener um well as has already been said we're facing a climate and ecological emergency and we've heard about the importance of blue carbon um and also about the damage that's being done by some parts of the fishing industry to our marine environment so I wanted to know if the panel thinks there's any sections of the fishing industry that are incompatible with scotland's ambitious targets could I possibly start with with jimmy and the processing side and and then move to uh elspeth I think that's a difficult question for me to representing a processing sector to to answer because we're not directly involved in the fishing I can only say from my experience is 40 years plus as a fisherman and 30 plus years as a skipper I couldn't continue to go back to the same areas year after year after year and make it make a fishing vessel profitable if we weren't doing it in a sustainable and responsible manner so and and I I can only echo that that's what all of my colleagues was doing so I think it's probably better for elspeth to report on that but that's my my own observation and one I stand by thank you okay if we go to elspeth and then Elaine please thank you convener jimmy makes a really important point there I think it's important again to understand context fishing vessels don't fish everywhere the fish in areas which are known to be productive and as jimmy said I have continued to be productive over many years and I think that again is indicative of effective management if I can perhaps mention the the scaloping sector as an example there has been much criticism of the scallop sector for having an impact on the seabed I mean most means of producing foods have some sort of environmental impact I think looking at our farmers plowing fields we see an impact there so clearly you know any type of food production has some kind of impact on the environment if we think about scallop dredging for example I believe marine Scotland's own figures show that around I think 15 percent of Scotland's inshore waters are subject to scallop fishing which which then suggests that 85 percent of them are not and when we look I think at the at the co-operation agreement between between the Scottish Greens and the SNP and we see some very potentially some very draconian measures being proposed for our inshore waters you know I think a challenge back to that to that document and to that agreement is you know where is the evidence for suggesting that we need such a such an approach and I think in fairness the document recognises that further measures would only be taken where evidence if we come come to light that they were necessary but as I spoke about earlier we already have a robust a constructive process around marine protected areas priority marine features which has been effective identifying the right things and the right places to protect and then taking the measures to do that so I think making some blanket provision to say that you must you know you must have a far more blanket sweeping provision for protection where actually there isn't the evidence to suggest that is not the right way to go let's go forward on the basis of evidence on the basis of constructive collaborative discussion and I think let us recognise that all means of producing food have some impact on the environment and briefly Elaine please yes I think this is one of the things that concerns us most it for me it goes back to process and dines I don't think there's one good way of fishing in one bad way of fishing necessarily it's about good management because if you have too much of me I represent kill men I represent mobile fishermen line and dine they all work together and through Sifa national body and they appreciate that if you do too much of any one of those things you are going to have a problem what I do think that we have to do is concentrate a lot more on the insurance in terms of science looking at the stocks and looking at the the the seabed looking at what's out there and as I said not make policy in silos separate to what's going on so economically as well because that's really important I think you know I am concerned that we are not going to follow process and for instance right now we have a lot of really great wild oyster projects that are happening where they are placing wild oysters all over Scotland which seems and it's a fantastic thing to do however this I worry very much that this is being used as a type of closing off areas to local fishermen who are maybe fishing sustainably in a different area because it's a PMF now these types of things we have to be aware of we have to be making decisions based on what we need for the environment and we also have to be making decisions on process so that nothing is going through the back door or is being used as a a secret fisheries management tool it has to be something we're all sitting down and discussing it fairly and I would far rather see us talking through process and frameworks than managing things by campaigns because in honesty there's no one good way of fishing and no one bad way it's down to the management and what's appropriate for each of those areas and that's why blanky policies just do no work do not work and could be quite harmful actually to not only the environment but local communities as well thank you lean can we move on to Jenny now please hi thanks again I'm just going to ask a really short question so we hear more from the panellists I'm interested to know what the priorities your priorities are for post-euw exit fishery policy specifically around the objects such as national benefit objective and climate change objective and also priorities that you have in the development of joint fisheries statements and fisheries management plans perhaps I would come to elspeth first yeah certainly um there's quite a lot um a lot in that short question and I think it's really good that um what the committee has in some focus around the um essentially what is the fisheries act which is now our overarching piece of fisheries legislation in the UK now that the UK is left to you um I think again as I set out in some of my introductory actually in my background statement that I submitted in advance certainly we see as a priority for the for the new fisheries regime in the UK around really looking at the scope that we have now to develop our own fisheries management regulations um as I'm sure you will all know the fishing industry was was was very hugely disappointed by the the details of the Brexit deal in terms of the the settlement um that we certainly want to see what scope there is to leverage a better settlement going forward to be to be to be used and developed um but I think one of the one of the few advantages that we see in the fisheries heading is that we now have this regulatory autonomy this ability to determine our own our own rules in our own waters and I think that is a real opportunity for the UK and and indeed for Scotland because this is devolved territory to really look at what are the right types of fisheries management for Scotland in our waters and I think that also touches on the point that Elaine has just made that if we have good management we will have we will have good fisheries so um very much a priority for us around these fisheries management plans around the joint fisheries statement will be how the administrations will be working to develop effective fisheries management um for Scotland and for other parts of the UK obviously and how these will contribute to these overarching objectives of the of the fisheries act which are around as you identify things like how we meet the climate change objectives and I think some of the things that we've touched on this morning talk about that so I think there's some real opportunities through the fisheries act joint fisheries statement and the fisheries management plans and we're very much looking forward to engaging with both the Scottish government and the UK government to really make sure that we can maximise the advantages that these bring and make sure that that gives us a sustainable fisheries thank you okay thank you can may I just can I just ask a wee supplementary there um I believe the funding package is between two to three years under the new legislation whereas I think Europe was up to seven years is that going to impact on the industry? I think um what we have at the moment is um a commitment from the UK government for a 100 million pound fund and we saw we started we've started to see some of the details of that emerge fairly recently and some of that is around innovation and science there's no detail to come so that's just starting to emerge now in terms of the marine fund Scotland that that fund was initially launched only for one year and I think that reflects where both governments are in terms of expending reviews and having single year settlements and that does make it difficult for both for governments but also for businesses that might want to apply for these funds because you can't you know you you can't look at long-term projects long-term investments on an annual cycle so I think I think the sooner that the UK and Scotland can get back into more multi-year funding settlements then I think the more helpful that will be because I've heard quite a lot of people say that they felt that they couldn't take advantage of the marine fund Scotland this year because it was it required expenditure to happen before the end of the financial year so so certainly for longer-term investment and planning we certainly need some longer-term funding programmes thank you can I move on to Emma now to or is jimmy wanton in no he's got an itchy ear jimmy go for it yes it was just just it was just to add to that from an onshore point of view good management in the fisheries leads to good marketing and which will hopefully drive profitability back into the sector so it's really good that the management the science everything ties up at the catching end because we can then replicate that through the marketing of the seafood because it's really important on funding funding will drive profitability back into all businesses and I can give you a classic example where I had a troller that was old it was inefficient and I was able to attract funding to draw down funding to reinvest in that troller and reduce its carbon footprint by over 33 percent and I think one of the things I would like this panel to take away from here is the investment will pay back not only to drive profitability into businesses but it will help us meet our carbon reduction in our targets going forward in the long term so although it's an upfront investment it's a long term investment for the greater good of the environment thank you thank you jimmy I'm now going to move to Emma Harper for some questions on inshore fisheries thanks convener I realize we are going to be challenged for time so it might be that your responses can be down the line either written or or in future sessions it's particularly for Elaine White it's issues of like local management and governments of inshore fisheries you know in the west coast it's a lot of smaller boats people need to be more connected there needs to be more connection with the communities as well and particularly you mentioned in the south in the southwest part in the irish sea so there's islaman waters there's english waters there's salt with earth and then irish sea waters so there's all this in the mix and it must be quite challenging then to to manage inshore fishery aspects of these waters and now we've got a border in the irish sea so it'll be interesting to hear about what should be done what could be done what items should we be thinking about in the future thank you thank you very much again i keep going back to management we have IFGs which is is a very strong way that we can we can bring our local fishers together to actually come up with plans that suit them and of course they don't work in silos they will be working with their other colleagues and various other scotish IFGs so if you're working in the west coast you will be talking to the the east coast etc about what because obviously if you make a policy one place it could actually displace somewhere else and i do think we have to be more reflective because i do think for instance the islaman need their own policies that works very well but they don't have reciprocal ones for Scotland so you know it can mean that our fishers are quite disadvantaged and that's also happened between northern Ireland and Scotland so we do have to get that right i agree i think capacity is a major issue i think for a couple of reasons because we're pulled in so many directions at the moment you'll have seen the marine planning consultation what happened with the parliamentary review there and we've got a lot of work to to go there i mean i think that there's a lot of issues that we actually have to to to have transparency of process and we have to have stick to process and know what we're trying to do as opposed to overshooting into other areas in terms of the joint fisheries statement that should go quite a while away to actually working with our neighbours as should the future fisheries management to outline what our our intentions are and what i am concerned about is additional things that we probably aren't thinking about like cumulative impacts how they can cause displacement for instance if we're going to have renewables in the west coast how is that going to affect our fisheries so so so these types of things i don't think we're quite there when it comes to local and we need a strength of IFGs we need resource to do that we need capacity of our fishermen to engage and there's quite a lot coming at us at the moment i genuinely think we need to engage our fishermen a lot more it's when we come to the joint fisheries management as well sorry just to go back we need to be aware that a lot of our our fishermen are coming to the table for the first time it's seafel we are coming to the table for the first time to strategic meetings so when it comes to things like annual negotiations and quota or space sharing those types of things we are new we're the smaller guys and we're new there's no reason that we always have to stay that way but i think it's really important that we do know and that's we are fully supportive of the northeast industry etc doing well and the bigger fleet is doing well but we really need a little bit more attention to the smaller guys for the first engagement in strategic issues thank you very much Elaine unfortunately i'd like to say we're gonna have to bring this session to a close there is so much more to cover and a lot more answers our questions we like to ask but can i thank you very much for your involvement in the panel today it certainly set the scene for the work we've got to do in the future we are now going to take a five minute break in our second panel we'll go straight to questioning rather than have opening statements so we'll restart the session at 11 20 thank you okay welcome back everybody and i welcome to the meeting our second panel we've got Katie Gillam head of marine ecosystems and Kathy Tilbrooke head of sustainable coasts and seas from nature scot Callum Duncan head of conservation scotland marine conservation society and Charles Miller executive director for sustainable insure fisheries trust my apologies i'm not going to ask you for for introductions we're going to go straight into questions which will give you the opportunity to put across your your views my first question is on the scientific evidence of and the health of and the main pressures on our marine environment you know we heard in the last session about the apparent increase in whitefish biomass a significantly improved collaboration leading to improved health in our seas comments on the fishing industry the scallop industry only actually fishing 85 percent of our waters um but uh we need more information about the scientific evidence so can have your comments and can i start with callum Duncan please thank you convener um yeah i mean i think the evidence space uh shows that on a whole range of metrics we've failed to ensure our seas are in good environmental status by 2020 in the global context for that we have the best report in 2019 that talks about the unprecedented decline in nature globally and nothing short of transformative change needed and how we operate as a society to ensure the halting and reversal of the decline of nature and in marine systems that report was highlighting fishing as the you know along with climate change the the principal driver of that decline of nature at sea if we bring that closer to home the the collective evidence base of all the UK administrations through the marine strategy process concluded that 11 of 15 indicators were failed indicators of good environmental status been failed by 2020 that includes seafloor condition that includes many commercial fish stocks including most shellfish stocks and and declines and concerns about seabirds deals scotland's moon assessment 2020 again highlights the concern about the widespread pressure impact from fishing and that it's present in all scottish marine regions and offshore marine regions as a pressure now none of this is to say that that shouldn't be happening it's about managing it sustainably and having an ecosystem based approach to managing fishing and i think there's a real false dichotomy here because it's often sort of presented as you know you can have conservation or you can have fishing and obviously we need good conservation within a step change in recovery of the health of our ocean as the prerequisite for a healthy and sustainable fishing industry and i think some of the comments in the first panel illustrated that we really need to get on to the same page of what the evidence base is because the statement about 15 percent of the sea is scallop dredged the important question we should be asking is how much of the seabed is actually ground that scallops live on and then we're talking about a percentage of that so if you know where there was a report by marine scotland science that showed that uh less than one percent of the historically trawled inshore seabed uh the inshore seabed of scotland was actually protected within marine protected areas so um you know i think the evidence base shows there's a lot of cause for concern uh we we do need that step change in conservation uh an ocean recovery we all need to to take that journey together and we absolutely do need to have the conversation about what the just transition for um fishing industry along with all other industries because all industries have their part to play uh in uh in securing uh you know net zero future so it's not about singling out fishing it's one amongst many it just so happens it's a very uh widespread impact on the health of our seas okay thank you can let's get charles to respond please yeah thank you thank you for inviting him to the session as well um yeah i mean i i go along with the lord what calms just said um i think there's another sort of interesting sort of detail in what we'd heard earlier around biomass being large but actually when you sort of dig down a bit further what becomes apparent is that um you've actually got a different kind of makeup of the biomass to what used to be the case and so um certainly recent studies have shown in the west that um whilst biomass may be at a even an all-time high in some areas what you're seeing is a completely different um constituency so you're seeing a very large number of very small fish and you're not seeing the large fish so that's a that's a problem for the eco for the ecosystem but it's also um a problem for the fishery i mean that the kind of large beckoned um fish like cod are extremely in extremely low numbers but what you're seeing is huge numbers of very small whiting and so the evidence needs to be really drilled down into and so some headline statements can sort of look good sound good but when you start to kind of crunch the numbers as it were then you then you get a slightly different picture i totally concur also this concern around the seabed i mean that's a that's you know that's the foundation for a sustainable ecosystem which in turn is obviously the foundation for sustainable fishery and so when we are having a benthic indicators which are failing to meet good environmental status that's a fundamental problem for recovery of stocks and for the attention essentially the resilience of the fishery itself which is what certainly is driving sift so yeah there is evidence but we really need to look at it in close detail and rather than some of the sort of banner headlines which may not perhaps kind of portray the full picture thank you charles yeah i think i think that certainly hits an appoint of the headlines don't always tell the full picture can i ask either Katie or Kathy of nature scott how they see inshore fisheries groups and NGOs working together to ensure we do get the right picture of what's happening in our seas Katie thank you very much writing us to speak today it's really good to have that opportunity and nature scott has been involved with working with some of the inshore fisheries groups right since the start i guess of when they were set up and continue to be involved through the regional inshore fisheries groups and i think there's been a kind of a gradual development in that as a stakeholder engagement mechanism and we've really supported seeing that develop further into the future and i guess we don't have a really fixed view in terms of how that development should happen but the key things for us are that whatever mechanism is used it provides a meaningful mechanism for you know a really good exchange of ideas and opinions and actually supporting future management going forward so that you get the full range of stakeholders involved in that and you didn't mention local communities there but i think that's a that's also an important part of what happens at a regional or local scale in fisheries management in the future thank you i'm going to stick to with this topic on climate and ecological crisis and move to allister and then we'll see these for the questions thank you convener much of what's been talked about so far has been especially in the last panel has been about the trade-off the necessary trade-off between the future of the environment and the future of sometimes quite fragile rural economies so can i ask this is possibly a question for charles i'm not sure of the areas which are currently actively fished and as i've talked about those areas are a minority of of the the scotland seas of the areas which are currently actively fished what what kind of change do you expect or do you believe that these communities should expect in the coming years thank you i think one of the questions just if i can sort of as a preamble to that is is around some of the statements about what areas are currently actively fished and one of the concerns that we have is that there is very little in the way of comprehensive data on that because there is not a comprehensive coverage of the fleet in terms of their vessel monitoring and remote electronic monitoring not entirely clear which areas are actually fished and so that presents the first problem in in kind of answering your question dr allen but if i can perhaps then turn to the some of the trade-offs around that have been referred to as well i mean i think the concern we have in in my organisation is that there aren't necessarily trade-offs in all situations i mean what you can have is a system an ecosystem-based management approach which will involve the use of spatial management and indeed as the fishery management strategy document published last year noted mpa's can support fish stock recovery and so what we're saying is that actually ecosystem recovery should be compatible in many cases with fishery recovery and the long-term sustainability of fishery and so my concern there is that there is a sort of this siloization going on that you have the ecosystem on one side and you have the fishery on the other and we would say that the two are intimately linked and if we can get that sort of past that potential sort of the way the way that's viewed then we are perhaps looking at a better route towards communities being actually able to work much more effectively together. Thank you. Could Kathy address that and then Calum please? Thank you convener and thanks for the opportunity to speak. Just building on what Charles said there i mean we support those comments about the need to avoid seeing this as a kind of either or because you know comments that have been made earlier about recovering the health of the seas does offer huge benefits for long-term sustainability of the sector as well but i also think that perhaps it's worth bringing in here the need for robust marine planning to help with these kind of you know these management of trade-offs so we need marine plans to be able to prioritise and steer the use of marine space and as we've said in the earlier session our seas are getting much busier and i think we need a revision of our national marine plan to manage those growing pressures and reflect the new priorities for climate and nature and part of that is about better integrating fisheries management into those plans both at the national level and at the regional level so that we can achieve an appropriate balance so i think that's part of it and you know allowing communities to have an input into the vision for their local seas will be an important part of of that process. Okay, thank you and Calum. Yeah, thank you convener. I just wanted to emphasize support for what both Charles and Kathy had said there using the phrase trade-off you know implies you know winners and losers you know as we go forward there are decisions to be made and it's not it's not you know fear to suggest nothing can change and everybody you know can still continue as they are i mean changes have to happen but it's about a process that brings everybody along with that and i think that you know marine planning is a very important part of that. I think integrating fisheries management with marine planning is really important because all coastal communities and stakeholders have a stake in the health of the marine space that is a public good and you know it's also important for the committee to understand that there's you know the the the the fish fisheries themselves i mean that's a that's a complex and diverse sector and there's parts of the sector that for example don't think some of the proposals in the programme for government you know go far enough so there's you know there's a huge range of views there and it's really important to have that you know open forward looking inclusive you know dialogue with it with a shared evidence base and you know a path and a vision of where to get to and that would be really really important okay allister if the panel don't like the word or the phrase trade-off i'm happy to use another one like interface or or co-operation but i think you can you can see what i'm driving at which is really just how we manage that that relationship i absolutely accept incidentally what's been said about the need for change and what charles said about things like the need for winch monitors to provide data i suppose what i'm driving at is that when we're talking about designations does the the people in the panel i mean it else with touched on this feel that there might be a better way of managing a the process of designation to avoid confrontation as has happened in some places and also more that we can do to move on the process of community involvement in the management of designations i'm not not making a case against designation per se just interested to know if you feel there's better ways of doing it would anybody like to take that on it's maybe one for for for Katie thank you yes um well i was really encouraged to hear the comments that elspeth mcdonald was making in the previous session about the experience of working on the previous process of designating the nature conservation marine protect areas and i think the things that elspeth was mentioning there around the need to have transparency and the need to make sure that we're working with a good evidence space and also the need for collaboration there whatever whatever phrase you want to use to describe that whether that's you know co-production and full-stake ordering engagement but there needs to be a clearly established process and i think one of the things that we had as a benefit from the nature conservation mpa work is that there was that clear process set out and i think there's a there's a need to kind of take stock with the commitments that have come through now from the co-operation agreement and from the programme for government to clearly articulate things like for example what the highly protected marine areas might mean in Scotland what the definition is how they might work in practice so that we can then engage with stakeholders and set out a clear process for how they're going to be selected and what it will look like when they're actually put into place so i think i agree with a lot of the things that other people have said previously and core to a lot of this is allowing the time and space in the process to actually enable all of the key stakeholders to have a role and to actually make sure they have their views heard i would hope as well that there's also some opportunities that we could look at there were mentions in the previous session about the future fisheries management strategy and how that related to the marine protection commitments and there are some obvious things that you might be able to pull out from both for example the need to protect spawning grounds and the need to protect nursery habitats but it would be really good to as we go through this process to hear from both fisheries and aquaculture industry about what they think the key opportunities they can see from implementing these commitments so that we're actually responding to that need to restore and allow marine ecosystems to recover but doing in a way that achieves that balance and supports the longer term sustainability of their industries as well. I support everything that Katie said and to come back on the point about designations and concerns that may exist around them. The Scottish MPU process was nothing perfect but it was deemed to be an excellent process and the Scottish Government and NatureScot and JNCC and all stakeholders involved I think to be commended on that. The issue, if I may put it that way, almost was it was happening in a silo because there wasn't a fisheries strategy that it could be seen to be integrated with or interrelating with or a planning system in which it's sitting. I was involved with a lot of the management workshops that became proxy discussions about what should be happening in the wider sea in terms of the use of sea space, seabed use, how any displacement of gear might impact in other areas or other growing sectors. It's almost like waiting for the wider fisheries management processes and when planning processes catch up. I wanted to say that to take the opportunity to respond to people's thinking about MPAs as means to protect the remnants of some fragile bits of seabed and that's not how we should be thinking about them. The features that the MPAs protect if allowed to recover, they interact and provide ecosystem services, whether it's locking up carbon, providing important habitat for commercial fish and shellfish and providing resilient by-diverse systems. They are almost like a bank from which you can replenish the wider sea. It seems that the discussion about using closures for one of a better term, curtailments of certain types of gear for the wider benefit of fisheries is quite a polarised discussion because it's not a free space to have that discussion from my perspective. You wouldn't be surprised to hear that we welcomed the commitment to highly protected marine areas. We think that they can benefit from biodiversity for food provision and for blue carbon, for a planned right. We do think that it was the right thing to do to commit to capping effort and to look at how to reduce effort on an evidence basis. Obviously, there's a lot to do, but I think that a lot of the polarity and the tension arise as a result of siloed processes and non-integrated processes. To finish, I would also support what Kathy was saying about the importance of a renewed national marine plan that doesn't pretend that everything can grow and things won't interact or conflicts. For us, what's key is that the baseline for the marine system is quite low and quite diminished, and we won't get the benefits for other parts of society. I don't know whether you've stopped or whether your video's cut out. I'm just going to move on to Mercedes-Benz before then. Can I ask either Katie or Kathy? We heard in the last session in the Environment, Climate Change Committee about the good work that was done up in Shetland between fishermen, NGOs and environmental groups, and the University of Herriot-Watt, I think it was. I'm looking for acknowledgement of that. And there was a fantastic level of trust built up where the fishermen were happy to share their data and whatever. Is there other examples of good collaborative working like that that Nature Scotland and Marine Scotland can build upon to ensure that replicated rights to cross our coasts? Thank you, yes. Kathy might want to come in after this as well. I think there are lots of really good examples. I think there's maybe an assumption that there hasn't been lots of good collaborative working going on to date, but there are lots of examples where there have been collaborations, whether that's between Nature Scotland and industry or between various different NGO groups and industry as well. There are definitely lots of good examples and I could mention a couple, but we'll also be happy to provide more information on those afterwards if that will be helpful to the committee. One example that springs to mind in terms of the regional approach to fisheries management is the Shetland Shellfish management organisation. That's been a very different way to the approach that's been used in other parts of Scotland to managing what's happening with shellfish fisheries. That's one example where there's a whole range of different interests that have been brought together through a statutory mechanism to bring that regional tier of management in Scotland. That's been really useful. As another completely different example, we've had the recent example of the Scottish Entanglement Alliance, which was a collaboration between industry, ourselves, NGOs and others to look at potential issues to see whether there are issues in terms of the entanglement of large marine animals with static fishing gear and then to identify the next steps and what could be done. I definitely think that collaborative projects are the way to go forward and would welcome ideas and suggestions from others, particularly from industry members, about how we do that in the future. I think that Katie has covered that. Let's move on for the benefit of time. I've got two questions relating to fishing management. The marine protected areas were designated in 2014. I believe that NatureScot gave advice about fishing management in 2013 which included stating that dredging and trawling ought to be banned in several MPAs, but there are still many MPAs where those activities are continuing unrestricted. My question for the NatureScot representatives is whether they're concerned that NatureScot's advice hasn't been heeded. The second question is for the whole panel to ask what we can do to ensure that similar mistakes aren't made in the creation of the new future fishing management strategy. Katie, I think that it's probably appropriate to come in on that. Thank you very much. You're right that we provided advice on the management of fishing activity in relation to MPAs just to give a little bit of background for our role in that process. We're not fisheries managers, obviously, and we leave that work to others to implement. Our role is to provide advice on the sensitivity of different habitats and species and therefore to help fisheries managers to identify where the risks could be and therefore where management measures need to be put in place. The work that's gone on to date in terms of management of fishing activity for MPAs focused on the first phase, which was for the most sensitive habitats and species. Those are things that have been more in the press recently, things like seagrass beds and mull beds, so the most sensitive habitats and species. The measures for those were all put in place a number of years ago. You're right that we also provided further advice on other habitats where further management would be required. Those were essentially mainly habitats and species that were considered to be moderate sensitivity. The questions were not so straightforward in terms of whether there should be fishing activity or not. If you have fishing activity that happens across a horse muscle bed or a seagrass bed, you can see very immediately what the impact of that would be. For the habitats that still have fisheries measures put in place, there are more moderate sensitivity, so very important habitats such as Burrard mud, for example, where there's more to do with the amount of fishing effort and reducing the effort to a level that allows the habitat to be in a good condition rather than saying that there should be no fishing activity happening within those. We're aware that that advice has been considered carefully by people in Marine Scotland. We welcome the commitment that's come through the corporation agreement now to put clear timescales on that that we're working towards. We're aware that there's been a number of other pieces of work going alongside that, so ourselves and Marine Scotland Science and others have continued to develop the evidence base so that that's stronger to support the management measures when they come through those proposals. Alongside looking at increasing the evidence base, there's also been work that is responding to stakeholder comments about how to develop better methods to assess the impacts or the benefits of any of the measures that are proposed, because that was feedback that we got from stakeholders previously that those methods that were being used didn't really capture that in quite that way. I guess that's my answer to the first part of the question. We do feel that our advice has been listened to and that the commitment in the corporation agreement reinforces the commitment to act on that. The second question was about making sure that no other similar mistakes are made in the implementation of the future fisheries management strategy. I guess that the future fisheries management strategy is very early days since 2020, but my understanding is that the time scales for that and the planning is well under way for how that will be implemented. Where I interact with that work or where the work of my team interacts with that is really an opportunity to look across from what's come through from the programme for government commitments and to look at the future fisheries management and see where the opportunities are, because I think there are reed across between the two. It would be really nice to go back to part of what Callum was saying. How do we join this all together into a bigger picture so that we're not just going to stakeholders and talking about highly protected green areas one day in a cap on individual fishing effort another day and another time talking about how do we protect spawning areas, but we're actually presenting a picture that's in the round and people can see that we're working towards something slightly bigger. Thank you. Charles, would you like to come on in on that? Thank you. In terms of ensuring that the stakes are not repeated, I think that one of the fundamental issues, and it touches on what we've discussed just a moment before, on the whole question of engagement amongst different stakeholders. I think that really what the issue here is around governance and around the structures and how transparent they are so that different stakeholders can engage with one another. I think that if we've got a more transparent, more equitable system of engagement between different parties, clearly the fishing industry, but also the many others who also have a right to make use of the public asset that is our seas, then there needs to be some considerable thought given to how these governance structures work. Specifically with regards to the fishery management strategy, it talks about strengthening the role of the regional IFGs. Now that, some stakeholders, is a cause for concern. The RIFGs are really exclusively for the fishing industry and that's fine to have a fishing industry body, but that seemed to be suggesting that the RIFGs were going to be taking a perhaps more dominant role in this. Rather than broadening out the decision making process to all stakeholders, which would ultimately presumably improve transparency and hence decision making, it seemed to be that Marine Scotland policy was pushing slightly in the opposite direction on this. That is obviously a cause for concern and I think that that's something that really would be valuable to look at. Okay, thank you. Does anybody else like to continue that topic? Okay, could I move on to Beatrice for her questions, please? Thanks, convener. I was pleased, Katie, to hear you reference the Shetland shellfish management order as a good example of collaborative working and also local management. And I think it was Callum that referenced the sea birds and seals that can get caught up in fishing gear, gilnet fishing. I think that we've all seen pictures on social media of sea birds that have been caught in gilnets. I'd like to ask questions about the future catching policy. I asked earlier on the previous panel about the ISIS scientific evidence on North Sea cod. I wonder if I could get your views about how to reduce unnecessary discards and by-catch having heard that you have a scenario where small whiting are being taken out of the mouths of a cod and being gutted while the cod is thrown over the side. I'd like a little bit from our panelists about their views on future catching policy. Who would like to start on that one? Charles again? I mean, I should pre-preface that with saying, of course, that North Sea catches are sort of outwith the remit of sustainable inshore fishery trust. But I mean, I think I've got a broader general point on this, which is that there's a lot of the policy work that really says the right things. My concern is perhaps about not so much whether the policy or the strategy or some of the framework statements are saying the right thing, but it's more a question of how the implementation goes ahead. Sorry to answer this in a more broad way, but I think that it's quite a critical point to make in this that we need to, again, it's about drilling down into the detail. You know, something might sound quite encouraging and, you know, the UK Fisheries Act has some, you know, important objectives in there about climate change and things like that, but it's how it's going to be dealt with in practice. And I think this is perhaps something that is sort of broader in the time available, sort of feeling I need to get across at this stage if that helps. Okay. Thanks, channel. Callum, please. Yeah, thank you for the question. Lots of big topics, not a lot of time, but I think it's a very good question and it comes down to information, sound science, evidence, confidence. I know we heard earlier about the differing perspective on quantities and so on. I mean, our perspective is we want to see remote electronic monitoring as a cost effective means to get as much information as possible as to, you know, what is being caught where, whether it's caught or anything else. And that's a combination of cameras, suitably positioned so, you know, they're not interfering obviously with, you know, they're only monitoring what's coming on to the boat and not the sort of, the boat is a place of living and, you know, combined with GIS and other information. So we just build up a much better picture of what the state of the stocks are in order to inform future catching policy. You know, we can provide, I have provided to predecessor committees a report on an REM, I can do that again if you'd be. I'd also just quickly like to say one thing in the context of COD. We were, I mean, it kind of gets to the point of ecosystem based management as well. There was, I know it wasn't much love, but the COD recovery plan seemed to have been successful and the part of that was the windsock closure west of Shetland and Orkney. And they were finding cod catch within that from scientific surveys in the closure, 70 per cent higher than outside. And then this site was also coterminous with the marine protected area. And then, you know, the marine protected area is designated, but then the sunset clause, if you like, on the closure came into effect and the new voluntary arrangement was put in place that actually allowed more of that area to be trolled. I mean, obviously, I welcome the fact that there was a voluntary arrangement in place to leave some alone, to have some for trolling and some for starting. But it was quite an interesting example of, you know, where not realising, I feel, the sort of ecosystem benefit of a closure around which they also happened to make an MPA, because the fishing effort there is higher now it's an MPA than it was as part of the fisheries management measure. So we need to be looking at that temporal and permanent closures that can help stocks recover. And I think that the wind stock provided some evidence of the benefits to commercial species, larger and wide-ranging species, but that can still benefit from fixed close areas. Because that closure was also seeing higher numbers of very fragile, low-growing, long-lived species, like some alasma branks, for example. Thank you. Cathy, would you like to make a comment on that? Yeah, thank you just briefly to add to what's been said. I think a lot of this really relates to the management of the fishery itself and the interaction between different stocks, but we would also want to think about broadening this discussion out a bit to, for example, the catching policy for populations of forage fish that are important within natural food chains, thinking about, you know, the importance of those elements, how you set sustainable levels to ensure that those issues are part of the picture. And also, for example, in addition to by-catch of fish, looking at reducing unintended wildlife by-catch in fishing gear, and the work that Katie mentioned earlier about entanglement is perhaps part of that. So there are these wider wildlife interactions that need to be considered within these discussions on the catching policy. Thank you very much. Can I now move on to the environmental impact of aquaculture and other regulations? Karen, can I come to you and then Ariane, please? Thank you. Thank you, convener. You know, there's been much research and real potential for seaweed farming, particularly here in the northeast coast. It's really, you know, it's quite a tremendous opportunity for coastal communities to diversify into a new sector. And it's just one example of diversification, but clearly seaweed production has grown across the world and has been used in an extensive range of products, eco-products, and it also absorbs a significant amount of CO2, so it can also contribute to net zero. So what I'd like to ask the panel really is what has been asked of the fishing community in relation to this diversification in the context of the sustainable marine environment, because we now see regulation of these newly expanded areas being conferred on. And what other possible diversification can you see coming to the fore that you feel is eco-friendly but also economically positive for struggling coastal communities? Thank you, Karen. Katie, would you like to address that first instance, please? Thank you. I'll leave this one to Cathy, I think. Thank you. Yeah, good question. And there's a lot in that. I think in terms of things like new industries like seaweed cultivation, there is, you know, there is a lot of potential there, but it is something where we need to make sure that the regulatory framework and the evidence base there is available to make sure that we're making good decisions on, you know, locations for these new activities, to make sure that they're not damaging anything that we, you know, that's already there in terms of natural features, and that we understand how to harvest sustainably. For example, you know, some of the past discussions have been on harvesting of wild seaweed, seaweed, particularly things like kelp beds, play a really important role in the functioning of ecosystems, things like providing coastal defences to coastal communities. It's really important that we don't, you know, embark on new developments and exploitation without understanding sustainability of those practices. Cultivation, I think, about getting the locations right, about getting the management right, and, you know, thinking about things like biosecurity as well is important. So, lots of factors we need to consider, whether that's something that, you know, the fishing sector might want to diversify into. It's certainly worth looking at. There was a report done on wild harvesting and, you know, diversification for the fishing sector, and there were some opportunities sort of identified there in terms of small scale, I think, seaweed harvesting that might be worth investigating. There are potentially other sort of opportunities along the lines of wildlife tourism that can be sustainably developed within coastal economies. So, I think that there is more work to do on this, and, you know, as part of consideration of just transition, we definitely need to be helping and thinking about what those opportunities might be as we kind of grow more diverse and sustainable coastal economies going forward. Thank you. Charles, would you like to come in on that? Yeah, certainly, and I endorse a lot of what Kathy's just said. I think that seaweed industry presents a really excellent opportunity for coastal economy diversification. It does also need a new regulatory, or indeed a regulatory framework, and Kathy referred to biosecurity policies and certainly guidance on the siting of farms. I think that's very important. But other issues around prohibition of artificial enrichment or pesticides, these all need to be looked at to ensure that it's done in a way that means that it can coexist with fishing industry and other stakeholders. One particular concern that we have is the scale of potential seaweed farms. Now, what's been applied for and starting to be developed out recently, we've all been relatively small, up to 50 hectares, I think it's about the largest at the moment, but there is talk of them going much larger and certainly elsewhere around the world. These are very large-scale, multi-hundred-hectare sites. That is a potentially important issue for the inshore economy. It needs to be managed properly. CO2 benefits are certainly potentially there. Of course, the CO2 is sequestrated by kelp, be it natural or be it cultivated. It really depends on what happens to the kelp after it's been harvested, so there are issues around that, too. It's welcome, but it's got to be managed. When you're looking at small sea logs, you don't want very large seaweed farms in them. Other activities that could potentially provide opportunities for diversification, certainly when there's been discussed earlier today around shellfish farming. It's small scale at the moment, the muscle farming industry. It's got issues around getting adequate scale from individual sites to be able to compete in large markets, so there's assistance perhaps needed there. Oyster reintroductions on a commercial level as well as for carbon sequestration reasons. There are a number of opportunities here, which I think really need to be looked at. As has been mentioned, the need for a marine planning regime is becoming all the more apparent as the different activities emerge to try and identify how they can coexist so that they don't displace fishing and other activities. Those are all issues that are extremely important and need to be looked at. I would definitely include shellfish in the list, if you like. Can I ask Arrianne for her questions, then? We'll have a supplementary from Emma Harper. Thank you, convener. A couple of things. One is that I'd be curious to hear from the panel your thoughts on other stakeholders, community groups, tourism businesses, people whose livelihoods depend on marine biodiversity, joining the regional inshore fisheries group meetings. You were touched upon that earlier that it's limited. I'm curious to hear about that, opening that up. On the regulation part, environmental impacts around salmon farming, I'd be curious to hear your views on further regulation for that specific sector of aquaculture. That's probably one for Katie or Kathy to kick off on the other groups on the inshore fisheries. Thanks very much. Maybe if I take the points about the inshore fishing groups and then pass over to Kathy on the environmental impact of aquaculture. I touched on that earlier in relation to the role that local communities and others might play in that. Maybe it's a slightly disappointing answer, but we don't have a fixed view on what the mechanism should be. I guess that we have a strong view that we need to be really clear about who all the stakeholders are, that we want to have a voice in fisheries management going forward. There are a lot of stakeholders who are well engaged with fisheries management processes, but we are aware, obviously, that there are other stakeholders who feel that they maybe haven't had that opportunity. Having a discussion about who is involved in those discussions and being really clear about that and getting that agreed will then help the regional inshore fisheries groups or whatever other mechanism is used to take those next steps to developing into the future. I guess that there's a question related to that about to what extent is that a stakeholder engagement facilitation mechanism or to what extent is that a mechanism that provides for the kind of co-design, kind of co-management approaches and really needed to think through the governance to support that. Thank you. I'll come in on the aquaculture part of the question. We welcome the programme for government commitment to a new vision and strategy for aquaculture. We're also already engaged in the Professor's Great Regulatory Review, which was mentioned earlier. Key points that we've been feeding into that regulatory review are that, at the moment, we've got quite a tangled system of different consenting regimes, and in particular we've got the interface between planning consent and licensing under SEPA's licensing process and marine licensing. One of the key things is that aquaculture is not well suited to a one-off planning consent type arrangement. It is an on-going process. It's a management system within the marine environment and it really then is better suited to a licensing regime that could be more easily adapted as things happen and change and that monitoring can then feed back into changes to the way that the licence operates. That's a really important part that needs to be considered, because at the moment we're trying to shoehorn things into the planning framework when it's really not very suited to that. Hopefully that can be looked at. I think there's another point about the alignment of the different regulatory regimes and things like environmental impact assessment and how we bring that together a bit more successfully. I'm trying to link up the way that all the different regulators feed into the early discussions with developers about new sites to make sure that we really influence the sighting and the location in the best way so that we avoid big challenges further down the line. Part of that is about the special planning framework for aquaculture and making sure that we've got good maps to show where more suitable locations are actually located so that developers can steer towards those. There's a lot going on elsewhere in relation to work on things like interaction with wild salmonids and sea lice risk framework, work on acoustic deterrent devices and things that we're talking to industry about on seabed impacts, sensitive features, priority marine features that we talked about earlier and things like entanglement of seabirds in nets. Those are all really important strands of work and it's just critical that when we design perhaps a better regulatory framework we make sure that those sort of new approaches to tackle some of those environmental challenges are properly embedded within the regulatory framework so that we're not making it complicated with additional requirements. It's all sort of integrated into one system but I think there's a lot going on and hopefully at the end of this process we will have a much stronger, better system of regulation as Tavish mentioned earlier. It's not about changing things completely, it's about just having better regulation that does the job more effectively. We've got a small supplementary from Rachel and then we'll move to Emma Harper. It's a question on that to Cathy, please. The licensing and the planning, if you're looking at that, will the licensing you've mentioned, the environmental impact that you will take into account, will that also take into account the potential location with regards to jobs and local economy? For a new development coming in there will always need to be some form of one-off new development type planning process to cover those aspects and the wider impacts on how things fit into a coastal community. I'm not really suggesting that we don't have some form of spatial linkage through a system like the planning system to allow the social licence of the community views to be taken into account to work out how it fits with other infrastructure. It's more about the other parts of managing an aquaculture operation, which is being shoehorned into planning through the use of things like environment management plans, but probably sit much better with an on-going licensing process. I think that all needs to be worked through in the regulatory review, but you're right, there are some elements that probably still need to sit and have some input from local community input and other stakeholders as well. Thanks, convener. It's just a quick question that might be directed at Callum about marine litter. Callum presented to the marine tourism cross-party group at the end of the last parliamentary session and I'm a member of that CPG and you talked about work that was being done to look at dealing with marine litter, so I'm just wondering about an update to that, is there work being done to connect and collaborate with fishermen and inshore fishermen on how to deal with marine litter? I know that one of the fishermen in Kirkcwbry has been doing a good job of securing what needs to be secured in his boat so that things don't fly over the side for instance, so I've just taken a wee update about that. Thank you. I mean, we've been happy to collaborate. We did a big clean-up at Cairn Bologa, I think it was, with Kimo and SFF locally, but in terms of sort of more widely and more strategically the fishing for litter team continues and expands and we're obviously supportive of that. The marine litter strategy steering group has the issue on its agenda and the also commissioned, the Marine Scotland commissioned resources futures to take a real close look at actually litter deriving from the fishing industry itself, so there's obviously the two things. Fishing for Litter, where participating skippers are, you know, helpfully bringing what they bring up in their nets back ashore and then there's also dealing with the sort of, some of which might be direct litter from the industry, so much of it might not be, but then there's also the issue of, you know, better dealing with the waste generated on the vessels themselves. So, you know, I can provide a report to you afterwards that resources futures have done from Marine Scotland that was looking at and made a number of recommendations which I'd be happy to share with you. You know, chiefly it's about making it easier for vessels of all kinds, including fishing vessels, to be able to get their rubbish ashore and for it then to be properly dealt with. And obviously, you know, that'll depend on the scale of facility that they're returning to in terms of port or quay side or what have you, and it won't be one size fits all. But sorry, it's a bit general. I don't have specifics, but I can get that report to you after the meeting. Thank you, Calum. That would be useful. And finally, we've got a question on budgets from Rachel Hamilton. NatureScot's website states that the Scottish Marine Enhancement Fund will be launched imminently, and I just wondered if you did have a date that you could give us on when that will be launched. Can you outline where the budget for that money is coming from, how it will operate, and will the funding be conditional in the way that the future of funds are happening within the programme for government? Yeah, thank you. So the idea for the Scottish Marine Environmental Enhancement Fund is to encourage all those who use our marine environment to invest in its long-term health and sustainability. So the fund will actually be made up primarily of voluntary contributions from different sectors and different users and just anyone else who wants to make a contribution. Then it will use a series of criteria, award grants to projects that are intended to promote enhancement or also to targeted research to enhance the evidence base on things like restoration in the marine environment. The plan is not that this will be Government funding necessarily, although things like the Nature Restoration Fund might be one part of the money that is dispersed through this mechanism going forward. The bigger pot of money we hope will come from users of the marine environment, and that has already been the case in terms of offshore wind sector, in particular being a sort of early contributor to the fund. They have sort of helped to get this started, get this off the ground, but we are now talking to a much wider range of sectors who are all interested in contributing and getting involved as well. We are about to launch the fundraising element of SMEAF. SMEAF is being driven by Marine Scotland directorate within the Scottish Government Crown Estate Scotland. We have had very strong ministerial support for setting up the fund. It will be hosted initially within Nature Scotland. I cannot give you an actual date, but within the next month or two we will be launching a fundraising drive for SMEAF, putting it on a slightly more official basis and then hopefully opening to applications for the fund in the spring next year. I hope that that answers all the elements of your question, but come back to me if not. Can I just open up to the rest of the panel with regards to any future funding gaps that might appear as we move towards a just transition? I just wondered how the fishing and agriculture industry themselves play a part in shaping some of those funds. I do not really know who to draw. Can I just ask Charles to briefly comment on that, because we are running out of time? I feel that that is slightly beyond my remit with apologies. That is not an issue. We are a modusly funded, modus sized NGO. That is not really an issue, that specific one, which I feel I can adequately comment on. Can I open it up to the rest of the panel please? I am not sure that the questions might be right for Calum or Charles on basing that comment, and I am not sure that our… Cathy is going to respond. I can come back in again. In terms of the involvement of the fishing and agriculture sectors in the discussions about the SMEAF fund, we have reached out to those sectors but recognise that they have had a lot of issues with Covid and EU exit. There has been no pressure on them to formally engage, but we hope that, as things get easier, they will be able to engage more with that process and be part of that sort of growing movement in relation to SMEAF. In relation to wider funding, we mentioned the nature restoration fund, which has been a sort of programme for government commitment. It is obviously going to be carried forward. A point was made earlier about the one-year funding issues. I think that there is an issue there about trying to move beyond that to multi-year project funding so that we can plan ahead. Some of those projects take much longer than one year to develop and to come to fruition. They need funds to be able to support project development and staffing costs, as well as the capital costs of carrying out the work. We can look at how Marine Fund Scotland evolves to be able to support some of those priorities alongside the sort of just transition, as well as supporting climate and nature priorities. There is something about research and innovation and how we make sure that we are properly joined up, particularly in relation to the fishing and the aquaculture sectors, to try to fund the kind of research and innovation that we need to overcome the sort of on-going environmental challenges and the new things that are coming up as well. We have some good mechanisms in terms of Fisheries Innovation Scotland and the Aquaculture Innovation Centre, but we could probably do more to be strategic about how we identify the kind of priority gaps and the innovation needs and develop joint projects with industry to address those. I think that this is directed to Katie. I asked the last panel about the new legislation that was brought in as a result of leaving the EU, so I would be interested to know what your views are on the objectives within the Fisheries Act 2020 and the priorities within the development of the joint fisheries statements and fishery management plans under the Fisheries Act 2020. I will keep this brief, but we can always provide more follow-up afterwards, but just because of time, we welcome the objectives that have come through from the Fisheries Act 2020 and the definitions that have been published alongside of those. That is really helpful for moving on to implementing it. Others have mentioned it before, but in terms of our priorities for future fisheries management, it is about making sure that we have an ecosystem-based approach. Those objectives speak to that, and we welcome the elements of the ecosystem-based approach that have been brought into the future fisheries management strategy, things that I have mentioned before, such as nursery and spawning grounds, for example. One of the things that Elspeth Macdonald mentioned before was, in the earlier discussion, how we think about how we link up through the marine protection policies and the future fisheries management strategy to streamline that whole process will be really useful. In terms of the joint fisheries statement, the only thing that I will say on that just now is that we recognise that as a really useful part of providing that overall context, so that we understand what the processes are that will be used for joining up on fisheries management. In terms of the fisheries management plans, if that is the route that Scotland goes down, we see that plans like that have a lot of potential to really implement those objectives in a very structured way. However, whether or not fisheries management plans are what are used, we need to make sure that we have some kind of mechanism that facilitates an objective assessment of where particular fisheries are against an agreed set of criteria. That will help us to identify where the strengths and weaknesses are in the management, and in turn that should help us to identify what the future priorities and actions are. Thank you very much. I would like to thank the panel for their patience for the panel starting late and for running over time. Thank you very much again for your evidence, and no doubt we will come back to you some time later in the session. We will now move into private session. Thank you.